“Whenever you go over to a friend's house and she starts fighting with a sibling, it's maybe the most uncomfortable thing in the world. You've never had to argue with someone over the remote, so you don't know how to back your friend up or react at all.”— Hayley Glatter, seventeen.com
“The refrigerator is literally a shrine to your entire life. Honestly, you don't need your friends to see your third grade perfect attendance certificate when they walk into your kitchen. But without other kids to show off, your parentals hoard every little thing you've ever done and proudly display…”— Hayley Glatter, seventeen.com
“You're really bad at babysitting. You never had to take care of a younger sibling, so you have no idea how to hold a baby or entertain a young child.”— Pai-Lin Hunnibell, theodysseyonline.com
“With no siblings to play with as a kid, I invested all my energy into my friends, hence I always had playdates, birthday parties and social events to attend. Friends aren’t substitutes for siblings, but they can come really close, and they’re the ones you call when your mom and dad are driving you n…”— Laura Donovan, hellogiggles.com
“Only children seem to be better at tolerating boredom because they were always faced with it as youngsters.”— Laura Donovan, hellogiggles.com
“Not even middle school P.E. locker rooms could squash my fear of changing in front of an audience. If you shared a room growing up or were raised in a large family, you might not be so self-conscious about casually undressing with others around. Other private things, like urinating, are meant to be…”— Laura Donovan, hellogiggles.com
“I learned how to talk to adults early on, something that some children don’t learn until they are adults themselves. Some might say it’s a rub against only children but I don’t feel like I missed out on any part of childhood.”— Kayley Kravitz, huffingtonpost.com
“We had to be creative growing up. Without siblings around, we were forced to entertain ourselves. Whether it was through drawing, writing, or building something epic with Legos, our minds were always turning as kids, and it hasn’t stopped now that we’re older.”— Jay Miletsky, puckermob.com
“People always seem to think that growing up as an only child was hard on us when we were kids. But it was kinda nice – our friends would all have to deal with siblings they hated and would fight with all the time, while we got our rooms to ourselves and nobody to wrestle with for the remote control.…”— Jay Miletsky, puckermob.com
“You don't think twice about why you got so mad when your favorite seat at the bar was taken, or when you had a conniption because the boots you wanted in mahogany brown were sold out, but your friends immediately chalk it up to your inescapable only child syndrome.”— Erika Huber, elitedaily.com
“Because you see it so much in pop culture, you can't help but speculate about what might have been. What if I had a brother to fight demons alongside, instead of having to do it by myself? What if he then went to jail on false charges and I had to get myself arrested so I could break him out?”— Mark Hill, cracked.com
“With no brothers or sisters to pass the hard parts onto, I can't enjoy the stress-free life of leisure that comes with completely failing to live up to your expectations. If you're an only child, you feel like you have to get the great career and get married and have kids and support your parents wh…”— Mark Hill, cracked.com
“The entire stereotype of only children as spoiled, isolated brats can be traced back to one dumb statement made by a prominent child psychologist. It's like how everyone thinks spinach is a superfood because of a nutritional information typo, or how Tiger Woods' career tricked people into thinking t…”— Mark Hill, cracked.com
“Since your parents didn’t have more than one child, your parents were not ‘broken-in’ to you doing certain things like staying out late at night. My parents wouldn’t call me just once, but maybe three to five times to see where I was.”— Marion Schwaner, collegecandy.com
“Let’s face it, pets bring liveliness and love to the household, and they are always around to play with you. They grow up with you, show you affection when you’re sad and celebrate with you when you’re happy. When you’re an only child, you can never have too many pets!”— Marion Schwaner, collegecandy.com
“As you get older, you’re kind of thankful for being an only child. You realize what you have, and what could have never been attained if other siblings were in the mix. College, shopping and even your first car were (somewhat) guaranteed to happen.”— Emory Ann, thoughtcatalog.com
“Unless your parents are super nice or super wealthy, there is no rule that says only children get absolutely everything they ask for. The one time we can truly ‘have it all’, however, is when we get the blame for something we can’t pin on a sibling.”— Gena-mour Barrett, buzzfeed.com
“We love attention. We grew up never having to fight for attention, in fact, we probably received a little too much of it over the years. We are used to being the focal point in social interactions and that is not an easy thing to give up.”— Frank Bozzo, lifehack.org