Think about this: the oldest child is flawless, which is implied in their royal birthright as the first. They are obviously the favorite, always being told the important information. They're entitled to the front seat, which we always challenge them for every time, and they’re valued for their own opinions because of the assumption, which is ingrained in our younger brains from birth, older is wiser. The first of the firsts, busy marking their territory and reinstating the rules set down by the parents.
Then we have the youngest, the baby, a savior of a parent’s youth, the one who gets away with everything, and the annoying pain in the ass always trying to put in their two cents. The bayyy-be (said with a mocking tone of each syllable) is preoccupied with the excess of attention and indulging in coddling and all of its pacifying glory.
The middle child is the forgotten kid, smack dab in between. We are the layer of lettuce inside a sandwich that you can barely taste, yet significantly uniting the meat and cheese. Perhaps this just applies to my family, as we epitomize the birth order stigmas.
My older sister, love her to death, is nurturing but sometimes tries too much to be a parental figure. Meanwhile, my younger brother is a strong leader and my fellow troublemaker. Then there’s me. I try to keep the peace but also cause a lot of the mayhem in the house. It’s mostly the fact that I dislike being told what to do, as most middle children would agree. But it’s not all bad being the middle kid; we’ve got some advantages our siblings would kill for.
For one, we have the benefits. The middle child can sidestep the mistakes the oldest makes, while still importing wisdom onto the youngest. We don’t have to be first, which is sometimes hard to deal with, but overall kind of a good thing. We get someone to go ahead and pave the road ahead while we only have to leave footprints in the sand. As the middle child, we can always have a guide in front of us in life. This allows us to have a person to follow, but we’re also allowed to do our own thing, thus showing our youngest sibling that the world is theirs for the taking and you don’t have to fit a certain mold, a role which I hope I’ve set for my younger brother.
Being a middle child also allows you some leverage. I’ll be the first to admit that I love to test the waters with my parents. I have slightly more room to ask to go places and try new things, while also being able to say, “C’mon, my sister was allowed to do this!” I’m a button pusher but for some reason my parents let me do it. This drives my siblings insane (Sorry I figured out the system, guys). I’ve never gotten away with anything that was really bad, and I think my parents knew that I was going to parties in high school and just kind of let it go in order to let me do my own thing. I also always have two people to blame. This isn’t the nicest thing but every middle child uses this to their advantage. If something bad in the house happens, we can always say our older siblings did it, or flip it and say that our younger sibling didn’t listen or take our advice. It doesn’t always work, but when it does, it’s the magic of the middle child, I guess.
I do try to keep the peace in the house, even if sometimes I’m the one that starts it. But I don’t have my life together, a refreshing perspective for my siblings as I tend to be the family screw up. Since we abide by our roles, my sister is all like, “Hey, I’m the responsible, mature 86-year-old – who’s up for intellectual conversation and a glass of wine?” Meanwhile, my brother is all, “I’m sleeping in today, probably going to play some video games later since I work hard while the girls are away at school ,so I should be able to take the summer off while they’re home, right?” And yet, I’m over here pondering how to make our coffee machine work, trying to not turn my white clothes pink, and barely capable of planning life day-by-day. Yet, when we all start to drift, being the middle child, I’ve got to keep us all together, the glue of us kids. We all have to stick together even if it feels like we’re planets apart. Family makes or breaks a lot of people’s lives and I try really hard to have it make ours.
As middle children, we have to be the best at sharing, because we never really had anything of our own. We’re either inheriting or passing along hand-me-downs. Not everything is bright, shiny or new, but what is mine is yours. This helps a lot for the real world. We have the perspective of compromise and working things out. Being a middle child gives us the edge on those in the real world who are used to getting everything they want. We role with the punches and take it one day at a time.
Being a middle child is more complicated that you might think but it’s the best kind of complicated there is. You get one kick butt older sibling helping you out and one mostly cool little sibling you get to help make into a really cool human being. Why would anyone ever want to change that?
