Be your own person
read more about: the middle child. mom of a few. parenting strategies.
I love to listen to my kids talk amongst themselves; it’s how I learn that siblings have a language all their own, and realize that the warmth I feel inside is from knowing that they are growing, understanding that they can depend on one another, trust one another, and protect one another.
My eldest, yesterday, in the middle of a conversation with the 4 year old said to him, “you must be your own person!”, and I smiled to myself upon hearing those words, as it’s become almost a mantra in our house. You see, I realized a while ago that my 4 year old was in danger of becoming infected with one of the worse parts of the somewhat-mythical-but-all-too-real middle child syndrome, the part that I like to call “what he said” – you know, where the younger sibling just decides that being a shadow of the eldest is the grand sum of his life’s ambition.
I could see that he was falling into the trap of fearing that his opinions were not good enough, that if he was different from his brother that we would somehow love him less, I could see him becoming unsure of himself, questioning his own thoughts, even at his age. I now ask him specifically what he thinks before I ask my eldest, I now have long talks with him, well long-ish talks, and above all else, I’m trying to stress to each of them the importance of being your own person.
I’ve started to notice a change in my middle child, a new confidence, the charismatic smile that he often flashes my way, a fearlessness to disagree with his brothers, a refusal to be bullied, and a passionate dislike for injustice, which is fitting because his name actually means justice.
I’ve never been one to succumb to peer pressure, in fact, I think being different is one of my defining characteristics. Some may call me “crazy”, some may make fun, some may just not understand, and sometimes even I wonder why I have to always be different, but when I look at my kids and realize that they are accepting of the differences in all of us, that they are comfortable being themselves, that they are beginning to display a level of confidence I’m sure I never had as a child, I know that “being your own person” is a mantra worth learning.
