4 year age gaps

[ann_of_loxley]

Do you have a 4 year age gap between your children?
Maybe you part of a 4 year age gap yourself (you and your sibling)...

If so...tell me how you like it!

I cant imagine my son at 4 yet.... But we may TTC this December (we have been talking about this today) - which is a year sooner than planned.... So I am interrest in hearing how you all find it!
I know the small age gaps are discussed a lot - but lets hear it for the 4 year gaps!

Thanks

[MCR]

We have a 5.5 year gap between our first two. I loved it.
The older one wasn't jealous at all, and was a really big help with the new baby.
I wasn't chasing a toddler and trying to hold onto a newborn.
I had lots of time with Ds#1 before Ds#2 came along.
They actually did become good playmates by the time the baby was about 18mths old. The older one would bring him toys, play with him and was very happy to do it. He entertained the baby in the backseat of the car without me worrying what he was getting up to.
The are still close at 14 and almost 20. They enjoy getting together on College breaks.

[savannah smiles]

Mine are 4 yrs and 4 months apart. We wanted that big of a gap and it's worked very well for us. DD1 is very loving towards dd2 and loves to teach her how to do things. There's not much jealousy or fighting (yet!) and my 6 yr old is a really big help.

[dubfam]

nak

ds #1 is 4 yrs 8 months older than ds #2

I LOVE it (so far)

We don;t have many jealousy issues and ds #1 loves to help out with his brother
He already had his time as a baby!!

Good Luck! I think 4-5 years age difference is PERFECT!

[artemis80]

Lurking. We are definitely going to wait at least that long for #2! I don't think either of us could handle a toddler and a baby.

[EviesMom]

Mine are 3.5 years apart (due dates were exactly 3.5 years apart to the day). DD was well potty learned, didn't regress on that at all thankfully; loves her brother dearly and is happy to entertain him; and he thinks she's the funniest thing on earth. She's not old enough to be gentle enough with him reliably for me to leave them together while I go out of the room like to put laundry in; but she will sing to him or play "pick up the toy for the baby, who will gum it and drop it again" over and over and over while I put dishes in the dishwasher or something else in the same room.

I have a 2 year age gap with one brother, to whom I am not close at all; and an 8 year gap with another brother, who I love dearly and did many things with as a child. I think longer is better, personally. I will warn though, that I thought 4 would be less tantrumy and more calm than 3... and uh, that was wrong. She's just bigger and more self-determined and demanding. If we have a 3rd, I'm waiting til DS is at least 5.

[artgoddess]

Mine are 3 years 8 months apart, and I think it's perfect. My son will be 4 years 8 months when he starts pre-school, my dd a year, and I'm really enjoying having both of them with me all day. He loves his baby sister, I meaan loooooves her. Of course she is about to start crawling and that love my change when she can get into his stuff. We savor our alone time with DS when DD is napping. And I know that DD and I will have plenty of alone time when DS starts school.

I have friend with similar age gaps and they like it as well, something about the older kid still being little, but having the cognitive ability to understand, "I'll be right there to help you wipe in a minute honey, your sister is still nursing." that makes it easier than I imagine having a 2 year old. Although I do suggest keeping some children's book in the bathroom where your older child can reach.

[DariusMom]

i have a four year age gap with my sister. as kids we weren't friends at all, mostly, I think due to our personalities and the dynamic in our families. however, i went off to college when she started high school and we started becoming really good friends. now she's absolutely my best friend in the world.

my DS if 5 and, if we have another child, he'll be at least 6 or 7 (for various reasons). I think it's ok. i think the having kids close together so they'll be close isn't really true. some kids will be close no matter what. others not. i think it has to be what works for the family. i could never imagine having a toddler and a newborn, though it works for some people.

the one disadvantage, i think, to bigger age gaps is that we are so through with the baby stage and going back into it seems less and less attractive as the years go on . . ..

[KA29]

Mine are 3 years, 10 months and it has been a nice age gap. We originally wanted them closer but I have some health problems after dd (my oldest) so we waited. The nice thing about it was that when ds was born, dd was not at all jealous, she was thrilled. She has been head over heels with him from the beginning. The other nice thing was that she was independent enough when he was born to be able to go to the fridge and get her own snacks, use the potty on her own etc. That was really helpful to me when I was nursing or trying to get ds to fall asleep etc. They are 6 and 2 now and love to play together.

HTH

[wahlmn]

Well I guess I'll be the lone voice of dissent, My brother and I were 5 years apart in age and I HATED it. I purposely had my own between 2-3 years (27 months as it turned out) apart to hopefully avoid some of the issues my brother and I had.

I felt like we never had anything in common, he was always so many stages behind what I was doing, we never had shared interests, he was constantly following me around and being a general little pain in the ass, and I spent my entire childhood and adolescence having to babysit him and miss out of various social times with my own friends. Even now, he is 27 and my parents leave town in the winter for a couple of months at a time to go to FL, and he latches onto DH and I as pseudo surrogate parents and acts like we are supposed to feed him, help him with his laundry, taxes, etc. Now I know a lot of this is due to personality, but a good deal of our relationship issues are because of the the fact that we were so far apart in age, I think he is/was relatively immature for his age, (and I guess I was a pretty mature kid?). I still feel like he'll never 'catch up' and we'll never get to be friends, even though that is what I desperately want, a sibling to be friends with.

So I really, REALLY hope my two little boys will get to grow up together, be interested in the same things at the same time and have lifelong memories of their friendships.

Obviously other people's experiences can be a lot better, and your's might too, but I wanted to give you our perspective.

[Queen Gwen]

Our dds are 4 years and 15 days apart.

When younger was 2yo and going through the 2yo "thing" of learning new independence and generally being loud and asserting herself, her 6yo sister was going through a 6yo thing of learning new independence and generally being even louder and asserting herself even more forcefully. It was ... a loud year. And I was puzzled -- I had heard people talk about how their 6yos got sort of, I don't know, prone to backtalk about the time they started grade school, but we were homeschooling so I figured that didn't apply to us.

So I picked up one of those books by Louise Bates Ames entitled Your Six Year Old, because I wondered what was up with the older dd (she'd always been so sweet). And discovered that age 6 is like age 2, but louder and bigger. And, oh boy, this sort of thing happens approximately every 4 years -- children tend to go through a new burst of independence at ages 10 and 14 also.

Actually, I haven't noticed any other years that struck me as so ... amazing ... as that year that they turned 2 and 6 (they are now 8 and 12, and best of friends). But, in the interests of full disclosure, I though I'd point it out, if for no other reason than I wish someone would've told me so I didn't think perhaps our family had gone crazy.

Other than that one rough year it's been okay. Every age difference has its pros and cons, so I just rejoice that I can have children no matter what their age difference is.