Benefits of Siblings

張貼日期：Jan 10, 2013 5:2:55 AM

Chelsea Chen

I am the second child in my family. I have one elder sister and a younger brother. Frankly speaking, I was jealous of an only child because they can get what they want and monopolize all their own things. Nevertheless, now I realize that I don’t need to envy them. The reason is that having siblings bring me many advantages–saving money, acquiring experiences, and learning how to share.

To begin with, saving money is important in this time because of economic recession. Parents usually keep the elder siblings’ clothes and uniforms for the younger ones. For example, I wore my sister’s uniforms till we went to different senior high schools. As an elementary school student, I hoped that my used crayon, pastel, watercolor, palette, and brushes were brand new. I didn’t understand why my mother didn’t want to buy the new stationery for me. And she always told me to use my sister’s. I wanted to get a new satchel and a new translating machine as my birthday gift when I was in high school. But I couldn’t get them. Now, I gave my brother used pens, pencil cases, and notebooks which I won’t use anymore. I did the repugnant things that I really hated before to my brother. Nonetheless, I know that saving money is not only to be frugal, but also to make the best of use of everything.

Second, I got good experiences from my sister. For example, although school teachers taught students some focal points of the entrance exam, my sister told me the skills of preparing for the test and gave me some useful notes of her learning experiences. And as I am poor at math, I could ask my sister for teaching me the difficult math homework. In the similar way, I taught my brother if he didn’t understand some hard problems in his schoolwork.

The third advantage is I learn how to communicate and share with people from interacting with my siblings. I shared my bedroom with my sister, so we all needed to learn how to tolerate each other’s habits, forgive each other’s unpleasant behaviors, and communicate with each other to make an agreement on the rules of our room. For instance, I had to endure that she often put her clothes in my wardrobe. Likewise, my sister pardoned me for my sometimes forgetting to put the chair in place. Furthermore, we allocated the work of our room, like who had to mop the floor and clean the room on Sunday by turns.

In conclusion, having siblings is a wonderful thing. I totally changed my opinion that owing everything is happiness. And I deeply appreciate my sister and brother who let me become mature, and learn from their virtues.