A book can help with
For the child with no brothers or sisters, and the one wishing for them.
Being an only child has real pleasures: the undivided attention, the peace, the space to become yourself. It also has its own particular ache, especially when friends have a house full of siblings and yours is quiet, or when a longed-for brother or sister isn’t coming.
Books help on both counts. Some show an only child’s life as full and good rather than lacking, which matters when the world keeps asking why they haven’t got any. Others let a child feel the longing honestly, and quietly widen the idea of who counts as family: cousins, friends, neighbours, a very good dog.
Here’s what I’d reach for. Find your child’s age and start there.
Just me
For little ones it’s about company and imagination, and about families coming in all shapes.
A cheerful survey of every shape a family comes in: big ones, small ones, one parent, two, and plenty with only one child. It quietly tells a child that theirs is simply one of many kinds, not a lesser version. Warm, inclusive and good for a lot of conversations.
or on Bookshop.org
Fred turns up when a lonely child wishes hard enough, and Sam wishes hard. It is funny and a little melancholy, and it takes an only child's imaginary friend completely seriously rather than treating it as something to be grown out of. Longer than most picture books, so it suits a child who can sit with a story.
or on Bookshop.org
Company of your own
Older children can hold the longing and the contentment at once, and see friendship as its own kind of family.
Wordless, drawn in soft pencil, about a girl left on her own who sets off to find her grandmother and gets lost. Guojing grew up an only child under China’s one-child policy and drew this from her own memory of long empty afternoons. Because there are no words, children end up telling you what is happening, which often tells you rather a lot.
or on Bookshop.org
Anne arrives alone with an enormous imagination and a talent for making bosom friends, and builds herself a family out of the people around her. She’s wonderful company for a child who spends time in their own head. A classic that rewards an older reader completely.
or on Bookshop.org
A household of one
By eleven an only child has worked out that their house is quieter than other people’s, that every bit of adult attention lands on them, and that they are rather good at their own company. What follows takes all three seriously.
Harriet is eleven, lives in New York with two busy parents and a nanny who is the person she actually talks to, and writes down everything she notices about everybody. Then her classmates get hold of the notebook. Prickly, funny and not remotely sentimental about being a child who is alone a good deal. Published in 1964 and still the one only children recognise themselves in.
or on Bookshop.org
Cymbeline has never once been swimming, which is a peculiar thing at his age, and working out why takes the whole book. It is just him and his mum, and when she can no longer hold things together he is the only one there to notice. Very funny for a book with that much sadness in it.
or on Bookshop.org
Book links are Amazon affiliate links, meaning I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. More on this.
Something to do together
A page for mapping out all the people who count as your family, cousins and friends and neighbours included. I’m making it now, and it will live here soon.
An only child isn’t missing something so much as having a different childhood, and most of them turn out perfectly sociable and rather good at their own company.
So make it easy for friends and cousins to come round, let them have plenty of unstructured time alone without worrying about it, and answer the wishing-for-a-sibling questions honestly. And do try not to apologise for it, since children take their cue from you on whether their family is fine.
These pages are written for the grown-ups looking after a child: parents, teachers and carers. A good book can sit beside a worried child, though it never stands in for a real conversation, or for proper support when something feels too big to carry alone.