Kids without cousins

[ckay87]

Some of my greatest memories from growing up are of visiting and playing with my cousins. I have inadvertently deprived my kids of this by starting a family 10 years before any of my or DH's siblings. Furthermore, once all of our siblings got around to having kids, they all decided to have girls. We have boys. In a nutshell, my boys have SEVEN little girl cousins under the age of seven. Our family gatherings look like this:

(that's seven)
(guess who those 2 are?)


So in recent years, since my guys are getting older (15 and 12), I've been letting them skip lots of family gatherings, aside from major holidays. MIL gets bent out of shape sometimes....tells me I should "make" them go.

What makes it worse is that the little girls are so cute and .... well, cute..... that they get all the attention and my guys get pretty much none. Nobody seems to know how to talk to them since they are big boys (which is strange to me because they are fully-functioning humans just like them, you know?)

Does anyone else have a family setup like this or grow up this way? How do you deal? Do you let the big kids sit it out sometimes? Just an open discussion.

 

[cabanafrau]

My 10 & 14 year olds are the only 2 grandchildren in both families, which is guaranteed for DH's family & a distant possibility for mine. I'd offer them up as company at family gatherings for yours -- except they're females!

 

[Parkhopper]

My DS (14 this month) is the Only Only. He is the only child, grandchild and greatgrandchild on BOTH sides. I have a brother and a sister (both married - no kids). DH has a brother who is unmarried (also no kids). My siblings have each been married for over 10 years and have no intention of having children. DH's brother is nearing 40 and is not currently dating.

Luckily, we have several sets of very close friends (close enough that our DS calls them "Uncle" or "Aunt") and they have children that DS considers like cousins. They are close to him in age (at least within 5 years) although DS is always the oldest. He will play and interact with all of them and it doesn't seem to matter if they are male or female to him.

I don't have any advice for your situation, but I am sure that you will get plenty of response from others.

Suzi

 

[castleview]

On DH's side, friction exists. So our kids don't see their cousins as much - but our sanity is intact. On my side, we get along with the cousins, but accept that some kids are older and going in their own directions. I wouldn't worry about MIL. My MIL has finally gotten over her fantasy of every Sunday gatherings at her house where the ENTIRE family happily arrived. "Making" people go only resulted in more hard feelings.

 

[Hoodie]

I'm closer in age to two of my aunts then they are to my parents. As a result, my closest cousin in age is 8 years younger and there's at least a 20 year age difference between me and the other 7 kids. I'm 34 and my youngest cousin is 6.

It's been fun because I'm more of an aunt to them than a cousin. Your boys are at an age when the familyy gatherings aren't "cool" anyway. Give them time, they'll be okay as the oldest ones eventually.

 

[Camicar]

DD has 3 cousins who live 1500 miles away. The youngest of them is 3 years older than she is. They have no interest in her whatsoever when we visit.

 

[MoniqueU]

My husband and i are both only children. So no cousins for my kids. It makes me sad. I also would love to be an aunt to someone. We have 3 kids and I had them in quick succession on purpose to ensure that they would not be only children.

 

[puffkin]

My DS (2 1/2) is the only grandchild on my side of the family. My twin brother is not in a relationship and doesn't really even date. I "highly" doubt there will be any children from him unless he would eventually marry and get an "insta-family".

DH's sister has two girls. They are 11 and 8 so they are pretty old compared to my son. They are good with him though....but it isn't like having a playmate at family functions. DH's brother just got married, and they are pretty adament about not having children.

It is kind of sad because both DH and I grew up with several cousins around our age. However, our cousins have kids close to our son's age, and we do see them at family functions usually, so there are other kids around. They are just 2nd cousins to DS though.....but still make good playmates.

 

[dislal]

Just a small sugestion maybe at family gatherings you could have something (I'm not sure what) that could help your boys interact with and the little princesses some kind of game or craft or something. They would be like the big heros to all the family members

 

[DVCLiz]

My advice is to wait a few years when you have teen girls in the family. Then see how much they want their older male cousins to come to every family event!!!! And preferably to bring their friends, too.

 

[KATHINOWA]

My kids are 12, 10, 7. On DH side their cousins are 27, 27, 26, 23, 23, 22, 19 and 7. On my side their cousins are 14, 12, 9, 8, 7. They are close to all their cousins. The ones on my side especially because of the closeness in age and they live in the same community and go to the same schools. The older cousins live in a neighboring town and we see them frequently. We actually vacation with them from time to time. They are super-nice to my kids and always play with them even though there is a big age difference. I'm not close to any of my cousins so I hope my kids maintain their cousin relationships.

 

[TwinsinCA]

My sister is not having kids but my kids have 11 cousins on dh's side. All of their cousins are older (the oldest three are out of college and two are in college) and they are scattered all over the country. My daughters are 8 and they have two cousins who are 9 and 10 who live in a AZ. They also happen to both be boys. The fact they are boys is a non issue -- they all get along great. But they are also close in age. I am sure if their cousins were teenagers, they would not be as close.

I grew up without any cousins (both parents are only children) and you don't miss what you don't know. So I would not worry about depriving your kids. How often are the family gatherings? I think it is fine if you let them skip some of them. But I also think they should have to go more than a couple times a year.

 

[believe]

The cousins range from 20yrs - 8yrs on my side. The older boys are always playing with the younger girls. It is no big deal. My DDs love their older boy cousins. My oldest DD can beat the boys at any video game, so they love to play with her for the challenge.

 

[NMAmy]

My sister is 10 years older than me. So I'm 12 years older than my nephew and 14 years older than my niece.

So my niece is 30 and my dd is 17. They are still very close even with the age difference. My niece has children, as well. I've encouraged dd to spend time with them. My great-niece who just turned 5, took dd's picture in for Show and Tell. Really, I think that is just the sweetest thing ever--she and her younger sister really look up to their cool older cousin. So even with an age difference, cousins can still be quite close.

 

[Todd&Copper]

We only saw our cousins every 2 or 3 years growing up [we lived in HI and then FL, they lived in NJ], and the oldest cousin was nearly 7 years older than the youngest. I remember when D was almost 14, her brother C was 11, I was 9 and my sis just turned 7. Sis and I were way too uncool or D to give us the time of day.
Now, D has 2 adopted girls who are 10 and 8, C has a daughter who is 4 or 5, and sis and I have no kids, although DH & I would like to start actively try to get me knocked up by the end of the year. I doubt there would be many visits to see these cousins now, anyway. DH's sister had a baby this past March, but she is such a donkey that she would never invite us to visit, so I'll probably very rarely see my nephew. DH's cousins have no children yet.

In my opinion, this extended family business is overrated. We viewed these summer vacations as "obligation" and when we stopped in Orlando or Anaheim on the way home it was "vacation".

 

[Master Mason]

Some of my greatest memories from growing up are of visiting and playing with my cousins. I have inadvertently deprived my kids of this by starting a family 10 years before any of my or DH's siblings. Furthermore, once all of our siblings got around to having kids, they all decided to have girls. We have boys. In a nutshell, my boys have SEVEN little girl cousins under the age of seven. Our family gatherings look like this:

(that's seven)
(guess who those 2 are?)


So in recent years, since my guys are getting older (15 and 12), I've been letting them skip lots of family gatherings, aside from major holidays. MIL gets bent out of shape sometimes....tells me I should "make" them go.

What makes it worse is that the little girls are so cute and .... well, cute..... that they get all the attention and my guys get pretty much none. Nobody seems to know how to talk to them since they are big boys (which is strange to me because they are fully-functioning humans just like them, you know?)

Does anyone else have a family setup like this or grow up this way? How do you deal? Do you let the big kids sit it out sometimes? Just an open discussion.

My boys are 16 and 24 their cousins are all girls 13, 8, and 1. So yea I am in pretty much the same boat as you are.

 

[Michelle67]

My kids are on the opposite end of the issue from yours. My nearest sibling is ten years older than me. I have an 18 year old daughter, a 9 year old daughter, and a 5 year old son. My sisters between them have a 34 year old daughter, a 32 year old daughter, a 30 year old son, and a 28 year old son. My sisters' grandchildren are actually in my kids' age ranges; they range from 17 years old down to 2 years old. They don't live near us, though.

On my husband's side they have tons of cousins, but most of them are older (my husband is one of the youngest siblings) and they all live on the east coast.

So...my kids are more or less "cousinless" too, at least in terms of hanging out together. Family functions are somewhat of a moot point since they don't happen very often, but my kids do always go because otherwise they would be left home hours (or thousands of miles) away.

 

[addicted_to_WDW]

DS is the baby of the family by about 10 years. His cousins dote on him, but he hasn't grown up with them the way they did with each other.

 

[sk8ingmom]

My folks were both only children, so no cousins here.
My brothers are 5 & 10 years younger than me, so we didn't really play together - we are very close, just didn't play together.

I didn't miss having cousins - I had friends.

 

[Alex2kMommy]

My DH is an only child, so our two boys are the only kids in the family, no cousins.

On my side of the family the cousins are:

Boy(20) Boy(11) Girl(9) Boy(8) Boy(4) Boy(9 mos.)

The oldest and youngest live far away, but the middle 4 see each other every month or so. Even though there's only one girl, she plays well with all the boys.

Now when I get together with my girlfriends' families, we have ages:

8 8 8 6 6 4 3 3 1

Again, all the kids play well together, regardless of gender. At least from my experience, age plays more of a factor in this kind of thing than gender.

Recently I told DS8 that we were not going to have a big birthday party this year, but I would allow him to invite a few friends to some fun activity. He wound up inviting 4 friends to go to a playspace with those blow-up slides and bounce houses. He invited his 3 best male friends, and the daughter of one of my friends, whom we'd spent a lot of time with this summer. I loved that!