Did you want / choose to have your children close in age? + bq ?

My boys are twins so there are just minutes between them. My daughter is 20 months younger than them and now that she's getting close to a year old were thinking of having one more soon (then we're done).

I've always wanted my kids to be close in age, my brother and I are 5 years apart and we never really got along because he was young enough we were in different places developmentally for our whole childhood and were never in school together so we had different circles of friends. I think those factors did impact our relationship a bit because now that we're older we are more in the same place in our lives and can relate to each other better.

You cannot 'create' a relationship for your children. My mother was an only child. When they had me, my mother wanted me to have a sister, so we could be 'best friends'. My sister is almost exactly a year younger. When we were little she treated us alike, same clothes, same toys. Visually, we must have looked like twins. Unfortunately we had nothing in common except having the same parents. We had different temperaments, like different games, etc. All the forced closeness did way make us more aware of how little we liked each other.

It's taken us years as adults to get to being comfortable with each other.

I'd space children about four/five years apart, so that the first will have clearly different interests, school, etc, from the sibling.

And don't try to live your fantasies through your children.

I don't have any kids yet, but I'm thinking I'd like to have two children, four years apart. My twin brothers and I are 14 years apart, and that's definitely far too big a gap for me. I think four years is perfect. My oldest will be out of diapers and able to communicate clearly and play on her own, and she'll be ready to spend a few hours a week in preschool while I'm at home with a newborn. I think four years is great, because they're still close enough in age to have things in common, but not so close in age that they'll constantly get on each others' nerves.

My husband is 9 years older than his younger sister, and I'm 14 years older than my twin brothers. I adore my baby brothers, and I dote on them probably more than I should. While I adore them, I tend to think of them more as "surrogate" kids or nephews, because we're at completely different stages in life. I'm 23, married and finishing my degree, while my brothers are in elementary school and joining baseball and swim teams! My husband doted on his younger sister until she hit her teens (became quite bratty w/ all the hormones and whatnot) and they were close for a long time. As she is getting older, their relationship is getting better.

I want to have my children 2 years apart. I think it keeps them close enough in age, but gives you enough time to have the baby time with the first one.

BQ: I think it can have a lot of effect of children the age difference, but not always. I have a sister that is 10 years older than me and I'm just as close to her as the one that is 3 years older than me. I get a long with all 3 of my sisters and have a pretty close relationship.

I have twins, so no I didn't choose to have them so close in age :)

I don't know how much age necessarily affects the relationship, I think it depends on the kids. My sister is 19 months older than me and we were never close as kids. We only became close once I got pregnant.

I never really had a preference until after our firstborn's birth, then we decided we didn't want another kid in at least ten years or never. I got the ten year iud and voila! I was pregnant within nine months. Our kids are nineteen months apart and I think its perfect. If we had got our ten years our son would have been very lonely. We got a boy and nineteen months later we got our girl , and my husband got a vasectomy and we never have to have another kid again which makes me absolutely elated :)