After reading a friend's excellent and rather humour blog about being a first born. I decided to write some of my own thoughts about the subject.
1.My personality (although shaped by being the first born) couldn't stand being anything but the eldest. I love having a younger sister and I have all the characteristics of a first born child. I am success driven, independent, I tend to be focused and a tad serious, and have been a motherly type for as long as I can remember. I don't mind orders but I prefer for you to give them to me and then get out of my way.
2.I always felt that ultimately things were my responsibility. For instance: when my sister failed to do her chores, I felt that it reflected on me or my family somehow if the job didn't get done... so I would do it for her on occasion. I planned all of her birthday parties up until she was old enough to plan them herself... if she and my mom had a mis-understanding I jumped in to interpret both sides.
3. My favorite perks: I had my parents entirely to myself for the first 4 years of my life. I got to do everything first: like drive, which meant that I got to dictate where we went as it was after all my car.
4. I do think there are some mild injustices to being a first born. A personal one being that since both my parents were the youngest siblings, their sympathy's were slightly biased in favor of the younger one. If you think it's rough always hearing that your sibling must be included in everything, try having two parents who remember what it was like to be left out! Side note: since my sis and I are best friends I'm kind of glad they did. How else would I have ever come to know what an awesome person she is.
5. Some things never change. Even now that we're grown, people still expect that I can handle things and that I'll ask if I need help. In short I almost never get un-wanted advice from people who know both of us. My sis, on the other hand has to frequently state her independence to get people to help her less.
Now that I'm a parent I can already see my daughter's strong first born tendencies showing up all over the place. Partly due to being a girl, but being my first born, she's mommy helper. She's the most responsible two year old I know. She puts away all her own toys, and if you help her be sure you put them away correctly or it could be bad for you. She faithfully takes care of her babies and she took to watching out for her brother from the moment we brought him home from the birth center. She is my Ginny pig and as much as I hate to admit it there's no way around it. She did everything early as a baby and at 29 months old she knows letters A-E by sight and association. She's mostly potty trained and eats with little to no mess at table. She can count to 5, knows all of her colors, understands basic spanish and said her first two word spanish sentence this past week. I could go on and on, but before you accuse me of using my blog to brag you need to know that I taught her very little of it.
I guess what I'm getting at is that I want my daughter to be a first born with no regrets. I hope that as a first born I'll be sympathetic toward her inborn desires and drives and not push her too hard. I also hope that since my hubby is the oldest boy out of five (which makes him feel like a first born) and with my being a first born that we will not be hard on our youngest just because we know what the babies can get away with. If I'm successful (ha) then maybe one day, my youngest will one day write about being the youngest with no regrets.
