As Stephanie Tanner once said on Full House; “DJ is the oldest, Michelle is the cutest, and I’m nothing.”
I am a daughter, 1 of 5, but growing up it was 1 of 3. And I was subsequently born into the position as the middle child. For my fellow middle children, I don't even have to elaborate. You just “know". But for those that aren’t... It is hands down, definitely all that it is chalked up to be.
Now, I am not trying to weigh this all as a bunch of negatives. Every position within a family has its perks, its drawbacks. For the middle children of the world, I think it’s safe to say you can easily be considered the favorite. It doesn’t take my two sisters reminding me every day of this truth. As the middle child you get along with mom AND dad. But why is this….
I guess I have to take it a few steps back to truly understand all that the middle child is cracked up to be; the favorite, the loner, the suck up, the easy to please child. SO, for starters, as you could imagine, I was not always the middle child. This is a given, I get that. I spent my younger years tailing after my older sister, copying what she was doing, trying to hangout with her and her older friends. If she was a singer, I was a singer. If she was riding the bus to school, I was riding the bus to school (or at least I would’ve if 4-year-olds could). When my younger sister came along, I didn’t notice a change in our family dynamic. She was just another little baby, biting fingers and crying all the time.
THEN, I entered middle school-- the peak of the awkward shoulder length ,middle part, brace face and Sketcher tennis shoes era. I had enough of my own awkwardness to sort out, and then the beauty of being the middle child, I had that too. For some reason, as a middle child, you are the automatic third wheel. No matter the situation or the people involved, you are and will continue to always be the third wheel. Maybe this is something instinctive, or something we just learned to suck up. It’s gotten to the point that now in my 20’s, I’ll back up into the background and become the third wheel without any questions asked. It’s a role we have adapted for ourselves.
We are the leftover rolls at dinner. We are not the first batch that came out when everyone was excited to eat. We are not the “one more because they were so darn good”. We’re just there, the space fillers of society. But don’t be discouraged, space-fillers have a purpose too. So getting back to favoritism-- this is definitely because we have no specific place, no role, no designed purpose. We are known to be the middle man to ease situations, to help out to make our presence known. This makes sense.
Middle Child Syndrome; its definitely a thing. And all I wanted to do was validate it.
