Do you expect siblings to always include each other?!

Thanks! This is hard for me to swallow too. Maybe because I have a bunch of siblings, etc. I think part of why I am so into 'everybody has their own things' is because I was forced to share a room forever. I DID have my own things but having a shared space was hard on me. Some people LOVE that, I have friends whose kids INSIST on sharing a room, so they share a room and the other room is used for a playroom (if there are two kids). However, I am the kind of person who would have loved to have my own room AND bathroom as a kid with a key to lock them both and keep everybody out lol. I love space now and I crave it, even after we have no kids in the house, I will want to have a big house and a yard and just a lot of space to entertain. I can't figure out why my friend is so set on making her kids include each other all the time. Her kids are NOT similar personalities, the two youngest are more than the oldest, but her daughter is the middle child, the other two are boys. She is VERY girly very princessy. The boys are well.... rough and tumble. Wii and xbox. Trucks and cars. scooters. They are VERY boy. That's why I think it is such a conundrum. My daughter is about equal parts girly and equal parts rough and tumble. She loves playing with boys and she has a lot of friends that are boys. However, she LOOKS very girly. This attracts girls to be her friend but it doesn't necessarily mean she wants to PLAY girly all the time. I think this bothers my friend's daughter to some degree, and I think sometimes they band together against her brother because she is playing her hand by saying 'this is MY friend, not yours'. It's almost like a power struggle thing. My daughter - who wants to support her friend - then goes along with it. It's just frustration guaranteed at this point. I feel bad for the girls because like I told someone else, they don't go to the same school any more. They don't get to play ALL the time like they did when my friend and I got together every day and went to events and activities geared toward the girls (when they didn't have school every day). My friend works now and for awhile both she and I were taking some classes. I'm volunteering at the school now so we are just busier. If we lived in the same neighborhood, this would not be a problem but I feel if the girls only get to play once a week or LESS, the GIRLS should get to play together.

Some of the time is okay, but I kind of get the feeling that you mean 'most of the time'. This is the problem I have with my friend. She gets royally BENT OUT OF SHAPE when MY daughter and HER daughter want to play together WITHOUT her youngest son. He is 18 months younger than both of the girls. Sometimes they play GREAT together but sometimes bottom line is they just don't want to play with him, they just want to play with each other. We live at opposite ends of town, it takes me around 15-20 minutes to get to her house. The girls went to preschool together because we enrolled them at a community center that pulls from the whole surrounding community. They go to different elementaries now. Anyway, my point is that the girls got to see each other LOTS when they were younger. Now they RARELY get to play together. I feel that when they do get to play together, they shouldn't have to include anybody else if they don't want to. They were best friends for several years, and they were both 2 when they met. I think it's important that kids learn how to share but they also need space to themselves and their own friends. I would focus more on making sure EACH kid had some of their own friends rather than concentrate on forcing one to share or let the others play all the time. If I had one that didn't have friends, I'd make sure we did activities to remedy that situation so they could MEET people to be friends with rather than make my social child who had lots of friends HAVE to share friends and play with the one who didn't. I'm sorry but it just causes resentment and the child whose friends they are probably don't really want to include all the siblings either. I think this is normal for kids to not always want to include siblings, when you think about it, none of the siblings pick each other lol. I love my siblings but were they not my siblings, I'm fairly sure we wouldn't have purposely chosen to be friends/related. All I'm saying is that their behavior makes sense, and I like to try and avoid/defuse fights before they happen by not expecting a miracle. I find a practical solution instead.

I have a sister 2 1/2 years younger than me. I love my sister, don't get me wrong.... but I always had to share a room with her. I was determined to ALWAYS make sure MY KIDS had their own space to retreat to - that was JUST theirs, so they weren't always jammed in with someone else all the time. My parents were good about not always making us be together, but occasionally if they did when we were sick of each other, I'm sure we resented each other badly. I just don't think it's good to force people on each other. I have some friends I love dearly but if someone FORCED me to be together with them, that might mean the difference between bending and breaking, and quite honestly, we might not be friends after that. Especially some that I have that I can only expose myself to for short periods of time.... We all have our limits and it is not wise to push them to the breaking point all the time, like I said, if that's what happens, then the kids fight and they fight HORRIBLY. They are really MEAN to each other then and I'm not talking just ONE of them. When it gets to that point, it is ALL of them and knowing that it was preventable makes me ill. One more thing - I am not sure I would be keen on making friends with someone who ALWAYS had to include all of their siblings... I mean what if I didn't like the sibling(s)? It wouldn't be worth it to befriend one if that meant I had to befriend them ALL lol. Or at least ALWAYS play with them when they visited....or even worse, if I invited MY friend over, my parents would have to accept 5 more kids coming over? Bleh lol. I can tell you that as a parent myself, I would draw the line. My daughter would not be required to invite over half the neighborhood just because the other parent didn't want ONE of their kids to leave their brothers and sisters out!

Do you agree that spending a little time apart is as effective as 'getting along'? See, I do. When someone cannot 'get along' because they want to play different things, why can't the one person who wants to play something different GO PLAY SOMETHING DIFFERENT and not gripe and whine and ruin things for the two or three who are playing fine together? That just makes sense to me. Oddly enough, I have some friends who have nothing in common except me - meaning that I could not invite them somewhere at the same time because they might attack and kill each other. I am conscious of that though so I just make sure I am not trying to spend time with both of them at the same time. It has worked for a couple years so as long as I don't suddenly get senile, I think things will continue to work just fine. I would never but NEVER accept anybody trying to force us all to 'just get along' because that is a mathematical impossibility and I am not stupid enough to think 'try try again' works without consequences.

Thanks. This is one big bone of contention my friend and I butt heads over. I have told her that I would feel the same no matter how many kids I had. Kids are all different. They need different things. Life is not fair although we do try to make it as fair as we possibly can as long as we can. That doesn't mean that fair always means EQUAL though... not in this case!