People With Siblings Reveal Life Lessons An Only Child May Not Understand

People With Siblings Reveal Life Lessons An Only Child May Not Understand
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The grass is always greener.

Only children want siblings. Siblings want to be only children. There is no winning.

But both sides come with lessons and lifestyles unknown to the other. And siblings seem to have a leg up on little things, here and there.

u/Pbackrider asked:

Children in multi-sibling households, what lessons did you learn that the only child might never get?

Here were some of those answers.


Win One To Lose One

When you're getting food in the middle of a show, carry the TV remote with you.

KitterCatto3

But you have to accept that you will lose the favored chair. No way around that one.

EDIT: Lots of comments about saving the chair. "quack quack seat back" and "fives". Ha, not in my fam, fam.

"quack quack seat back, I get the chair back"

Everyone: "OK"

Get back, someone in the chair.

"Mom, Dad, I called quack, quack"

"SHUT UP AND SOLVE IT YOURSELVES!!"

cellophane_dreams

Unspoken Contracts

As the oldest child: because you get there first for everything, you may be punished more or less severely than your siblings for the same offense. This will piss off every other sibling.

Also there is an unspoken code of "if the parents weren't home when *object* broke, nobody saw it break." They'll try to prisoner's dilemma all of the kids. The more expensive and/or difficult to replace the object, the less any of the kids saw anything. Even if it could be proved that everyone was in the room when the item broke, nobody saw it happen. Why? Because this time you're covering for your sibling. Next time they will cover for you. It is a bond that will only be broken once, because if it does break the next time the kids are alone the snitch is gonna get it real good

KnittinAndBitchin

Building The Bonds

Teamwork

I have a bunch of brothers. My dad early on would punish you if caught in the wrong, but if you were tattling you got double. So instead of telling on each other we worked together to stay out of trouble.

It made my mom mad when she demanded who did something. She would threaten to punish all of us if one of us didn't confess. We all maintained our silence and accepted mass punishment. Afterwards, me and my brothers would talk over how we got caught, what mistakes were made and how to avoid it in the future.

To this day we are all very close, and though we are all scattered around the world, we still talk 3-4 times a week.

A***wrecker

Scheming Galore

How to act completely ignorant of what happened. "Where was your sister?" Mom asks. I say, "I don't know, I was asleep in my room the whole night." In reality, I was awake playing videogames with a walkie talkie keeping tabs on her the whole time and letting her know when I hear anything downstairs and I told her to come home when I heard our mom go to the bathroom, so she'd be in the yard when mom went looking.

The art of blackmail.

Comradery and having tons of time to hatch plans and build stuff.

Learning to deal with and enjoy people you don't choose to be around because you don't pick your siblings or their personalities.

anonymouslyspoken111

Machiavelli Is Watching This Guy From Somewhere

Speaking as an older brother, you bully the younger ones to keep them in line. But you also protect them from other bullies because they're a valuable resource - they'll have your back if you have theirs. They can back you up in a fight, back your story up to the parents, take a share of the blame, and are pretty reliable if you need some minor thing taken care of. It's basically gang leadership 101 - managing your street level guys loyalty without letting them get ambitious enough to try to take you out.

Edit: and of course, you also protect them because you love them. Figured that was understood, forgot to add it. It's not all cold utilitarian logic. Just some.

grendus

I Just Wanted The Marbles, Man

It doesn't matter what YOU want to do!

So many only-child friends seemed to dictate the entire household. If kid wanted to go to the beach, they went to the beach. I didn't even get to pick whether I wanted McDonalds or Burger King for dinner- my mom was picking which one she wanted so she didn't have to listen to us bicker.

Also, if your younger brother eats random things, you aren't allowed to have marbles in the house. Doesn't matter that you're not some moron who eats inedible objects, your brother is a moron, so you suffer.

Beachy5313

Bargaining Skills

Negotiation.

Nothing like rallying your siblings to your side when you have a common enemy (normally mom) and then negotiating the distribution of the result of your efforts.

Am the only girl and the baby. Set me up well for my career negotiating with angry dudes all the time.

WattsUp130

Tommy...Michael...Gus...Whatever Your Name Is!

My parents couldn't keep the names straight between us, so I got called my sister's name, the dog's name, the neighbor's kids name...

They'd also combine our names so when they called us they were somewhat right all the time.

God bless, they're good parents though.

Edit: I love reading everyone's stories and am so glad we can share this experience together!!

HotdogbodyBoi

How To Push But Not Push Away

How to argue without going for the jugular. I'm oldest of four and we could argue, scrap and wrestle without causing much damage no matter how angry we were.

Even now, we'll disagree but get over it immediately without being hurtful. You need that skill to survive in a family and indeed, the world. My ex was an only child without cousins and was horrified by fighting of any kind, but when he did get into it he was the nastiest, cruelest most vicious person.

He'd say some truly awful things without seeming to realise he'd have to live with these people or in that community after the dust settled. He never learned to play fight or about boundaries and was unable to understand our sons rough and tumble. He'd Wade into any kind of light-hearted, laughing wrestling and stamp it out. It took me forever to teach him that all children need to learn how to argue and even physically scrap in order to learn boundaries and respect for each other and themselves.

Applebottomgenes75

Whose Problem Is It Anyway?

When "You can hit me back!" is not effective, you have gone too far and actually owe an apology. Or you've created a manipulative psychopath, in which case you owe an apology to the world.

You actually won't know which it is for years.

UnApprovedActivities


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