Stuck in the Middle

So, as you know now after Brandon’s post on Tuesday, I am the middle child of three. In case you can’t remember, Brandon turned twenty in January and Laura will be turning nine in a little over a week.

I would like to make some big statement telling you exactly how being a middle child affected everything, but I really can’t; because I do not know anything else. Brandon mentioned he was interested to see what I had to say about this for a couple reason:

1.      I was a youngest until I was six

2.      I was a middle child until he moved out

3.      I now play the role of oldest while he’s away

Now, I wouldn’t say I agree with those things. While, they did happen, I don’t think I really played those roles.

In all honesty, I don’t have much to say about ever being a younger sibling other than I don’t really remember much of my childhood. I don’t remember anything from before I was five and only snippets from before I was eight. I remember events and random memories, but not an abundance of them. So, as far as being the younger child, I think my brother could tell you better than I could how I acted when that was my role.

And, I don’t really feel like I’ve taken over the eldest role either at this point. I think that went to my grandmother who moved in with us a year and a half ago.

I would say that I definitely think being a middle child affect how I acted and how I set my morals and such. As either of my siblings could tell you, I was a bit of a brat. (I still can be at times) I wouldn’t say this is me exactly defending my actions as much as explaining them.

Being a middle child is… difficult. Now, that’s not to say being a younger or older sibling is any easier, but since I don’t have as much experience there, I can’t say. Growing up in the middle child slot was so affective on me for two main reasons: my siblings. You have to realize this is how I see my parents seeing the three of us:

First we have my brother. Now, in the eyes of my preteen self my brother was something I really couldn’t be. My brother was the responsible, intelligent, and practical older sibling.

Second is my little sister, who for most of my life played the role of little angel to my parents. I felt like maybe, especially during the divorce, they overcompensated with her. They felt bad that we didn’t have to money or the family bond we had when me and my brother were growing up. While, this is true and I think they did the right thing making sure she knew how loved she was, it was a little disheartening to me.

The result of those two influences in my life lead to thoughts like: “Well, if he can pass all his classes and have nice friends, why in the hell can’t you? What’s wrong with you?” and “They love her, they love her so much more than they love you. Can’t you tell?”  Now, remember, I was in that angsty transition from annoying little person to even more annoying teenage person.

I always kind of felt left out because I felt like my parents were just so proud of my brother because of the things he did and they were so proud of my sister because they thought they had to be. While I know that my siblings don’t see my parent’s actions in the same light as me that was just how it felt at the time. I felt like they never noticed me and if I did something great it really didn’t matter. But, of course, if I screwed up it was the end of the world.

This being said, I was known to be a bit obnoxious and rude and stupid. I did those things because I really wasn’t sure if it was worse to be completely ignored or to be yelled at. At this point in time, I really think that I put myself at a disadvantage because I can’t take back any of those stupid things I did. I’ve been told that my entire purpose was to make everyone around me miserable and that kind of killed me inside. I think being ignored would’ve been better.

That’s not to say that I’m not so, so, so thankful for my brother and sister. They taught me great things. I don’t think I’d be who I am without the bar my brother mentioned setting. And my sister has really showed me a lot, and I think she can show me so much more about compassion and helping people as she gets older. I am blessed to have such amazing people around me and I’m really glad I’m a middle child.

With those two things in mind, ways that I think being in the middle affected me:

I am extremely quiet; I’m not known to particularly… anything really. I am really under the radar. I don’t know if that was because I kind of let Brandon and Laura do all the talking or just because I knew it being the center of attention wasn’t always a good thing.

It also made me extremely protective of both my siblings. I don’t think I can imagine anything happening to either of them. I think I’d walk in front of a moving train if it meant keeping them from getting hurt. As well as being protective of my siblings, I’m also extremely protective of the people that I’m close to.

I really like bottling things up because I don't like bothering people with my problems because after getting more in depth with how the things that happened in my family affected the other people involved, I noticed people really couldn't care less sometimes and they shouldn't have to worry about your problems as well.

I take things to heart a lot and I think it’s because of the neighborhood I grew up in as well as being the one in the middle and just being more sensitive then my siblings. I also really try to do right by everybody I know because I just hate hating people, because it never ended well for me with my siblings. Arguing is the reason me and my sister aren't close and my brother and I are only close because he's not here to argue with.

Lastly, I know it helped having a role model and having that high bar to have to rise to. I think it will also make me more conscious about my moves with my future because I know my sister will be watching.

So, that came out a little ramble-y and made a lot less sense then I would have liked, but maybe I’ll get better at this blogging thing. We’ll see.

Hope you guys enjoyed Birth Order Week and can’t wait to see next week’s topic opinions!

That is normal, right?

So I'm the younger of my parents' two children. I have a older brother and, for the most part, the way we interacted in childhood was pretty normal. I would hide his stuff and get him in trouble for losing it and he'd try to cut off my extremities, shove me down the stairs, and sing The Way by Fastball in my general direction. I'm not exaggerating when I say that the last one is the one that traumatized me the most. I hate that song.

My brother was always the one that had to have the biggest new TV or the surroundiest new sound system or the shiniest new console, while I was always pretty content with a hand-me-down computer and access to the internet. The laptop I'm typing on now is actually the first computer I've ever had that was bought specifically for me (and it's refurbished so I'm still not the first one to own it). My brother always seemed to take up most of the Christmas budget, so I sort of took it on myself to be less demanding. I saved up more money so I could buy my own things (ah, Pokemon Silver release day. I still remember you fondly), and I know I lent money to my brother on more than one occasion. It seems a little counter-intuitive from the typical younger sibling stereotype, but it makes sense with how my childhood happened. I've always been ridiculously frugal, and birth order probably had to do with why.

My brother on the other hand, never really seemed to fit into the archetype of older brother. He was never responsible (even when I wasn't hiding his things), and continued to set a low bar that was pretty easy for me to clear. I remember a few times where the two of us were left alone in the house and I was the one in charge of watching over him. He moved out when he was 15 (I was 11) to live with our grandparents, and continued to make poor decisions in Michigan. His grades weren't great, and, most spectacularly, he got his girlfriend pregnant, twice. I never felt much pressure to be better than he was because I figured if I didn't get pregnant by the age of 17 (which I did not), I pretty much won. 

This put me in an odd position. I was a younger sibling, technically, but as far as my parents were concerned, I was really the only one they had to take care of. My mom says that she was never concerned for my grades or my success as much as she was for my well-being and that I didn't need parenting as much as I needed hugs. I guess I spent so much time not being the problem child that I learned how to fend for myself. I generally came home to an empty house so I had to become pretty self-sufficient and responsible in ways my brother still hasn't gotten the hang of.

I do think the part you play when growing up makes a big difference in who you end up being, but I think that birth order isn't always the only thing that determines your role. I almost wonder if it's not who's born first but who gets the most attention that determines the kind of traits you end up with. I mean, I generally get along better with older siblings and I think a lot of that comes from that idea of having to look out for yourself and the other kids around you. Either way, I think I turned out alright.

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! 

Birth Chaos

This week's topic is birth order, and how it affects... well, everything.  Apparently I'm the first poster that isn't the oldest child.  Hooray for a change of perspective, and I hope that it's entertaining for everyone.

I'm the youngest of my parents' children.  I have two older sisters, and we were all born four years apart.  My sisters argue to this day that, as the youngest, I was the "favored" child, and in a way, I suppose that was true.  There wasn't much pressure on me to help out around the house, and I certainly got pretty much anything that I asked for.  But I don't believe that this was an end result of favoritism; I think it was the easiest, most convenient method that my parents could come up with to keep me entertained and occupied while they dealt with the challenges of raising my sisters.  I certainly didn't grow up feeling neglected, or ignored - I was perfectly content with what I had, for the most part.

I grew up in front of electronic screens, whether they were a television or a computer monitor.  My dad taught me how to manipulate MS-DOS as soon as I had figured out typing (sometime around age 4), and I was playing games on the computer from that point on.  We got a Nintendo not long after it was released, and it was fairly common to find me perched in front of it at any point when I wasn't on the computer or outside playing make-believe.  There wasn't any regulation, really, when it came to how much time I spent on any of my entertainment options - my sisters kept my parents busy enough that (I think, at least) it was more beneficial for me to be kept occupied and out of the way most of the time.  Aside from the baseball practices and games that were a regular part of my life for twelve years, I entertained myself with whatever was available, and my parents were more than happy to support me in that.  I had conflicting standards to live up to, in terms of school - my oldest sister was very intelligent, but my other sister struggled with most subjects.  I was always under the impression that my parents were more proud of my older sister, because of her performance in school, and so I set that standard for myself.  I got frustrated with anything other than perfection; at one point, when I got a 98 on a math test, I locked myself in my room and cried for hours.  Interestingly, this caused a rift between both of my sisters and me - my older sister thought that I was trying to show her up, and my other sister resented that I had such an easier time with... well, everything.  I really didn't get a lot of pressure from my parents to do well in school - it was just how it worked out, for the most part.

Fast forward to my years in middle and high school.  My living situation had changed drastically; I didn't have two sisters in the house to draw attention away from me anymore.  My oldest sister was living with her boyfriend and children; my other sister was living with her boyfriend.  For the first time in my life, I had the undivided attention of my parents, and I had no idea how to handle it... and neither did they, for the most part.  With the attention came expectations, and those only grew as the years went on.  Neither of my sisters succeeded at college (my oldest sister tried and failed, the other didn't even try), and so my parents put a lot of pressure on me to get into a good college.  Neither of my sisters turned out terribly responsible, and so my parents did what they thought was necessary to make me a responsible person.  There were very few parts of my life that remained free from criticism at this point, and as might be expected, I chafed under this new attention.  To me, it felt like my freedom had been completely eradicated.  Nothing seemed like it was good enough for my parents any more - straight A's in school weren't praised, or even acknowledged.  They were just expected.  I was no longer the youngest, the "favored" child.  In a sense, at that point, I was the "only" child.  All of the attention that had previously been directed towards my sisters came onto me.  It created a situation that none of us could handle very well, and my relationship with my parents suffered greatly, often becoming openly hostile.  This lessened slightly after I graduated, though, and pretty much disappeared after my sickness.

Fast forward one more time, to present day.  In some ways, I don't think that the birth order of my siblings and myself matters much any more, because we're all grown adults now.  My parents are, for the most part, done raising us - we're free to live on our own (somewhat, for some of us) and learn from our mistakes (... again, for some of us).  But I do still feel some of the effects of being the youngest child, and I feel them even more as of late than I ever have.  I've really done the best out of my siblings, in terms of my life.  My oldest sister is still terribly irresponsible, and she's struggling to raise her children properly (and failing).  My other sister has become more responsible lately, but only after a decade of irresponsibility and poor decisions.  Whether valid or not, I feel a ton of pressure to be successful - to not only be able to support myself, but to thrive in whatever I choose to do.  I tend to set stupidly high expectations of myself, and I tend to get upset if I don't meet those expectations... and why?  My best guess is that I want to excel at anything, at everything, in order to give my parents some form of reassurance that they did alright in raising me and my sisters.  The point could easily be made that they likely don't need that sort of reassurance, but I don't think that my brain would easily accept that.  Whether valid or not, whether healthy or not, because of my sisters' failures, I put a lot of pressure on myself to be better.

So, in summary, I do feel that birth order has a huge effect on people, and all aspects of their life.  I think that it can be both positive and negative - in the vast majority of my cases, it's turned out to be the latter, but I'm sure there are other points of view that will lean towards the former.  Pendleton's got the blog tomorrow, so thanks for reading my post - I hope it was informative and entertaining.

Big Brother

I'm the oldest of three. I have two sisters, the younger one's eight and the older one just turned fifteen yesterday. Happy belated birthday, Randi.

Anyway, so how does birth order affect things? An example that I love to turn to with this topic is my parents. My mom was an older sibling, my dad was a younger sibling, and dear lord did it show in how they handled conflict resolution between me and my sisters. But, it's a bit presumptuous of me to try to interpret how birth order affected their experience and approaches to life, so I'm going to focus on mine.

When it comes down to it, the protective instinct toward my sisters is probably one of the most important things to me. Last year, when Randi and I got into a car accident trying to help out this stupid bitch neighbor of ours, my gut reaction wasn't to call for help or assess the damage done to the car or check to see if I'd been hurt or if that stupid bitch and her cat were okay; it was to spin around and look in the back seat to see if Randi was okay. She had the common sense to call 911 while I was panicking and worrying about her though, so perhaps her instincts are a little more effective than mine.

In a weird way, I feel as though I've really set the bar for my sisters to live up to. I'm planning to become a high school math teacher after college, and both of them (at least for now; I expect this to change by the time they make an actual choice) want to be teachers when they grow up. I'd like to think that that has something to do with the choices I've made.

A recurring theme when my grandmother calls to check in is that my youngest sister, Laura, feels as though she isn't smart enough to live up to the high standards that I've set. I wish I could explain to her that my accomplishments aren't all that impressive and that she's more than capable of doing even more with her life than I have, but she's eight and kind of idolizes me. Oh well. She'll figure that out when she's a teenager.

Speaking of teenagers, I'm going to try not to talk too much about Randi's experience (since she'll be doing that herself on Saturday), but a special note has to go to the way that our relationship has developed since I moved out. She's taken on a lot more responsibility without me in the house, and I think that her getting a taste of what it's like to be the de facto oldest has created a sense of mutual understanding that didn't exist before. We were at each other's throats almost nonstop before I moved out, but now she's one of two of my close family members that I feel like I can talk to about anything.

This may sound a bit arrogant, but I do feel as though my position as the oldest really put me at an advantage growing up. My parents were new to the whole raising children thing, and I think that it made them put in more of an effort to avoid screwing up, though that may have just been easier because they were still married for most of my childhood.

I really think that my status as the oldest sibling gives my sisters another person to not only look up to, but also judge the mistakes of. I mean, a huge part of shaping who I am came in the form of trying to avoid making my parents' mistakes, and I think that my sisters will be able to turn a similarly critical eye to my actions and maybe avoid some of the mistakes that I've made. Randi's one of the most laid back people that I know, and I'm a neurotic mess. Laura is probably the most outgoing kid I've ever seen, and I'm introverted to a fault. Coincidences? Maybe.

Anyway, I've rambled a bit without really making a point. Hm. To sum up, I really think I'm the archetypal oldest child. I'm very possessive, I don't like to relinquish control of a situation, I am always the one to organize and schedule things, my sisters look up to me (I think), and I had more than a few significant advantages over them growing up. Maybe Randi's post will elaborate on some of the things I've talked about to reach some kind of deeper insight into the situation.

In the mean time, John'll be sharing his experiences with birth order tomorrow. Enjoy.

Perception

"There are stereotypes out there about birth order, and very often those stereotypes are spot-on," says Delroy Paulhus, a professor of psychology at University of British Columbia in Vancouver. "I think this is one of those cases in which people just figured out on their own."

Perception. As we grow up we become more aware of the the influences around us, what our siblings or friends have experienced in their lives and perhaps our own experiences have shaped us. I have the privilege of starting off our topic by talking about being the eldest child, with a younger brother to be exact. 

I suppose you could say by experiences as the eldest have been like others that the oldest have experienced. I was definitely given more responsibility than my brother - if more responsibility means being trusted to be left alone to make sure I get my own homework done, I make my own bed, and put together my own lunch at school. Now, neither of us were never given a huge amount of responsibility - we never had to cook, there was little cleaning besides our own room, and our largest chore was switching off doing the dishes at night. But they were never over bearing, and I think I developed my independence, my feeling that I want to have my own space where I can live alone and take charge of my own life. 

I think it is easier to see the difference in growing up by looking at the way I perceive my brother was raised. I say perceived because there is definitely a bias there, where I feel like I had to do more than my brother did. They went easier on him than me - he depended on them more to make lunch, cook on weekends, and make his bed. I felt like I always jumped up before him to help with what I was asked and they always threatened him with punishment but never followed through. They weren't very good with punishment with me either, but he was always the one less motivated than I was. Or, as I said before, who I perceived was less motivated. 

He did have to deal with more academic pressure. I did very well academically through my K - 12 years, so my parents expected him to do the same, that meant straight A's for his high school years. I think, the most importance influence on being the oldest child was the independence I feel. I want to spend my summer learning more about cooking, cars, and woodworking, all which I think would be very good skills when I get out on my own. 

I do not really have much more to say on the topic. I do not think much about my childhood experiences and how they affected me. I feel like I am just the way I am because I am and that other things besides birth order had a greater impact on who I am today. I wonder if it affected my brother more, who always had to compete with the older sister who seemed to do pretty well in the areas her parents wanted her too. I am interested to read the younger siblings perspective, but maybe that is because I have not experienced that role. Brandon is speaking on the topic tomorrow, in the same older sibling role as I was, and I wonder what he will have to say about that. 

Week of 5/6 - Birth Order

For week two we’re going to be discussing birth order.

Basically, we’ll all be sharing our opinions on how your rank by age among your siblings affects things like a person’s personality, their attitude towards certain situations, intelligence, success, and other components of someone’s life. We’ll also be discussing our personal experiences that have brought us to these conclusions.

Hopefully this will help everyone see from all sides and may explain opinions on future topics. With that being said, I know we all will have varying views on this topic and I know I can’t wait to see what everyone has to say.

Tomorrow Kathleen will be here to kick us off and I’ll be back the twelfth to finish things up. Everybody have a great week!