Flashback Thursday: The Middle Child Angst Conundrum

This is one of my favorite pics of J'boy when he had just turned two nearly a year ago when he was the youngest child

Today, he is a MIDDLE CHILD.

As a firm follower and believer in birth order dynamics, I believe that a child's birth order in a family affects his/her personality and shapes his behavior throughout adolescence and adulthood.

So that is why I'm trying my darnedest to NOT be THAT parent who contributes to middle child angst in my own middle kid.

So far, I'm batting 0 because today, I totally forgot to assemble J'boy's Valentine's day cards for his classmates until after he had already left for school. But sure enough C-boy and I had painstakingly did them all for his class and even did two sets: one for the girls and one for the boy. Meanwhile, J'boy's cards were sitting upstairs in the boys' bedroom all by their lonesome with noone to assemble them. :( (sad)

Also, last week, I noticed that I had managed to enroll C-boy in a series of classes: gymnastics, Gymboree, Kindermusik,swimming, tennis and other activities by the age J-boy is in now, but J'boy so far has only had about 1/3 of the classes C-boy had. In earnestness, I think it partly has to do with money as back when Cboy was born, I made a lot more money and only had one child to splurge on and now, with three kids, Trinihubby and I have to be more creative.

Notwithstanding, it is still quite upsetting to me to see (and be the one contributing to) Jboy getting the short end of the stick, because I can see that he so wants to participate and be a part of the class whenever we have to haul him to one of C-boy's classes. He should have his own class, but when I think about having to haul him to separate classes during the week and I think of how it's cold and winter and 8 times out of 10, I may have to take the baby with me, I fall back. Lucky for me, Trinihubby has stepped up to the plate tremendously and has all but taken over C-boy's piano and Kindermusik class duties, practicing with him and even helping C-boy with his homework every single night and running math and reading drills with him on the weekend. So....that would leave me plenty of time to find some activities that Jboy may enjoy and use my spare time (a ha! what's that) to do the same to engage J'boy.

I sure do not want J'boy to have the frustration and angst that I witness in so many middle children, like my sister and husband. I mean, they're cool people, those middle children, but whenever something comes up that may seemingly put them in a disadvantaged position (whether in an argument, some difficulty in their lives, or some other stress filled event), you see where their past feelings of being taken for granted and ignored creep up and affects their actions and statements. It's an interesting social phenomenon, if anything.

I feel I should be putting together a "therapist fund" for driving J'boy to the shrink. I hope it's not too late and I can check myself along the way. *sigh*