I was delighted to receive this hand-drawn birthday card from my eldest daughter recently. It depicted a typical happy family together, with both parents holding her little hands, looking all so happy.
She even included a tree house, which coincidentally was something I would totally have loved to stay in too and I had this fuzzy feeling all over. That would have been it, until I delved a little further.
You see, we are a family of 6 after all, not only 3 as depicted in her drawing, and that set me thinking.
Even though I came from a family of 4 boys, I didn’t really have that much of an opportunity to “fight” with anybody. I was the youngest and even the age gap between me and my “youngest” older brothers was 9 years apart!
I did not get to enjoy as much “brotherhood” as I might have liked with my siblings, and mostly hung out with a group of neighbourhood friends instead while growing up. My brothers were so much older and had their own stuff to attend to anyway.
So when I got married, I knew I wanted to have kids, and to have them at close intervals! I thought that this would be great and they will enjoy growing up together. But that didn't go as well as planned, and came with another set of problems.
Yes, sibling rivalry happens and this is a surely common topic. I had tried various ways of reducing this, from explaining patiently to the older ones on the reasons why we behaved differently towards them, to even bringing them on separate bonding trips abroad.
Despite all these, there were still times when their actions leaves us exasperated and wondering why they can’t just get along! On one hand I would not want them to keep any secrets from me, like Steffi skipping recess in school just to buy some squishy toys. But on the other hand I also cannot take it when they decide to snitch on every little damn thing the others had done!
There are also times when I have asked for the cane because someone misbehaved badly or lacked respect for the adults, only to have the other sibling(s) come running to me happily with the cane in hand.
It was really funny to see it happen the first few times, especially when it involved cute Louie. But when I think about it now, isn't it kind of scary to realise how much they wanted to see each other being punished? Do they not love their siblings? There are always both sides to a coin I guess.
Our family may seem like the perfect family to many and I do feel really blessed of course, but for now, a nice drawing from the kiddos that comprises of every member of the family would be something much appreciated by yours truly! Or maybe I think too much already... I HOPE!
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