First And Second Babies – Are You Bringing Them Up The Same Way?
I’m loving all the press at the moment about first and second babies and whether mums bring them up differently. For me this goes hand in hand with how your place in your sibling line up creates you who you are today. Perhaps I love it because as a middle child I am deemed to be a peacemaker (er.. sometimes) and somewhat neglected (untrue). Whereas only kids get a real hammering for being selfish and spoilt, though they are also incredibly smart and successful in life. And younger kids, well we know what happens to them, spoilt and like to get their way apparently but also loving and loyal. As for being the older kid (see Brooklyn Beckham below) aside from being serious and feeling responsible for the whole world they tend to be incredibly hard workers.
I know from my own experience that my kids pretty much conform to the above. Why? Well because I have definitely bought child number 1 up differently from child number 2. My son is about to be 3 years old and yesterday I realised he can’t hold a pen properly because we’ve let him run amok with the iPad and basically hurl his toys about over the carefully considered hours we spent drawing and practising with my daughter who is now 6. I’m also ashamed to say I don’t think he knows his colours properly, but then I could be wrong because I haven’t got round to asking him.
By comparison I’ve spent hours with my eldest playing with shapes and colours and numbers and jigsaws and getting her to do the right thing. As a result she’s pretty smart for a 6 year old. The downside is I also spent hours worrying about her sleep patterns, eating patterns and whether she was happy or not. So guess which child is the best eater and sleeper and can entertain themselves without my input? Yes, poor neglected baby number 2.
That said I also know they are both going to grow up and blame me for everything anyway so I perhaps I should just stop worrying about what I did and didn’t do.
So did you bring your first and second babies up differently? Do you think family order has made you who you are today? Let me know.