The Middle Child
This weekend, I rediscovered my daughter, and was reminded what wonderful qualities she has, and how much I love her. I have three children, and I’ve read all the information about birth order, and it’s supposed effect on a child’s development. I say ‘supposed’, because I never really believed it, and I read all those articles with a chuckle. After all, I’m the 3rd of 4 - after my father’s remarriage, the 5th of 7 – and I turned out OK. (Well, pretty OK . . . ) My daughter is The Middle Child, and like I was, she is the only girl. The two comments I continually heard growing up, were “The only girl? Oh!, you poor thing” and “The only girl? You must be so spoiled!” Well, neither was true, but I learned to just smile sweetly and keep my mouth shut.
As a parent, I can see where a middle child can become “sandwiched” between the two others, but my 7 year old daughter gets a bigger dose of that then most. With all of my children about 5 years apart, her 21 month old younger brother is still The Baby. He’s still at the “OH, he’s soooooo cute” and “Look what he did!” stage. Because of his age, he obviously requires a lot of supervision, so that takes a lot of parental time. Her older brother has always been a challenge, and because of his personality, he is the High Maintenance child. Although at 12 years old he shouldn’t need constant attention, because of his personality, he too, requires a great deal of parental time.
So our Middle Child is sandwiched between the The Baby and High Maintenance, both of whom consume large chunks of parental attention. Because Middle Child tends to be less demanding, and better at independently living her life, it’s been easy to “ignore” her. We didn’t mean for this to happen. We never intended to leave her out. It just sort of happened, and we’re very sorry. Believe me, we soon recognized our mistake. We suddenly began seeing very “Un-Middle-Childlike” behavior from her. All of a sudden, she was . . . well, someone else! My husband and I were clueless as to why our heretofore Low Maintenance and relatively easy-going child, was suddenly acting like . . . AHA! GOT it! She was acting more like her older brother! Now to a logical adult, this seems absolutely absurd. Why would you want to change your cooperative behavior to model someone who’s decidedly uncooperative behavior gets them into trouble over and over again? We couldn’t fathom this! But after a couple of weeks of very “un-you-and-more-like-your-brother” misbehavior – punctuated by discussions with her about cooperation and teamwork – we realized that although we had correctly identified the source of the behavioral change, we had incorrectly diagnosed the logic behind it. In her mind, she wasn’t copying behavior that resulted in lost privileges and time-outs, she was copying behavior that resulted in more attention! Eureka! – we had it now! Although completely illogical to us, this line of reasoning evidently made much sense to Middle Child. So we sat her down and discussed the advantages of being a contributing member of our family/team. She seemed to agree, and we felt assured that she would see the error of her ways, the logical benefits of ours, and change her behavior accordingly. Wrong again! And this was when the true light began to dawn on us. We were using logic, and logic had absolutely NO place in this whole scenario! Although Middle Child’s mind had agreed with us about the advantages of cooperation, her emotions were still feeling left out, as she watched The Baby and High Maintenance monopolizing all of our time! So my husband and I went back to our huddle, to reassess our goals and develop a new strategy. We thought and talked and planned for almost . . . oh, 10 minutes! That was all it took to realize that rather than trying to get an emotionally unhappy 7 year old to understand our logical “big picture”, what we needed to do, was to address her concern. That concern being, that the boys were getting all the attention! Soooo easy. It was definitely a parental “duh!” moment for us.
We implemented our new plans that same weekend, starting with a DDD – a Daddy Daughter Day. As luck would have it, High Maintenance had a math tournament early Saturday morning, with no spectators allowed. So I dropped him off with the promise that we would all meet him during their lunch break. After meeting for a very interesting lunch (with 6 other High Maintenance children), I took The Baby home for a nap, and Dad took Middle Child to a carnival that was in town. When High Maintenance’s tournament was over, The Baby and I attended the awards period and then we all drove home. Meanwhile, Middle Child and Dad were enjoying their time together immensely. That evening, was a big party, to which only Mom, Dad and High Maintenance were invited. So when everyone returned home, we had dinner, and everyone shared what they had done that day. Both Middle Child and High Maintenance were interested in what the other was saying, since they hadn’t been with each other, and were hearing new information. After dinner, we began our preparations the Big Evening. Middle Child was not the least bit upset about not going with us, since she felt that she had had a wonderful day of her own. And High Maintenance didn’t mention a word about missing the carnival, since he had activities of his own that he was excited about. It was an amazing day!
Obviously, every day can’t be like that one, and the kids can’t expect to have one parent all to themselves, every day. But we did learn some important lessons that day. First of all, we learned that what people told us about having 3 kids is true. It’s much harder to add the third than the second. Because now the kids outnumber the parents, so there’s never enough parent to go around. And we learned that by not acknowledging cooperative, helpful and positive behavior continually, we are actually encouraging the exact opposite. It’s very tempting to think “Oh, he/she is playing nicely again. He/She must remember when I told him/her how much I appreciated that last time.” And that maybe be every bit the truth. But by taking the extra few minutes for an appreciative hug, or some extra books at bedtime, or an outing without siblings, we positively reiterate our appreciation of those actions. And that positive reinforcement is what will keep that child on the cooperative path. We still stray, now and then, but Middle Child is very quick to remind us when she feels we are leaving her by the wayside. In fact, it happens so gradually, that most of the time I don’t even notice that I’ve wandered into that land of only-acknowledge-bad-behavior. But when I’m there, my days aren’t any fun either! So I welcome Middle Child’s reality check, and the reminder to spend more cuddle time with her. Then we add some extra one-on-one time into our schedules. After all, she is my only daughter, and she really is a doll!
As a parent, I can see where a middle child can become “sandwiched” between the two others, but my 7 year old daughter gets a bigger dose of that then most. With all of my children about 5 years apart, her 21 month old younger brother is still The Baby. He’s still at the “OH, he’s soooooo cute” and “Look what he did!” stage. Because of his age, he obviously requires a lot of supervision, so that takes a lot of parental time. Her older brother has always been a challenge, and because of his personality, he is the High Maintenance child. Although at 12 years old he shouldn’t need constant attention, because of his personality, he too, requires a great deal of parental time.
So our Middle Child is sandwiched between the The Baby and High Maintenance, both of whom consume large chunks of parental attention. Because Middle Child tends to be less demanding, and better at independently living her life, it’s been easy to “ignore” her. We didn’t mean for this to happen. We never intended to leave her out. It just sort of happened, and we’re very sorry. Believe me, we soon recognized our mistake. We suddenly began seeing very “Un-Middle-Childlike” behavior from her. All of a sudden, she was . . . well, someone else! My husband and I were clueless as to why our heretofore Low Maintenance and relatively easy-going child, was suddenly acting like . . . AHA! GOT it! She was acting more like her older brother! Now to a logical adult, this seems absolutely absurd. Why would you want to change your cooperative behavior to model someone who’s decidedly uncooperative behavior gets them into trouble over and over again? We couldn’t fathom this! But after a couple of weeks of very “un-you-and-more-like-your-brother” misbehavior – punctuated by discussions with her about cooperation and teamwork – we realized that although we had correctly identified the source of the behavioral change, we had incorrectly diagnosed the logic behind it. In her mind, she wasn’t copying behavior that resulted in lost privileges and time-outs, she was copying behavior that resulted in more attention! Eureka! – we had it now! Although completely illogical to us, this line of reasoning evidently made much sense to Middle Child. So we sat her down and discussed the advantages of being a contributing member of our family/team. She seemed to agree, and we felt assured that she would see the error of her ways, the logical benefits of ours, and change her behavior accordingly. Wrong again! And this was when the true light began to dawn on us. We were using logic, and logic had absolutely NO place in this whole scenario! Although Middle Child’s mind had agreed with us about the advantages of cooperation, her emotions were still feeling left out, as she watched The Baby and High Maintenance monopolizing all of our time! So my husband and I went back to our huddle, to reassess our goals and develop a new strategy. We thought and talked and planned for almost . . . oh, 10 minutes! That was all it took to realize that rather than trying to get an emotionally unhappy 7 year old to understand our logical “big picture”, what we needed to do, was to address her concern. That concern being, that the boys were getting all the attention! Soooo easy. It was definitely a parental “duh!” moment for us.
We implemented our new plans that same weekend, starting with a DDD – a Daddy Daughter Day. As luck would have it, High Maintenance had a math tournament early Saturday morning, with no spectators allowed. So I dropped him off with the promise that we would all meet him during their lunch break. After meeting for a very interesting lunch (with 6 other High Maintenance children), I took The Baby home for a nap, and Dad took Middle Child to a carnival that was in town. When High Maintenance’s tournament was over, The Baby and I attended the awards period and then we all drove home. Meanwhile, Middle Child and Dad were enjoying their time together immensely. That evening, was a big party, to which only Mom, Dad and High Maintenance were invited. So when everyone returned home, we had dinner, and everyone shared what they had done that day. Both Middle Child and High Maintenance were interested in what the other was saying, since they hadn’t been with each other, and were hearing new information. After dinner, we began our preparations the Big Evening. Middle Child was not the least bit upset about not going with us, since she felt that she had had a wonderful day of her own. And High Maintenance didn’t mention a word about missing the carnival, since he had activities of his own that he was excited about. It was an amazing day!
Obviously, every day can’t be like that one, and the kids can’t expect to have one parent all to themselves, every day. But we did learn some important lessons that day. First of all, we learned that what people told us about having 3 kids is true. It’s much harder to add the third than the second. Because now the kids outnumber the parents, so there’s never enough parent to go around. And we learned that by not acknowledging cooperative, helpful and positive behavior continually, we are actually encouraging the exact opposite. It’s very tempting to think “Oh, he/she is playing nicely again. He/She must remember when I told him/her how much I appreciated that last time.” And that maybe be every bit the truth. But by taking the extra few minutes for an appreciative hug, or some extra books at bedtime, or an outing without siblings, we positively reiterate our appreciation of those actions. And that positive reinforcement is what will keep that child on the cooperative path. We still stray, now and then, but Middle Child is very quick to remind us when she feels we are leaving her by the wayside. In fact, it happens so gradually, that most of the time I don’t even notice that I’ve wandered into that land of only-acknowledge-bad-behavior. But when I’m there, my days aren’t any fun either! So I welcome Middle Child’s reality check, and the reminder to spend more cuddle time with her. Then we add some extra one-on-one time into our schedules. After all, she is my only daughter, and she really is a doll!