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When I was growing up in my large family with 6 brothers and sisters, my parents did not do any "one on one time" with any of us. They did speak to all of us as a group but never did they lunch, shop or hang out with just one of us individually. I guess they felt that one of us would be jealous if they saw Mom or Dad going out with just one of us.
I think this lack of "one on one time" has added to the fact that all of us are kind of messed up!
If you were the parent of a huge family, (6 or more) would you do one on one things with the kids?
i'm parent to 5,1 now at uni.2 have serious issues(caused before they came to me)
i would love the luxury of spending 1:1 time with them and have been working hard to get them to accept me doing things like cooking/reading drawing with just 1.as a single parent,(no one else will have them now) i can only do things in the house, which my 15 yr old bio d is not interested in.but i do give her lifts to trampoline training 6x a week when she has to put uo with the embarassment of her brothers............a mum can only do so much.
I grew up in a family of 7 children. My father coached my brothers in Little League in order to spend time with them. I remember my 5th birthday, when he took me out for a father-daughter dinner. I really do not recall mother-daughter things though. I think it was easier on my Dad, who traveled for his job, to make sure he connected with his kids as individuals. My mother was with us all the time, but as a group.
I do one-on-one stuff with my five kids. I might take one to run errands and grab lunch, or out to get coffee (well, milk for them) at Dunkin Donuts. Or we might do a volunteer project. It's gotten easier as they've gotten older-it's really hard to do when everyone is small, but once they are school age it's easier.
From what I can recall, only on our birthdays probably. There's 8 kids in my family and it was a traditional set up....mom stayed home, dad went to work. So whenever mom went to the store, she usually took all the little kids with her, or no kids (when she needed a break). Rarely was it just one. I myself have 4 kids and do my best to take them one at a time, so they get a feel of one on one time.
When I was growing up in my large family with 6 brothers and sisters, my parents did not do any "one on one time" with any of us. They did speak to all of us as a group but never did they lunch, shop or hang out with just one of us individually. I guess they felt that one of us would be jealous if they saw Mom or Dad going out with just one of us.
I think this lack of "one on one time" has added to the fact that all of us are kind of messed up!
If you were the parent of a huge family, (6 or more) would you do one on one things with the kids?
I was one of four kids, but my mom and dad divorced when I was 9 and my dad went on to acquire three more kids. On top of this, my mom ran a home day care. There were always 7 or more kids in whatever house I was in (mom's or dad's) at any given time. I was always the oldest of all this mess, as I was the first-born.
I got absolutely no "alone time" with either of my parents. My mother tried a few times to take me shopping alone, but it never worked out. When I started getting older and needed my first bra, for example, she tried, but one of my younger siblings actually hid inside the car and came along with us. This pretty much ruined the whole attempt. Mom was upset, I was upset, he was in big trouble and also upset...
I don't know that not having any alone time with either of my parents has hurt me in any way, but it certainly made it very easy for me to become independent from my family at a very early age. I think growing up in a large family made me yearn for a smaller, quieter, simpler life. Granted, aside from being large, it was also dysfunctional (we have our fair share of abusers, drama queens, control freaks, psychotics, those in denial about everything, pill-poppers...) but whose isn't?
I've never been the kind of person to be co-dependent or attached to people. I detach from people very easily. When we move for my husbands job, it's never been difficult to say goodbye to friends we've made along the way. When we left our original "home" (where I was born and where both our families lived), we were never homesick. I was actually relieved to move away from them, as I find them to be too much... just overwhelming and chaotic and emotionally draining. I'm not happy when I'm around them because I prefer quiet and privacy and my own space. It feels like I have to put a fake happy face on when I'm around them, and make all kinds of small talk and do the lovey-dovey hugging thing, and I don't like feeling that way.
Anyway - I feel that alone time is important. It needs to be regular, consistent, and high-quality time, though. You can't just think about doing it or talk about doing it and then finally when the kid is 13 you attempt it. I think if my parents had done it regularly, consistently, the whole time I was growing up, it would have brought us closer. They didn't, and I never felt as if I knew them at all. I never felt that I was very important to them, so it didn't matter to me whether or not I stayed close to them as I grew older. I didn't care too much about them, and it didn't seem to me that they cared that much for me, so over the years we became more and more distant from one another. There were other things going on, too, that made me lose respect for them and not want to be around them... it wasn't just not having any alone time with them growing up.
I have found (for the most part) people who come from large families usually have smaller ones when they become parents or visa versa. We always seem to yearn for what we don't have.
Many onlies go on to have 'bigger' families...people from families of 5 or 6 have just one or two...
In my own family, well, my grandma was one of 8. Not one of her siblings had more than 3 kids..a few had none, she had one, and so on...
My dad was an only and he wanted a big family...they had 3 kids (actually four but one died.) As one of three, I knew I'd have only one or two kids because I wanted to be able to give that child what I did not get.
I only had one brother, but he was handicapped and took up a lot of my mother's time, so I don't recall any one on one time with her. My dad was the "hands off" type who thought (thinks) child care is the mother's job. (If left alone with one of our babies, he'd probably rush to the emergency room to have a poopy diaper changed!) I wasn't into sports or fishing, so I never did anything with my dad, although I spent a lot of time one on one with my grandfather. I never became friends with my parents in adulthood, but we have little in common. I'd say I was (am) more independent because of this.
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