Of course we’ve heard of sibling rivalries. But there’s also a rivalry between sibling children and only children.
Not that we only children have a chip on our shoulders. Just because there’s a National Sibling Day on Monday, April 10 doesn’t mean we had to go out and form our own holiday. But we did. National Only Child Day is Wednesday, April 12.
I have to admit when I looked up a list of national holidays for April and National Sibling Day was listed but National Only Child Day wasn’t, I was a little offended. To be honest, I had never heard of either one and just assumed if there was a National Sibling Day then there must be a National Only Child Day and there was.
As an only child, I can’t tell you how many times somebody has come up to me and said, “You don’t know how lucky you are not to have brothers and sisters.”
I wished they were there when I was playing in the living room as a kid with a baseball bat and broke off the knob that changed the TV channels (we didn’t have a remote, something really had to be awful enough on television to have to get up to change the channel) and tell me how lucky I was. It wasn’t like I could say “he or she did it” because there was no other he or she.
Obviously there are advantages and disadvantages of being a sibling or an only child. And while I wished from time to time I had a younger brother, I’ve written this before — I wouldn’t trade the way I was raised — as an only child — for anything.
So to all the siblings and only children celebrate your holidays next week and be thankful for who you are. I am.
— Charles Whisnand
