Sophie Morris feels guilty when the playdates of her only child Percy fall through. She asked the experts how to deal with her daughter’s disappointment
During a week’s holiday with my eight-year-old daughter, we only had one meltdown. Sounds like a roaring success, right? Sadly not. Because the meltdown was over a cancelled playdate: her friends were ill. I couldn’t fix this because everyone else was busy, and crucially, I hadn’t given her a sibling to plug this kind of gap.
The conversation about only children has moved on considerably since I had mine in 2016. Back then it felt like a ‘thing’ to remark upon. People assumed there had to be a reason behind it (though sadly failed to consider that trauma might have been involved when sharing their unsolicited judgements).
Even this summer, round a campfire at a holiday rental, a man I had just met who had come away on a two-week holiday without his own toddlers, explained to me why I could and should keep trying, even at my egg-deteriorating age of 44.
In our case, we didn’t have medical problems or miscarriages, but never felt capable of looking after a second child, despite dreams of a Cheaper by the Dozen style home life. Simply not being up to the job is a hard pill to swallow. Years on, I blame Covid, certain if we hadn’t had that two-year setback when my daughter Percy, now eight, was just three, we would have tried for another.
But here we are, and she is one happy little lamb who delights at pointing at the screaming toddlers on trains and planes and crowing about how lucky she is not to have to put up with one herself. At teatime and bedtime, she and the dog jostle for my attention, and I can’t imagine how I’d manage that contest with another human to consider.
She has as many friends who are only children as those who have siblings. No doubt the number of only children in the UK will grow and grow. While we didn’t do it this way for financial reasons, we are aware we’ve dodged a great deal of stress in this area. We haven’t experienced the same struggles to afford childcare others have, because we are two earners paying for one child. Recent figures from the Office for National Statistics show that births in England and Wales have fallen to an all-time low of 1.44 per woman, and the cost of living comes up again and again as a reason. We did consider the environmental impact of having more children, and it sticks in the throat to hear friends with three children proselytise about their virtuous vegan lifestyle.
But there is one major issue that makes me feel sorry for my only child, and also to blame myself for what I’m not giving her. This is when a scheduled playdate falls through, and try as hard as I can, I can’t find another child for my daughter to spend time with. It became normal for people to cancel plans of any kind during the pandemic, understandably. Today, certainly among adults, there seems to be a culture of cancelling plans. With children, they’re so often just ill, especially at this time of year, but my daughter’s disappointment destroys me. I want to do anything I can to fix the problem, but too often – after scrabbling around for last-minute company – I fall short.
Dr Amber Johnston, neuropsychologist and the director of Healthy Mind Psychology says that I should try to be kinder and not blame myself. “Come at it from a lens that’s really filled with self compassion,” she recommends. “As mothers, we are constantly filled with maternal guilt, and wondering whether we could be doing more.
“How about ‘good enough’ mothering? What do they really need? They need safety and love.”
Her advice is to think about how best to manage the disappointment, rather than trying to gloss over it. “That’s what happens in life, and if she never feels disappointment, that’s a disservice. It’s a natural response, and it passes.”
Johnston suggests that planning something else to look forward to could engage with the child’s disappointment while helping them to move on from it.
I ask Naomi Magnus, psychotherapist and clinical director of North London Therapy, how she would approach this kind of disappointment, and her response is similar. “My instinct would be to validate any feelings first,” she says, “and then to think of what would make things easier in that moment.” She suggests emphasising that you know the child has been looking forward to the playdate, and that it’s exciting and fun to play with others your own age, before switching the focus to doing something fun together, like having a bath, going out to a café, or making a list of your top five things to do that year.
The twin perils of being a working mother and having an only child make for a dangerous tinder box come holiday season. On the one hand, if you take time off, you probably don’t have many mum friends to share it with. On the other, as you haven’t given them any siblings, you need to provide alternative entertainment, and children don’t always want to hang around with adults. If you’re shortsighted enough to have moved miles away from any family and cousins, like me, good luck – you’ll need it.
I don’t worry about my daughter’s wellbeing in terms of not having siblings. She has two parents at home to shower her in attention. We cuddle her to sleep. Each morning, she will read in bed with one of us while the other prepares a breakfast of porridge, something toasted and a few kinds of fruit. We lay her uniform out on her bed – made by us, obviously – then help her into it. If anything, we joke that we’ve delayed her development. Why would she learn to put on her own socks?
Other people might call this ‘spoilt’, but I am relieved to hear from Magnus that there’s no such thing as giving a child “too much” attention. “The space and the time and the attention they get from their parents is invaluable,” she says. “It used to be said that only children were spoilt because they’re used to getting all the attention. We now know that there’s no such thing as too much attention, and if a child is able to get high levels of nurturing and attention as they’re the only one, that’s a good thing.”
Magnus also makes a really interesting point about the stories that we’re told, or continue to tell ourselves, about what it means to be an only child. “Historically the narrative around the only child experience has been about what they miss out on.”
“From a more emotionally and psychologically healthy perspective, the narrative can and will shift to what they gain, because I think that it [being/having an only child] is an increasing phenomenon. There’ll be an increasing number of adults growing up who are only children.”
She also flips another criticism of only children, the claim they’re precocious and better in adult company than with other children, pointing out that it should benefit them in the long term. “More and more, growing up in adult company can be seen as an asset, which gives them an advantage when they’re older, at work and in other adult environments.”
Do I feel better? I definitely feel better equipped to handle my daughter’s next disappointment, and hope the strategies will help her feel less bad. But I suspect I will feel equally sad on her behalf for not being able to swoop in, fairy godmother-style, and fix everything for her with a wave of my wand. In the long-term, of course, that wouldn’t prepare her well for the bigger disappointments in her future, but it’s nice to dream.