I've been thinking a lot about this since I'm expecting #2 (a girl) in January. My one brother is 2.5 years older than I am, we were not close growing up, and we're still not close. Because I looked up to him, I thought smart = mathy. My strengths are more verbal, which I translated as "not smart." We didn't fight but we didn't spend much time together either. My family moved frequently and my brother was off in his own world most of the time, so I was very lonely as a child. I'm hoping for a closer relationship between my own boy/girl pair despite a larger gap (39 months) between them.
I'm not sure if this is hijacking the thread, but I'm curious about our generation too, if others got along with their siblings while growing up.
not hijacking at all ... it's all part of my initial question in one way or another
. My sister and I were 6 years apart (I'm the younger one) and it pretty much took first 30 years of my life and me living 5000 miles away from her and the rest of the family for the two of us to find common topics. While I was the "gifted" one, she was always the one making herself superior to others and I don't think he had one single thing in common at all when growing up. She never even tried to understand me and would always put me down. I remember her remarks telling my parents why did they make me the smart one and she had to be the one failing math. So, gifted or not, I always wanted to have kids really close in age to give them a better shot at being friends. And while the boys don't ever spend time with each other, they have an apparent bond that's really hard to describe but a lot of times my husband and I can really feel it
