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Recent threads on having siblings, or how many children to have, prompted me to wonder if there is 'Only Child' playgroup out there? There are special groups for multiples, so why not singleton children?


How do you think being an only child affects your child, good or bad?


Personally I love being the mother of an only child. I feel like adding another child, at least at this age, would change my relationship with my toddler. I'm happy that we can just about give one child the standard of living that my husband and I had. Research does suggest that only children are not the stereotyped 'lonely onlies', but rather are well-adjusted and happy. I had an unhappy time with two abusive siblings, so I'm keen to avoid that in my own little family. Obviously my experience colours my choices. I'm just wondering what anyone else's experience/choices have been?



Are there any other parents of only children of any age who want to meet up?


xx

What a great idea!


I wish I was there to join, but as someone pointed out, am now back in Canada. I would love to meet some mothers of older only children so I could understand the next few years a bit better.


That said, I will be following this thread with interest and hope to read about others' experiences with this. I am really amazed at how few people I know, children or adults, who are only children. It's lonely being an only parent some times too!


Best of luck with finding a nice group Saffron, hope it works out.

HIya - I am the mum to an only child and given my age & personal circumstances mean it is quite likely to stay this way. I often worry about it as I come from a large family and love it, but, due to unusual circumstances I am by far the youngest. This means when growing up, I often felt a bit alone, especially on holidays etc as my sisters & brother are so much older. They love me very much but I was often jealous of the "group effect" they seem to have with each other (and our cousins - we are a large, close family). Because of the age difference, even their kids are a lot older than my LO (adults in fact) . DH is also from a large family, and has children from a previous marriage. His kids adore our LO but the age gap is even bigger than with me and my siblings. So even though he has siblings & cousins etc, I am worried history will repeat itself.

So I guess it is up to me to enable as much friendship and social companionship as possible - hence, if there is an Only Child club, I'm in!

Hi all- Glad to see there's so much interest already!


Somewhat surprisingly, I haven't found any playgroups for 'onlies' yet, so I was thinking to host at mine if numbers aren't too big. I'm in Brockley (se4), so not strictly East Dulwich, though I've noticed that forumites tend to be scattered over Dulwich, Nunhead, Sydenham, Peckham etc. Of course if anyone else wants to host, that would be lovely too. Maybe we can rotate?


Depending on the children's ages, perhaps we could meet once or twice a month for tea and biscuits, then maybe get a little more organised for a dayout sometime?


xx

Let's tentatively plan both dates then. :) You can't make too many new friends or have too much tea and cake*!!


Thursday 15th September, afternoon... from 2:30pm ish?


Saturday 24th September, also afternoon?


If the weather is nice, we can meet at mine, then take our LOs up to the park. If it's rainy, we can stay indoors and do painting or baking, or watch videos, or have dolly buggy races up and down the hall.


If that sounds good, I can PM everyone with more info.


Cheers all!





*(Ok, you technically CAN have too much tea and cake, but my cake threshold is very high.)

Great! So we're on for both dates (Thursday 15, and Saturday 24 September, from 2:30ish to 4:30ish at mine (se4). I'll send a round of PMs with address etc next week -- or sooner if Little Saff will get off the iPlayer and let me use the computer. Cheers, all! :)

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