How birth order affects your parenting.

Have you ever taken a birth order quiz? Like this one on Buzzfeed? Funnily enough, it told me I was an only child (I have a younger sister). This one pegged me spot on as a first born.

[ Who doesn’t love a good online quiz?!]

Sillies with my middle kid. Check out notjustaprettyfamily.com for more on parenting, birth order, character, mom life, raising kids, sons, daughters, raising boys, raising girls, middle kid syndrome, and more. — My middle.

I would say I am a fairly standard first born in terms of personality. The typical self-confident, high achieving perfectionist who puts a lot of expectations on herself. I’ve managed to tone down the intensity of those traits over the years and appear more easy going than I used to, but that first-born beast still lingers underneath. Reading about birth order has always fascinated me, that a person’s personality can be so very shaped by the order in which they were born. And how I can relate so very much to other first borns, even though we were raised in vastly different families (did you know that first borns tend to do well at school and want to take on all the projects? Or that first borns do better on IQ tests than their siblings? Or that we tend to be bossier? Yeah, that didn’t surprise you, husband, did it?). I also married a first born, which is apparently also indicative of my firstly peers.

The first born kid.

And being a first born, I obviously relate much better to my first born child. He is a lot like me. He doesn’t like to be wrong. He is smart with a creative bent. He doesn’t like to do something if it’s not going to be perfect the first time. He likes order but can do just fine in a little chaos. He is a leader and a starter. He can be overdramatic and really defiant and sneaky, afraid of making mistakes and admitting when he’s wrong. Again, just like mom.

The middle kid.

My middle kid, though, is often something of a mystery to me. The middle child syndrome as a stereotype sometimes rears its ugly head – no drive, negative outlook on everything, feeling like they don’t belong or always left out. He doesn’t like to let me in on what’s going on inside his head. He tends towards emotions rather than rationality. He is like me in that he tends toward introversion, but apart from that I often find it hard to relate to him. Being a parent means loving the little people in your house even when you cannot for the life of you understand their behavior. Even when you feel more like yelling than hugging.

Because with the loving and attempts at understanding comes a sweetness I would never get from the other two. He will snuggle with me far longer than the other two. He needs me to tuck him in every night. He needs my affirmation where the other two just need my presence. He needs convincing about his awesomeness where the other two just tell you how amazing they are and show you the proof (not even joking). My job is helping him find the pretty inside him and then share it with the world.

See, middle kids have super powers all their own. He has to take nonsense from his baby sister and his older brother and while right now half the time that ends in a wrestling match, he’s going to be really good at holding his own against others. He has become an adapter – he’ll tell you he never wants anything to change but he’s the first to want to move to the place we’re visiting. He is a collector and actively seeks to treasure his memories. He’s really good at sharing because he mostly wears hand-me-downs and has a toddler constantly taking his stuff.

Also, there are some seriously amazing middle kids rocking the history pages and the current affairs. Warren Buffett, JLo, David Letterman, Bill Gates, Peyton Manning, and not to mention a handful of amazing presidents (Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy) are all middle children.

How I parent my middle.

So how is it different parenting our middle kiddo? Because he’s stuck there in the middle, we’ve tried to make sure he has things he can call his own. We make sure that he has friends all his own (he’s really close in age to the biggest kid, so they end up playing with a lot of the same kids). We make sure he takes classes or does sports that are unique to him. We make sure to cultivate interests that are only his. And we make sure he gets time with each parent one on one. I guess, in essence, we try to make sure he feels like he is seen and cared for and loved. And that’s really all you can hope for with a kid at any spot in the birth order.