Well, then my brother and I are the exception to this poppy cock rule as are my two oldest children. My brother is 12 months and 10 days older than me and both of us excelled in school. And my children are thirteen months and a day apart, both honour students and my daughter has the highest grade point average of her entire grade.

As they say, rules are meant to be broken.

My sister, who is three years younger than myself, however, struggled academically her entire life.

So. Every family and every family, as always, is different.

I agree with the ~2 years padding. My 3 girls are almost perfectly spaced at 2.5 years (Feb, Aug & Jan birthdays). That is enough spacing for them to be unique and get attention, but close enough so that they aren’t all like “only children” and can form bonds (and hopefully do the high-school driving plan that you outlined – assuming I even let them drive!)

So, this is interesting. My youngest three are each 18 months apart, while my oldest and #2 were separated by nearly four years. He’s witty, charming, and gets good enough grades to get into IU next fall. She’s also quite brilliant (if I do say so myself) and plans to pursue an engineering track beginning her high school freshman year. My last two? They watch Annoying Orange, listen to Dragonforce and Lady Antebellum (respectively), and eat too many pancakes and eggs. They’re screwed . . .

My wife and I always talked about aiming for a 2 year split. My siblings are each about 2 years older and younger than me, respectably, and I’ve been fairly close with both of them my whole life. My wife’s only brother is 4 years older than her, and she always felt like they were a little too far apart and lived in different worlds until they were both adults. We got lucky enough that our planning worked out, and now have two sons about 2 1/4 years apart. It seems about right.

That said, we were just talking today about how much more complicated life is with two of them; trying to deal with an inquisitive toddler while caring for a baby is rough. But I’m sure that however nice it would be to have the help of an older brother who was more capable and responsible, it would be offset by the added pressures and difficulties of that age too.

Dunno that I agree with this. My brother is 13 days short of 2 years younger than I and HE is the accountant! While my other brother and sister are 15 mos. apart and HE is the engineer and SHE is the avid reader. Where do the benefits of being close in age and aiding in education ( ie- my brother learned to read at age 3 because I was 5 and doing so in kindergarten! He has always been more advanced than me in Math also. We were in calculus together in high school! Couldnt have survived it without him!) come in? My other brother and sister have always done most things together, they practically have their own language, even at ages 23 and 24! She helped him with speech when they first started talking ( she talked first, would interpret for him, then he started talking). Now he is the engineer and she is still a fan of words! ( she loves reading, acting, singing and talking…alot!) With 6 years between my sister and I all four of us have helped each other with some aspect of education at one time or another. I dunno that being further apart in age matters, I believe it’s the closeness in age that will help all children involved with education.
ps- my son and daughter are 15 mos. apart. He began walking at age 9 mos. ( denote that to wanting to keep up with big sister) and can identify letters, letter sounds, colors, and numbers as well as if not better than his older sister! They learn from each other!