I come from a big and very unorthodox family. All In all, I have 9 brothers and sisters; some are half siblings and some are step siblings. But while growing up, and throughout my developing years, we were mainly 5 siblings and I was the middle child.
You see being a middle child is complicated. It comes with little benefit and certainly comes with little attention from your parents. At least, that’s my experience, but I have heard similar things from people around me.
In case you are lucky enough to have been the first child, or even luckier, the youngest sibling, I want you to understand 5 struggles I faced for being a middle child.
1. You have to become independent.
Let’s face it! You are not the first child. So, you are definitely not a novelty. But you are also not the youngest one. Therefore, you are not the baby of the family.
2. You face silly rules thanks to your older sibling.
Your older sibling may have done some questionable things while growing up. Thanks to that your parents have already established rules around them. The bad thing is that now those rules, regardless of how different you are from your sibling, will apply to you.
You have until 9 pm to go out with your friends? Well, you can probably thank your older sibling for that.
The only thing that really bothers me about this particular struggle is that the rules that apply to you thanks to your older sibling will not always apply to your younger sibling as your parents might be a little more relaxed and less strict with them.
NOT FAIR!
3. You always get the hand-me-downs.
There’s definitely nothing wrong with hand-me-downs.
I personally LOVE them and I also love anything second hand! But…while growing up, it always bothered me that I would get all the hand-me-down clothes, shoes, toys, and the like. But then my younger siblings would get all new things because by the time they could get my hand-me-downs they were already too busted to be used.
So my older siblings always got new things, and my younger siblings too. Not the middle child though, we get all the recycled stuff.
4. You do things without people noticing
In the midst of the chaos that is having more than 2 children, your parents are usually not paying close attention to you, the middle child. This is somewhat of a struggle as you go unnoticed often and that can be really upsetting.
But going unnoticed has its perks. I’m sure we have all been able to get away with so much more than our other siblings thanks to being the middle child.
5. You will never get a room to your own.
The basic premise of this struggle is that at first, you had to share a room with your older sibling, so that the baby could have a nursery. Later, you had to split space with your younger sibling because the older one “deserved some privacy”.
Excuse me, How is that fair?
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