hot take:you should not treat your children the same. And no I donât mean love one more than the other. You should love your children equally but I donât think that you should treat your children the same. my mother has three children. Me, the oldest, my brother, the middle two years younger than me, and my baby brother who is twelve years younger than me.
She does not treat us the same. Thatâs because we arenât the same child.
I am anxious. I have adhd, ptsd, and have struggled with depression. I am an overachiever, a perfectionist, and take everything as my responsibility. I overthink everything and freak out about nothing. I am in the stage of finding my independence, moving to college, becoming an adult, and learning what a work life balance is. my brother isâŚoblivious. He doesnât see a lot of the things that happened in the past that messed me up. He is a little attention seeking, a little irresponsible, and likes to have fun. He tends to not think things through and can sometimes make bad choices. He can sometimes He hangs out with friends a lot he is very social. He is in the stage of peer approval, learning good from bad choices, how to be responsible.
my baby brother is a sweetheart. He loves to do whatever everyone else is doing and follow us around. He knows what he likes and tells us about it constantly. He is very vocal and talks a lot sometimes about nothing at all. He likes bluey, paw patrol, playing board games, video games, and following us. He is in the stage of figuring out elementary school, learning how to interact with peers, learning to express his emotions, asking why all the time, and learning that just because the grown ups curse sometimes doesnât mean he can. (Especially at school)
You canât expect one method of parenting to work for all three of these. These are three completely different people, in completely different stages of life. My mom needs to be firm with my middle brother to make sure he understands when he makes the wrong choice and give him a curfew because well heâs a teenager. She needs to be able to help me calm down, realize not everything is as huge as I make it and she understands I punish myself more than she will. She needs to be able to make sure my baby brother understands the consequences when he does something naughty without loosing her mind at him because screaming just makes him cry then nobody gets anywhere.
Make no mistake that the same qualities are there, kindness, love, patience, and a little bit of firmness, but they take different shape and intensity depending on which child it is and the situation. thatâs what I think a lot of people miss. The way you parent the firstborn might not work for the second or third.
