![]() ![]() To me, the biggest perk of being a middle child is that you’re given two friends for life whom you can connect with on different levels. You don’t have the pressure and the daunting responsibility the oldest child carries, nor do you get babied or bossed around like the youngest (although maybe you experience both when one sibling is away). However, I am thankful to be a middle child. Many believe the middle child syndrome is real and that middle children don’t want to be in their own shoes. I may be good with teamwork and conflict resolution, but I definitely wouldn’t call myself a social butterfly.Įxpectation: You don’t like being a middle child Since I spent a lot of nights and weekends hanging out with my siblings rather than with friends, my sisters and I have our own friendship and humor code that doesn’t always translate outside our home. On another note, because I’m so close with my sisters, I am not always the most social outside my house. However, I often need time in my room by myself to recharge - this really depends on your extraversion. I will agree that I do interact with my sisters a lot, and there is never a quiet moment in the house. Someone will always be talking or listening, and there will most likely always be someone that gives you attention or asks you for attention.īecause you have an older sibling and a younger sibling to attend to, many expect middle children to be very sociable. Being a middle child also means that you have a family of at least five. Being in the middle, you play an important mediator role, possibly bridging two generations within the family (Gen Y and Gen Z in my case). But even if you do have parents who neglect you over your siblings, as a middle child, you actually will never lack attention: attention from your siblings. As long as you express your unique self, middle child or not, people will notice you.Īpparently, my parents were aware of the so-called middle child syndrome and tried their best to balance the love and attention among the three of us. As I explored my interests and expressed my style and creativity, I noticed that relatives and family friends were more interested in me. ![]() If being a middle child means people pay less attention to you, it only means that you have less pressure to care about what others think of you. More importantly, though, I’ve always been active with many interests and hobbies. ![]() I firstly have to give credit to my height - I’m the tallest of the three, so many people approached me assuming I was the oldest. Here are what people expect the middle child experience must be like, opposed to the actual reality I experienced.īeing sandwiched between the oldest, the leader and pride of the family, and the youngest, the baby of the family, it seems like parents, relatives and family friends would pay less attention to you. People think that it must be a bad experience, but I have to disagree - I’ve always loved being a middle child. I am the middle child of three girls, and when I tell people, they either react with a surprised “woah,” a curious sympathetic expression with the question, “Do you have the middle child syndrome?” or some sort of empathy expressing that they are also a middle child. The syndrome predicts middle children to be attention-seeking and people-pleasing to make up for the love and attention they lacked as a child. The “middle child syndrome” is a word coined from the belief that in a family of three or more kids, children who are neither the oldest nor the youngest may receive less attention from parents, thus feeling excluded and neglected growing up. ![]()
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