A Quiet House

Estie’s parents were almost empty nesters when she was born. Her oldest brother was 21, then another brother, then Jonathan, who was 15 years older, and then a sister 11 years older than her. By the time Estie was in third grade, everyone was married and out of the house.

“My house was super quiet. I became a big reader. What else did I have to do?” says Estie, who recently turned 50. “Of course, all my friends with tons of kids in their home would want to come to my house all the time because my house was so quiet, and we could do whatever we wanted.”

Her home became the go-to spot for her friends during high school. There were no little siblings around to be annoying, and Estie had a lot of freedom. “After finals everyone would just come to my house,” she remembers. “I also had free rein on my parents’ car, and everybody knew that whatever you wanted to do, if you want to do anything, just call Estie.”

Though she enjoyed living in the go-to hang-out place, Estie acknowledges that she missed out on having siblings. “For a couple of years when Estie was in high school, my parents took in boarders from the local high school,” shares her brother Jonathan. “One of the reasons why they got the boarders was so somebody else should be in the house, so Estie shouldn’t be by herself.”

“Oh that’s right, for like four or five years when I was in high school we had boarders. I totally forgot about them,” Estie says.

“It’s like they rented you siblings,” says Jonathan, which makes them both laugh. They note that it was very much not their mother’s type to have strangers in the house, and that it also made sense for Estie to have some company at that stage of her life. Estie became so close with one of the boarders that one year she actually spent the second days of Pesach with the boarder’s family.

Avigayil’s parents also took in boarders during her childhood because she was, essentially, an only child — her three older sisters were all close in age and all out of the house by the time she was seven, and her brothers were off in yeshivah, so it was just her. And, for a time, the boarders.

“My mother says that she did it so that I would have other people in the house,” says Avigayil. The girls were sometimes frum high school girls from out of state, and other times they were college girls on their own religious journeys.

For the siblings who were out of the house, it led to some unique experiences. Once, when Malka called home, a boarder answered and they engaged in an awkward exchange of hellos until Malka introduced herself and the boarder realized who she was talking to. “Oh, I’m living in your parents’ house,” the girl responded.

Not everyone can have, or wants to have, boarders to fill up the quiet house. Hindy is 12, and her next oldest sibling is almost 19 and is in beis medrash for most of the day. “All the older siblings grew up in one home,” says Hindy’s mother Chaya*. “Hindy kind of grew up alone, with elderly parents.” Chaya is in her fifties, so not elderly, but definitely older than some of Hindy’s friends’ parents.

This dynamic means that Hindi gets more one-on-one time with her parents. “I love that I get to be close to my parents, but I don’t love that my siblings treat me like I’m two,” Hindi says. “All my siblings tell me that I need to respect my elders. But my other brother doesn’t say that to the brother who’s just two years younger than him. He only says it to me because I’m thirteen years younger than him.”

When siblings grow up together before the youngest came along, it can also create a challenging dynamic when everyone comes home for Yom Tov or for a simchah. “Sometimes they’re having a conversation,” Hindy says. “And they tell me that I’m too little to join in. I either go upstairs and hang out in my mother’s room, or I just stay there anyway.”

“I’m so sorry that happens,” Chaya comments, rubbing Hindy’s arm sympathetically.

“You might think it’s great that your parents will spend money on you and that you have no siblings sharing a room with you, but it gets very boring,” Hindy says. “There’s nobody home. You might think your siblings are so annoying, but I think the experience of fighting with siblings close to my age would be fun.” She pauses, then continues, “I guess if we swapped places after a day, I’d find it annoying, too.”

“It’s very hard to be in your own family without a sibling,” says Racheli.

Blurry Relationship Lines

The youngest may not grow up with their siblings, but they do benefit from growing up with nieces and nephews close in age to them. Racheli’s oldest daughter is only five years younger than Hindy. “My kids love Aunty Hindy,” says Racheli. In addition to Hindy visiting them, Racheli’s family comes for Yom Tov and also for a week in the summer. “She’s super patient with them. But at some point she doesn’t want to be running around with the little kids. She wants to be with the adults.”

Being closer in age to her nieces and nephews than to her own siblings has led to some humorous situations. “On Chol Hamoed I was at a park and my sister was calling for me,” says Hindy. “I didn’t hear her and someone nearby says, ‘Your mother’s calling you.’ ”

While this can sometimes make her feel that her siblings view her as more of a niece than a sister, Hindy acknowledged that it’s a lot of fun to help with her siblings’ kids when they come visit. Recently some second cousins moved to town.

“Sometimes I feel closer to these cousins than I do to my own siblings,” says Hindy. They have more shared life experiences, and she goes there nearly every Shabbos as well as stopping by frequently during the week.

Racheli finds that because Hindy is so close in age to her own kids, sometimes she naturally reverts to relating to her in a maternal way. “One time when she was at my house for Shabbos and I was trying to get everyone into the shower I told her that she needed to go first. She got so mad at me and told me, ‘You’re not my mother!’ ” Racheli laughs at the memory. She told her sister that while she was indeed not her mother, there was only one shower and someone needed to go first.

Having older siblings living in town can be an even better setup. Jonathan moved back to his hometown during Estie’s childhood, and his lively home became her haven. In turn, Estie became an extra set of hands for Jonathan and his wife.

“I would babysit for their kids, or if my parents had to go away, I would go sleep at their house,” shares Estie. “When I got older I would go stay at their house, and I would go on vacation with them. I even moved in with them when I came back from seminary because our parents had made aliyah at that point.”

“My kids actually see Estie as a sibling,” Jonathan adds. Every time his family went on a trip, Estie came along. Even though his kids treated her like a sibling, she was clearly the oldest and most in charge sibling. “They respected her, and she controlled them. It was very good for all of us,” he says.

“I don’t know that they behaved so well!” Estie retorts.

“They behaved well enough that you controlled it,” Jonathan counters calmly. “And I think it gave you responsibility. I think you grew up much quicker than the rest of us did. Estie had each end of the spectrum. She was definitely treated like the baby, but on the other hand, my parents were more mature and experienced when was growing up. She actually lived mostly around adults.”

Spending time with nieces and nephews can also teach these nearly only children about the compromises that are a regular part of life with many siblings close in age.

When Avigayil was growing up, a trip to the zoo meant getting an ice cream or a soda as a treat during the outing. But one time her mother took Malka’s children to the zoo along with Avigayil, and she discovered that the rules had changed.

“Avigayil asked for a soda, and then our mother was a little stuck,” Malka shares. “Getting one child a soda was fine, but getting five children sodas was a little too expensive. I’m not sure how she handled it in the end, but I still remember that incident!”

With a nine-year gap between the twins and their next oldest sibling, there is that clear dynamic in their family of the older kids and then the twins. But since the twins have each other (a reality they both love and hate), and both their married siblings nearby, they didn’t experience the same feeling of loneliness as some of the other youngests.

Chany was quick to note the perks of this proximity. “I have constant babysitters at this age. It’s wonderful. The twins are closer to my kids’ ages than they are to mine, so every time we come over, they get to hang out. My kids love them.”

Their mother, Sara*, shares that Chany was at their house a lot over Chol Hamoed Succos this year. “We made up that Chany would take the kids out for the day, and I’d stay home and cook.”

“I was taking my own kids out anyway,” adds Chany. “It’s more fun when the twins come along. They make it more fun, they’re helpful, I don’t have to chase my kids around myself because they do that for me.”

“It was an incredible arrangement,” continued Sara. “I didn’t have the stress of having to both entertain the kids and cook for the second days. But at some point Leah says to me, ‘I wish Chany was my mother. She’s so much more fun than you are.’ ”

“No, I said Chany’s such a fun mother!” interjects Leah with a laugh. “Because you barely take us anywhere.”

“Because I’m old!” Sara exclaims. She added that while they took regular trips to New York to visit family when the older set of kids were growing up, in recent years the eight-hour trip hasn’t been so appealing. “It’s long and difficult when the twins bicker the entire trip, and it hurts my back to sit in the car for so many hours,” says Sara.

Chany notes that since she’s not living in the house with them, the twins only see one dimension of her. “They don’t see me when I’m chasing after my kids who are running around the house, smearing things on the walls, five seconds after the cleaning ladies left. I’m only there for the fun times,” she says.

Older Parents

Sara shares that it’s not just long-distance trips that have shifted in parenting the twins versus the older set of siblings. “We have pictures of my husband giving the older kids horsey rides, or running around with them, and he can’t do that anymore. We’re definitely the old parents to my younger kids,” she says.

Her mother’s age can feel weird for Leah sometimes. “There’s one friend I play with who has like three hundred siblings below her, and her mother is so close to Chany’s age that she could be my sister. But technically, Chany could also be my mother,” she laughs. Leah’s not wrong. There’s nearly the same age difference between Chany and her mother (20 years) and Chany and Leah (17 years).

“When I was a little kid there were a ton of rules,” says Chany. “There were age limits about when you could get your own china plate at the Shabbos table, when you got a glass cup, things like that. Bedtimes were also a thing. When I was going into high school, my bedtime was still so early that the school Melaveh Malkahs were later than my bedtimes. It was a whole discussion with my parents about how to manage it. Those rules went out the window when the twins were born. My parents are so much more chilled.”

Chany reflects that because her parents are a lot more financially comfortable now, it means vacations and simchahs look different for the twins than it did for the older set of siblings. “It’s not that I felt like we were missing out, but now they talk about going to amusement parks just stam and to Florida for winter break, and that was just not a thing when we were growing up,” she shares.

While Hindy’s older siblings grew up in a home with many small children and a father in kollel, Hindy benefits from both increased financial stability and also mobility. With just Hindy home, Chaya is able to do things like take her out of school to spend one-on-one time without having to worry about the logistics of other children’s carpool pickups, and has taken Hindy to go visit her siblings who live in other states.

Growing up mainly among adults can definitely create a different atmosphere. Socially it doesn’t make such a big difference in her life, but Hindy has noticed how some of her friends have different skill sets, or just different life experiences. “At my friends’ dinner table, they might be fighting about whose Rubik’s Cube is on the table, but at our house, we’re talking about politics.”

“There’s a lot of adult conversation going around,” adds Chaya.

While comparing childhood experiences may be common among some siblings, Racheli doesn’t do much of that. “Her childhood feels so far removed from mine,” says Racheli. She does find, however, that the comparisons that arise from parenting a daughter close to the same age as Hindy is a shared experience with her mother that has added dimension to their relationship. “My mother is just at such a different stage. She can’t be her daughter’s playmate all the time. I give my mother a lot of credit for all the ways she interacts with Hindy.”

Estie’s mother was 45 was she was born, which wasn’t so common at the time. Growing up, her parents were the same age as her friends’ grandparents. “Sometimes I just felt awkward,” admits Estie. “It was embarrassing for me that my mother would be wearing these random shoes and everyone else’s mothers seemed more stylish. She dressed like she was a fifty-year-old lady and my friend’s mothers were thirty-five. My mother wasn’t concerned with being stylish or cool or whatever. She was past that. She just wanted to be comfortable!”

Estie adds, “To my advantage, I had a lot of nice experiences with my parents that other friends of mine didn’t have. I remember my mother playing games with me on Shabbos. That’s what you’ve got to do with the youngest kid, you’ve got to play the games with them, you know. There’s no sibling to tell them to go play with. She may have wanted to sit and read a magazine, but I got to play Uno and cards with her because it was just me.”

“On the other hand, when you did interact with us siblings that had kids, you had the other end of it. You were like the older sibling,” says Jonathan. “So you had both. I think having you kept our parents young.”

Building a Relationship

Growing up at different times, in essentially different households and always being at different life stages could make it challenging to forge a close relationship. Once everyone is an adult, is the baby still the baby?

“I never felt like I was treated unequally,” says Estie. Despite being so much younger than her siblings, Estie feels that everyone respects her opinion. “When our father was in the hospital, and I spent time with them there, no one was condescending to me when I would speak to the doctors or made me feel as if I didn’t know what I was doing.”

One of the big benefits Jonathan sees in how Estie grew up is that she was able to see how her siblings ran their households, giving her a whole different outlook about family life. “In one way, you grew up as an only child. In another way, you were able to experience even more than somebody who had siblings, because you essentially had four other parents,” Jonathan says to Estie.

“To my parents, I was definitely the baby,” says Estie. “I don’t want to say I was the favorite because my parents didn’t play favorites, but at my parents’ apartment like fifty to seventy percent of the pictures on the wall were of my oldest son. It was their baby’s baby.”

“Their affection for Estie never bothered any of us siblings,” adds Jonathan. “We’d roll our eyes understandingly, maybe, but my father taught us never to stand on ceremony. I think that that’s why we all get along like so well, baruch Hashem. We really get along.” While none of the siblings live in the same place anymore, whenever they get together, the closeness is immediately apparent.

As Hindy has grown up, Racheli has tried to navigate cultivating a relationship with a sister who she never had the chance to really be around like her other sister, who is only two years younger than her. Being at such different life stages can make things challenging at times. “Hindy really wants to take a girls’ trip to Eretz Yisrael for her bas mitzvah,” shares Racheli. “But she doesn’t want us to bring our kids because she wants us to be sisters, not mothers, which I understand. But I have four kids, and it’s a lot to ask of my husband. It’s not simple.”

Logistics notwithstanding, there’s always the phone. “Youngests are always around many more adult conversations, so when Hindy calls me, the conversation is more like one I would have with my mother. For instance, she’ll ask me, ‘So, how are the kids?’” says Racheli.

In the days of long-distance calling rates, where rates would change as the day went on, Avigayil would wait by the clock with bated breath for the time when she could call her out-of-state sisters. “Around five, the phone would ring almost every single day,” says Malka. “I don’t really remember what we talked about, I’m sure it was just her telling us what was happening in school or asking about our kids, but it did bridge a relationship. She was just six, but six-year-olds can have very informative conversations!”

“My mother claims that I was such an amazing person and I wanted to have a relationship with my sisters,” says Avigayil. “I’m sure I was just deathly bored and dying to have some human connection. But my sisters were very good and always took my calls.”

Now that both Malka and Avigayil are mothers many times over, there are more life experiences they share in common, and being at different stages continues to have perks. Because Malka now only has one child at home, she can host Avigayil’s entire family for Shabbos. “I have so many empty rooms in my house now, and it’s such a nice opportunity to spend time together,” she says.

Looking at a large age gap could feel daunting, but Malka and Avigayil both maintain that the bond of sisters is such a beautiful connection that the difference of 16 years doesn’t have to be something that creates a divide.

“Just because you’re many years apart doesn’t mean you can’t have a close relationship. Sure, you’re not growing up with a sister, it’s a different experience, but that closeness is possible,” says Avigayil.

“There’s something so special about connecting to my sister and tapping into the energy of her stage, remembering what I was like then, and Avigayil gets a window into where she’ll be someday,” Malka says. “Experiencing each other’s lives and being able to share our thoughts and hashkafos creates different types of bonds and really, an admiration for each other and the stages that we’re at. It’s such a gift to share life together.”

The Mothers’ Perspective

One challenge for mothers juggling a broad range of children is juggling the needs of children at markedly different life stages. It can be hard to have clarity on what’s the obligation to a daughter who wants her mother to come help her post birth versus how often a younger child can be left to go help an older one. “How can you be fair in a situation like this?” asks Chaya. “It’s always a calculation for me — what’s the right thing to do? It’s impossible to know. Even when my married kids come here for Yom Tov and I have to kick Hindy out of her room, I’m aware that it’s really her house and they’re coming into her space. But they’re also our children.” She notes that Hindy’s good-naturedness helps a lot.

Grandparents, or their health, or the absence of them, is another challenge. “When my younger kids were growing up, they had young grandparents,” says Chaya. “I’m a young grandparent, and I’m the oldest of my family, so I really had my grandparents into adulthood, but Hindy lost her grandfather when she was ten. My mother is also getting to that stage where I’m starting to be more mindful of her health. I’m a sandwich. I’m taking care of my kids, and I also need to go spend Shabbos with my mother.”

When it comes to chores and helping around the house, there’s not always such a need for the youngest to pitch in. “Usually when you have a chore that needs to get done, it’s easier and faster for you to do it yourself. I think that that’s a big difference that I noticed with my friends, whose oldest daughters are Hindy’s age. They are doing things like baking a cake for Shabbos. Hindi’s never been asked to do that, so she doesn’t know how. Usually with parents whose oldest child is a twelve-year-old daughter, that daughter is really a helper. It’s so different when that daughter is a youngest.”

Sara has seen how the age gap impacted her parenting. “I was much more rigid with Chany in certain ways. She had thirty minutes of screen time when she came home from school. The twins have way more electronics time,” she says.

With bedtimes, Sara was much more structured with her oldest set of children. “I had my first three kids in eight years and I was just hanging on by the skin of my teeth sometimes. I had to have them in bed at a certain time, or else I would lose my mind. I needed my time at night to do what I needed to do. With my younger kids, I’ll give them more leeway. Even though they still have bedtimes, which they hate, I will give them leniencies and allowances in a way that I don’t think I did with my older kids.”

The rising of standards plays a role in the differences. Traveling for midwinter wasn’t even a thing when the older siblings were growing up, but the younger ones have all been to Florida for winter vacation. “It’s always a balance as a parent between how much you want to sort of follow the trend and indulge in what everyone else is doing versus keeping your kid back and making them the only one who’s not doing what everyone else is doing,” says Sara. “What’s fair to them? Trying to juggle that is a little bit tricky.”

“As a mother, it’s really nice to have a bas zekunim,” says Chaya. “I was thirty-eight when I had Hindy, and there’s something about that. You just appreciate it a lot more. With your oldest, I remembered just wondering, ‘When on earth is this kid going to sleep? When are they going to be toilet-trained?’ That’s all you care about when you’re a young mother with a bunch of little kids, just getting to the next stage and telling them to go outside and play so you can get stuff done. With your youngest, especially if you know it’s your youngest, you just appreciate and savor every stage. You don’t want to rush any of this.”

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 925)