Middle Child Syndrome

 

The other day I asked my husband and in-laws what I should blog about for my next post. After writing about my oldest a few times from having ADHD to not wanting me anymore, I decided to write about my daughter, the middle child. My husband said, "What if you write about her eye surgery or about what it's like being the only girl in the midst of two brothers?" I decided that for this one, I would write about her being a girl in a boys world or just being the middle child. To do this, I interviewed her.

The Interview

I wanted to start off with easy questions and this is how it went.

M: What’s your favorite food?

K: Ice cream and cupcakes 

M: What’s your favorite color?

K: Pink, red, purple- I can’t help it with those colors

M: What do you want to be when you grow up?

K: A mommy

These were pretty standard questions, ones I knew the answers to. By this time, she has moved to the other side of the table and is playing with her Barbie laptop with a musical keyboard. She seems happy to be answering the questions, but also a little bored. I started asking some more difficult questions and she gave me answers that I sometimes knew but also changed from time to time. 

M: How old will you be when you get married?

K: I don’t know. 19? Is that a good age? M: Will you marry your high school sweetheart? K: I don't know. M: I was 21 when I got married, that's two years older than what you said. K: Ok

M: How many kids do you want?

K: I want 10. Five boys and five girls.

What it's like being the only girl child

OK, so I'm going to be the grandma of at least ten grandchildren. This isn't including the kids that my sons will have someday. My husband and I are going to have to really build up our retirement fund so we can live comfortably in our old age after spoiling all of our grandkids. 

After this, I started asking her questions that were going to be emotional. I had a box of tissues ready for any emotional outbursts of crying. I hoped we wouldn't need them.

M: What’s it like being the only girl in the family?

K: I don’t like that I don’t have a sister. I’d like to have a sister so we can torture my brothers.

M: How do you feel about being the middle child? (I held my breath, expecting to hear about the injustice of it.)
K: I feel good about being a middle child.

I tried to bait her some more. Her responses weren't what I expected. After all, my middle sister was an emotional fountain, I expected something similar.

M: What do you think of your older brother?

K:  think he’s the best brother ever!

M: What do you think of your younger brother?

K: I don’t know, yet. I know that he drives me crazy every. Single. Day.

M: But you guys like to play together, right?

K: I like to dress him up like a girl because he doesn’t drive me crazy, then. He plays nicely. Otherwise, he gives me a headache with everything he does.

I knew that it was true. The other day, it had been quiet. I brought up a load of folded laundry for the kids to help put away and I called to K. Suddenly, I heard loud whispers and scurrying around. I looked inside K's room and found it empty, but I could see the light from the closet coming out from under the door. I opened it up, and there stood K in a pretty Princess Sofia dress and her little brother in one of her dresses that had a black velvet torso with a black, blue, and gray striped skirt. He reminded me of the part in The Little Rascals when Alfalfa and Spanky dressed in leotards at a ballet recital to hide from the bullies. I had to muffle my laughter. 

Bring on the difficult questions 

At this point, K still hadn't reached the emotional state that I thought would happen when talking about being a middle child, so I continued with some questions that I thought would open her up.

M: Do you feel left out sometimes?

K: Yeah, only when I have no one to play with.

M: Why don’t you have anyone to play with?

K: I don’t know. Sometimes I don’t know why. 

M: Does it make you sad?

K: No, because then I can play with you!

So, instead of my daughter feeling emotional and upset about the injustice of being a middle child and the only sister with two brothers, she had me tearing up. I took a moment to gather myself and finished her interview.

M: How old are you?

K: I am 6 yrs old.

M: Are you looking forward to 1^st grade?

K: Uh huh! I think it will be fun. I hope I can go to Mr. B’s class just like my big brother. I am glad to see my friends, except Isabella when she doesn’t listen.

M: What is something you’d like to do today?

K: I want to play outside and maybe hang out with grandma for a while and go to Old McDonalds had a farm (as she plays on her piano toy) what? I thought it was funny!

Conclusion

So there you have it. I tried my best to prove that there is a Middle Child Syndrome that affects all middle children. I wanted to prove that maybe they felt mistreated or more frustrated because they were the middle child, but my middle child told me that she's actually pretty happy and likes her life. So, in conclusion: There is no such thing as middle child syndrome. There is, however, First Child Syndrome, which I have experienced first hand as the oldest child. Don't believe me, ask a first child what it was like growing up as one and I'm sure you'll get a huge list of why it sucked being the first child.

Are you a middle child? Did you have a syndrome? Tell me about it in the comments!