April 2011

Can you tell me more about only child issues?

I came across your website while looking for information on only children and was compelled to write a thought or two.  I am my mother’s only child and I’m also am the mother of an only daughter who is just about to turn five. In reading through the experiences of only children that were posted I was struck by, more than anything else, the sense that because of who a person is and by being raised as an “only”, the person is somehow lacking. I have had many years of therapy sorting through my “issues”.  I have learned over time that the more I blame my parents, or even the circumstances of my childhood, the worse I feel.  It doesn’t help me to focus on what could have been at all.  My parents are who they are. Our circumstances were as they were. They loved me and sometimes they were [...]

Read more…

What are the most significant concerns for adult onlies? – Aging and dying parents.

  I have noticed that many adult onlies write emails about the difficulties of managing elderly parents. It is often harder to cope with – when you are the only one. Part of this is the responsibility of care, both emotional and physical, but there is also the realisation of how becoming an orphan will affect us, when our parents die. My own research and a piece of research undertaken in the US by Roberts and White Blanton (2001) concluded that ‘aging parents was the main concern for the young adults interviewed.’  They were also anxious about outliving their parents, and appear to feel a ‘lack of lifespan continuity’. What this means, is the sense that many of us have after our parents’ die that there is no one left to be a witness to our lives. (Sibling adults only experience this later in life if they are the remaining [...]

Read more…

Has being an only child influenced my being a writer?

Lesley Thomson author of  ‘A Kind of Vanishing’ winner of the 2010 People’s Book Prize for Fiction. Now no 1 on Amazon with ‘The Detectives Daughter’. I am a novelist. Is my success due to my being an only child? Without siblings I doubtless had more time to myself. I remember many contented days when I read, painted pictures, moulded clay, constructed collages with electrical components donated by my father who built radios in his own, fewer, quiet moments. I had a happy childhood packed with people: my friends, my parents’ friends and many relations and those in stories. It was rumbustrous and busy with adventures constructed by myself and friends. In addition I had ‘imaginary friends’ whose lives I related to myself in bed at night. Thus I taught myself the principles of continuous narrative, no doubt influenced by The Archers to which my parents were regular listeners. I [...]

Read more…

Being judged for being an only child

I used to get really fed up of people assuming I must be spoilt because of being an only child. I did feel it was looked on as a bad thing to be even though it was not my choice to be an only and I actually felt lonely sometimes and wanted a brother or sister (I told my mother this many times and finally gave up asking for one at about the age of 12). I felt judged negatively for something that was not my fault, but I don’t remember anyone judging my parents for it. I also had my mother say I was such hard work, which made me think I was worse than most children. I have three children and was determined not to have only one child. A few years ago someone got very offended because she has only one child by choice and I said [...]

Read more…

Sharing what it feels like to be an only

I suppose I was compelled to write to you simply because I have never encountered anyone who wanted to know, in some depth, what it felt like to be an only child. Although I have had some experience of personal therapy,  my experience of being an only child has come up in the context of other matters, not as a matter for examination itself. I suppose this is the nature of therapy, one deals with what arises in the time and space, and the fact of my ‘onliness’ has never been, of itself, a topic in the therapeutic space. I have no doubt, however, that having brought it to the fore, I will take it to my personal therapy. My impulse to write to you signifies to me that this is something that needs to be used in my therapy, which begins next week.

Some of what I remember is my [...]

Read more…

What being an only means to me.

Being an only means that you try to do too much because you don’t like asking for help.. I used to ask my father, but I can’t ask my children because then I  become a burden to them as my mother did to me and I  know how soul destroying it is. Being an only for me, means that I find it really hard to let anyone get close and the fact that I have two failed marriages, which must mean that it is me that is the problem, so I can’t go down that way again. Being an only means that I get lonely at times, I enjoy working at weekends because that’s when families get together and that’s when I sit by myself. I view my sons as individuals and knew they must leave home, so I can’t understand the family that gets upset when their children fly the nest. Being an only gives you the ’if you want something [...]

Read more…

Life Stages: Infancy

Life Span Theory has been popular as it shows us what the expectations and challenges are at different stages in our life. The theory is based on the idea that during our lives we go through developmental stages and that each stage has unique characteristics, which serve as the building blocks for the next stage. If the tasks of one stage are not complete we take them into the next. I thought this was an interesting model to adapt to the psychological development of only children who grow up without one of the significant social and emotional resources that help to navigate these crucial developmental stages – that is siblings. Undertaking in-depth interviews with adult only children over several years, the importance of looking at three areas of the only child experience was highlighted.  The first is the internal world of the only-child; the second is the inter-subjective world that [...]

Read more…