In a world filled with large families and mass produced stereotypes we live by things such as
“the middle child syndrome,” the “favorite younger sibling,” and the “pushed aside” oldest one.
But, then there’s a whole new classification in the land of siblings and that is us, the only
children. Yes, I know exactly what you’re thinking: SPOILED.
Although all of the attention is usually on us and our parents do love us the most because there’s no one around to share the love with, this does not mean that it’s a bad thing, or that we’re brats and that we don’t care about anybody but ourselves. We just do things a bit differently sometimes.
1. The best holiday of all time no matter how many siblings you have, is Christmas. For us only children, Christmas isn’t only the best because of the gifts, but, on Christmas morning we never had to wait for anybody to wake up because our parents were usually awake before us.
2. Our parents are our biggest fans and support us in anything and everything that we do. Since the attention is typically all on us, we get the most love from our family. We have super great relationships with our mom’s and dad’s and there’s almost never a time where they don’t support what we want to do with our future.
3. We LOVE our alone time. Alone time is a virtue no matter who you are but, we’ve had alone time our entire lives therefore, sometimes after a long day with lots of people, we need a little mental break. While we’re alone we always find something to keep us busy and we never actually feel, alone.
4. But, we highly value our friends too. Since we live alone and typically don’t see much of people similar in age around the house, we LOVE time with our friends. In fact, contrary to popular belief, we love to be with people, and we love to explore different groups of them.
5. We also cherished our imaginary friends as children. Most people have imaginary friends at some point, but us only children have so much free space to let our mind wander that we may have had several hundred imaginary people in our life. Always with absurd names, and always doing crazy things.
Granted those imaginary friends were the best friends we ever had!
6. A lot of the time, we prefer to avoid conflict. Since we aren’t used to constant arguments with older siblings, we are naturally averse to arguing with our friends. Instead of arguing, we’d rather just talk it out and move on.
7. We are super close with our cousins. Whether it be one or eleven, our cousins are not only our best friends, but are practically our own personal siblings except we aren’t forced to see them everyday. It’s the best of both worlds.
8. We’re drawn to other only children. Meeting another only child is one of the most exciting things because we instantly can relate on a whole new level. It always seems like we feel the same feelings and live the same lives as one another.
9. Okay, so we admit, it’s a little upsetting that we will never be aunts or uncles. No siblings, no kids of their own, no need for an aunt or an uncle.
10. You feel like some sort of rare species, “the only child.” Every single one of our friends has siblings or some sort of sibling figure in their life. We're left here alone to fend for ourselves but we usually end up doing a pretty good job of it.
See, we’re not all that bad! After all, only doesn’t always have to mean lonely!
