My twin daughters are 10.5 (turning 11 early next year) while my son will be turning 5 in late November - so an age gap of almost 6 years.I didn't plan to have this sort of age gap - we had the twins via IVF following years of infertility and at 39, I had a happy surprise pregnancy with my son.But I'm now struggling with the problems the age gap is cropping up.I'm struggling to balance the expectation/importance of including everyone in the family and making everyone in the family feel loved and wanted while acknowledging the fact that my daughters are are 10.5 year old girls and it's perfectly normal for them to not want a "noisy" preschool aged boy prone to tattle-taleing "annoying" them all the time, and that the age difference means they often will want to do different activities. He wants them to play trucks with him and is upset when they would rather read, or play gymnastics or jump rope.Basically, my daughters rarely want to play with him and it hurts my son's feelings. I'll mention it more later, but he is very high energy and loud, and they often complain he is 'embarrassing' to them in public, and they complain he 'ruins everything' and they often complain he is "annoying" to have around.Like my parents took them to a theme park a while ago when visiting us, and when I asked the girls how it was, they said 'it would have been more fun if we weren't stuck doing all this baby stuff because of [son's name] and his slow baby walking'. They complain about how 'fun' stuff like that is 'ruined' by 'having to have him come too'. When they are home, they stick together because they are close, but don't like having their brother join in much because 'he ruins games by not waiting his turn or not following the rules' or 'he ruins movies by talking through them' or even just 'whenever I try to read or something, he starts coming and annoying me to play, and I just don't want to play'.Has anyone been here? I'm at a loss with what to do - especially since my husband and I are coming at it with different experiences.My husband says "they're (the girls) being mean brats" - but he is the youngest child in his family and the youngest cousin on both sides and was cleared favoured by his parents over his 3 older sisters which made them want him around even less. He says how much he hated it when he was on the end of "we don't want him to play with us". He has never been in the position of being the older sibling/cousin having the "annoying" younger sibling/cousin forced into them - he was the "annoying" younger sibling/cousin. I don't think he is showing favouritism the way his parents did, he just can't relate to being the older child who is being "annoyed" all day by a significantly younger sibling, so he sees it as them being cruel.But I also understand my daughters' feelings because I was in their position growing up. I have a younger brother myself (a smaller gap - 3.5 years - enough to be a bit "above" what he was doing and find him irritating at times). I remember what it was like to find a younger boy annoying and how much I really resented it when mum would say things like 'you've been reading for 3 hours, you can surely play with your brother for a couple of hours' or how much I hated I had a friend over and my mother would force us to include him in everything we did.So we both "sympathise" a bit more with a different side based on our own experiences.It's hard because I really see both sides of it.I hate how much it breaks my son's heart to be the 'odd one out' of the family and to be the 'baby' of the family and how sad he looks when they don't want to spend time with him, and when he says things like 'It's not fair. I didn't get a twin, I have no one to be my friend in this family', and when I say 'I'm your friend', he says 'but a kid friend in the family, I don't got one'.But I also understand my daughters' feelings. I have a younger brother myself (smaller gap - 3 years, but enough to be a big difference as kids) and I remember what it was like to find a younger boy annoying and how much I really resented being asked to play with him when I wanted to read, or have to do things that I had long outgrown to appease him, like going on 'baby' rides at a theme park. They are 10 year old girls - they wouldn't want a 4 year old boy tagging along to their fun day at the theme park, and that doesn't magically change because he is their brother.I'm really stuck between 'we are family, like it or not' and remembering that my son was mine and my husband's choice, not their choice, and I'm essentially forcing preschooler onto pre-teens and expecting them to like his company when it's normal for them to find a much younger child annoying.My son is much louder and higher energy than the girls (we are keeping a close eye on him for ADHD - I was on it early because I have it myself) and he is prone to being a tattle-tale and an embellisher (something we are working on with him) which means the girls REALLY don't want to play with him because it always ends in them getting angry with him. If one of them says "use your indoor voice", he'll come running to me all "MUUUUUUUUMMMM, [name of twin here] told me to shut up". He then expects them to act like nothing happened 3 minutes later when they're now angry because he just tried to get them into trouble. He's gotten better because we used it as a lesson of "when you try and get other people into trouble for no reason, it makes them not want to play with you".In fairness to the him, he girls are not entirely innocent. They can be very rude about it when they don't want to play with him, and one in particular is easily irritated (in general) and gets very short/rude with him very quickly - if they are trying to play a game and he interrupts it, I've seen her slap his hand away, and once he ran into the skipping ropes they were playing jump rope on with a friend and ruined her 'record attempt' and she pushed him over and made him cry. When I talked to her about it, she was like 'now I'm getting punished because HE ruined something'.It's hard to know how to handle it because I really do see both sides - he just wants to be included, and they just want him to stop cramping their style.My husband and I are in disagreement now because we have arranged a birthday party in late November at a play centre (booked this far in advance because this place books out months in advance). The party is not on his actual birthday, it is on the Saturday and his birthday is on the Wednesday, which is a school day. I found out today that the girls yearly 'break up' party for gymnastics (a water-park and sleepover in the gym) will be held at the same day. My husband thinks they need to go to the party no matter what because 'family'. I'm not sure that is entirely fair because they have looked forward to this party for months (they knew what they would be doing, but no the date) and their age/height means they won't be able to make use of 90% of the play centre anyway - they'll just be sitting around with the adults while my sons friends from pre-school and my former mum-group run around. They will be sat there with nothing to do, and will no doubt be bitter and upset they are stuck sitting there instead of being with friends. If given the choice, they'll pick the gymnastics party, and if we make them go to their brother's party, it will be another 'thing he ruined'. But I see where my husband is coming from with 'family first'. So I don't know.This got long, but has anyone who has dealt with a big age gap where you had a little sibling desperate to be included and older sibling/s who felt like the little sibling cramps their style, how did you deal with it while being fair to both parties. via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2xjkQPG
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