I don't think there is enough acknowledgement of the trauma of being the eldest because from a very young age, you are made responsible for people frequently not that much younger than you and it is expected from you, your feelings, plans and considerations be damned
If your parents aren't there, you can't just goof off and have fun because you have young children to beware of and make sure they are safe, even though you, yourself are still a young child
You learn to do the chores first and are the one expected to do them and then they don't really care as much about your parents doing the chores because well you're already helping out
If you go anywhere with your family and you decide to go the loo, a small gift shop or anything just on your own and your sibling decides to come with, well know you're responsible for them and you have to make sure they're behaving and they know what they're doing and they're okay
And in all of this, you never really get the choice to say no, your parents have made plans with the expectation that you will be looking after your siblings, so if you say no, you will be inconveniencing them, you'll be ruining their plans, so you just have to say agree, and rearrange your own plans because the parents can't be responsible for their own kids
And it is very traumatising because this is ingrained from a very young and completely expected of the oldest, people go 'oh they're so mature' and celebrate when the oldest sibling is seen looking after their younger siblings but it is a weight on the eldest because they didn't consent to their parents having kids, they haven't consented to looking after their siblings, and they are still a child themselves
These kids are carrying the weight of looking after someone else from the day their younger sibling is born, no matter how young they maybe, you see it even in siblings with only a year between them
These poor kids are bearing responsibilities adult themselves struggle to deal with, and yeah they aren't doing all the parenting but they constantly feel responsible for their siblings, they constantly feel expected to look after someone else, and they're just kids and we celebrate the way they are treated, we celebrate them taking responsibility and they can't escape the trauma
