Kiddie Table For One, Please

I’m an only child.  I know the first thing that pops into many people’s heads when they think of only children… only children must be completely spoiled.  I’ll admit it, being an only child does have its advantages.  Only children never have to compete with other siblings for their parent’s attention, and we never have to share our space or our stuff with other siblings.  And while only children may, in some ways, be more spoiled than children who have siblings, most of the only children I know haven’t turned out to be the spoiled brats that generalizations often make us out to be.  At some point all children learn to share, whether they learn to share with their siblings on day one, or if the first time they learn to share is with the kids in preschool.  But, as I’m sure you all have guessed, being an only child can sometimes be lonely, especially when you live in a neighborhood where you can’t just walk over to a friend’s house and spend the day.  However, that being said, my experience as an only child, especially during my early childhood, led me to explore my surroundings more and figure out how to do new things than I probably would have if I had siblings. 

I can only speak from a personal experience, of course, and any generalizations I make can’t be applied to every single individual, but this is what I’ve found from my personal experience.  I don’t know if personality is necessarily shaped by birth order, as I’ve seen both introverted and extroverted only children.  Maybe this is the sociologist in me, but I think that in addition to birth order, there are so many other external factors that play into the shaping of an individual’s personality other than sibling and family dynamics. 

As far as thoughts on birth order affecting intelligence, I feel that when I was growing up, I often found myself compelled to learn more about the details of my surroundings and how things worked, partially because there weren’t any other children in the house to do other things with or distract me from what I was doing.  And while this could be contributed to individual personality, I noticed that whenever my friends came over, I was more interested in playing with them instead of learning about how things worked and why.  When I was younger, I usually stayed at my grandparent’s house during the summer weekdays when my parents worked.  While I was at their house, I used to make up things simple board games, because I didn’t always have someone else to play games with me, and I would write stories for my dolls to play out.  I definitely think that being an only child compelled me to become more creative in order to ward off boredom, and I also think my birth order had something to do with making me more observant of the things that surrounded, because I wanted to use every resource I had to keep myself entertained.  While I wouldn’t say that birth order necessarily affects intelligence, I can say that only children are often put in positions where they have to push themselves to be creative to keep from becoming bored. 

To conclude, I feel that birth order shapes who we are and how we view things from an early age and continues to shape us even after we have grown up and left the house.  While I believe that our birth order has an effect on how we grow up, I also believe that there are so many other factors that take a part in shaping the perspectives we take in our lives, and our family dynamics are rudimentary, but not finite indicators of how we ultimately come to form ourselves.  


Kelsey will be sharing her thoughts tomorrow, so everyone should check back!