Catdaddy33

Well, I'm an only child and as of now we plan for my 12 yr old daughter to be an only child. The selfish part is probably somewhat true, I never had to share my stuff with a sibling as a kid, nor does my daughter. When I was young the neighborhood we lived in had a bunch of kids that I played with so that and school taught me how to not only be social, but also how to share. That's not to say that I had my moments, I liked having stuff done the way I wanted, and would get pissy at times when it didn't. My wife would say that I'm still like that at times (and I am), but is it cause I'm an only child? Maybe..

We had a good idea that my daughter would be an only child early on, so we were sure to place her in social situations and enrolled her in camps and sports. That in combination with school made her more outgoing, although I see a lot of her mannerisms mirror me at an early age. It's not uncommon for her to have a friend spend the night or vice versa, and she get tired of having the friend there, or want to come home. She has a lot of friends and is rather popular (as popular as a 6th grader can be) and is understanding of her friends feelings. Even today, I shy away from large social situations, I prefer more intimate gatherings with 2-3 other people, and I get to a point where I've had enough and want to leave..

We both have need for alone time, that bothered my wife for a long time, but now we see my daughter retreating to her room to sit and read for a couple of hours a week. Is it selfish for us to want to be left alone? Not sure, but I need it in order to keep me sane..

We use to get the "when are you going to have more kids" question, but as our daughter got around 10 people stopped asking. I guess they either figured it out, or were afraid to ask in case there were "medical" reasons why we couldn't..