My singleton has never really outgrown her wish that she'd had a sibling. I never have, either. (Sorry.)
It wasn't what we'd have planned, either, but it's how it worked out.
I'm also an only-- and I will add, here, that there are some very legitimate down sides to being one as an adult with aging parents. DD knows this, and has mentioned it, watching us manage things with/for our own aging/dying parents.
DD is just plain
lonely. As an introvert, she deals with this better than many children would, I expect. I did, too-- but as a singleton who is an outlier, you do suffer for not having others who
can understand you.
DD didn't have a lot of social peers until she entered college, for example. Even now, she is definitely at a different
stage socially than most of her peers are. It is aggravating-- her arc isn't the same as theirs. It's not that she "isn't there yet" so much as that she went through whatever-it-is when she was more like 10-14, and now it's done and she's a bit impatient with it all, if that makes sense.
She's also not into "casual" relationships-- friendships or otherwise. The investment seems to her to be wasted unless the person has the basic capacity to be someone that she would choose to keep in her life long term. Obviously, basic compatibility isn't entirely based on cognitive ability, but it's a part of it for her, and that means that about 95% of the people she encounters are not in that category. If not, she keeps them out of her inner circle-- though she often leaves
them none the wiser that they aren't "close" with her, if that makes any sense.
I guess I'm just saying that yes, on the one hand, this isn't your child's decision to make... but on the other, I would be gentle about this.
It
is painful to be an outlier all over again, and if she doesn't KNOW any other singletons well, it can feel that way. I'm the only singleton in my extended family, for example. I was also treated to any number of myths about my only-child status both during childhood and also as an adult, later on. That OF COURSE I'd have struggled to live in a dorm setting, since I didn't know how to live with a sibling... that I must be self-centered, etc. etc. None of those things is truly related to having siblings or not. It might be related to parenting or one's childhood experiences, I suppose. But to having a sibling, no.
I did swear that I'd never have an only child, knowing how lonely I was.
