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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]How do you handle large age gaps  between cousins? My children and my sister’s two older children are very close and grew up living like siblings. 12 years later my sister and bil had another child.

Obviously I’m a jerk for even thinking about this but I find myself having scaled back on the time the cousin spend together because now that the kids are older teens/tweens the four year old tags along and I have to entertain the four year old while the older cousins play.

I feel like a jerk for even thinking about not including him when we do stuff. Is there a scenario where I’m not a jerk for this? on top of it all I have family pressure by my parents to have the cousins (implied everybody).

Just as an example the other day the cousins wanted to go to Tysons corner and I felt obligated to also bring little cousin so he wouldn’t feel left out. Guess who hung out with the 4 year old?

And this may or may not make a difference but my sister never has my kids over it’s a very one-sided relationship but that’s an entirely different conversation.

[/quote]

I'm a little confused by the ages.  There's a 4 year old, and a 12 year gap, and then tweens.  It doesn't really compute.

The only way that I can figure it out is that your sister and her husband have kids, the youngest of whom is 16, and you have kids who are younger, including one who is at least 4 years younger (the "tween").  The older cousins have accommodated your younger kids for years.

In that case, I do think that you. have some obligation to repay times when your sister included your youngest and provided way more supervision than she would have for just her own kids.  Not 100% of the time, but some time.

I also think that the tweens and teens can do things by themselves, and you can leave the 4 year old out if you do something that just doesn't work for the youngest.  [/quote]

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