Sun 18 May 2008
I like this article I found on msnbc the other day. I always knew it was true! I remember getting the old “you have to be an example” speach. I always figured it was just my family though. I think parents tend to get tired of fighting and expect the younger siblings to act just like the oldest sibling.
June 28th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
That’s pretty crazy, and is further evidence for what I had previously suspected:
My parents raised my brothers and me as two separate groups of kids.
Benjamin was treated as the oldest and an example for everyone, Timothy got away with everything, I was treated as an example for Kenny, and Kenny got away with everything.
Interesting…
August 26th, 2008 at 10:42 am
I took a class my sophomore year about the development of children and how depending upon where you rank in your families birth order you take on certain characteristics. For example the oldest tends to be the leader & responsible one while the middle is usually more creative & protective of the others and the youngest is rebelious & less responsible.
I found this website: http://www.childdevelopmentinfo.com/development/birth_order.htm
& this one:
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1672715,00.html
I agree that parents usually pressure the oldest to be the responsible one because the other children look up to him. Parents generally try really hard with their first child to make sure that everything goes perfect & that comes with being a new parent and I think even that puts more pressure on the first born to be perfect. Then as the other children come they start to loosen up and then when they baby comes the Mother generally has a realization that this is her last child, her “baby” no matter how old it gets and she treats it as such. These actions aid tremendously in how a child develops and feels about themselves and their family. But, it doesn’t help to know that no matter how parents raise their family their children will probably still suffer from their birth order characteristics.
The only solution that comes to mind would be to recognize these birth order characteristics that are problematic and try to treat that particular child in a way to counteract that characteristic. But… this would probably only mess up things even more. Being a parent is hard work! This I realize even though I am not a parent yet. 🙂