I would like some advice. My wife and I have four children. 15 boy, 8, 5 and 2 all girls. All are obviously unique and have different personalities, yada yada yada. My five year old is often argumentative, defiant, passive/aggressive, etc. She wants to "share" with her eight year old sister whenever her eight year old sister picks up anything to play with. And by "share" I mean she wants to take it from her. She is sometimes mean to the two year old and sometimes almost seems like she's deliberately making people angry. This isn't all the time, but some days she makes poor choices and then just melts down from there. Now, when she is one on one with us it's a completely different story.....she's positively a joy. Funny, empathetic, bright and caring. Is this typical of so called "middle children"?
I don't know about that -- what you describe is very different from our middle child (we have three boys, 9, 7, and 5). But, you have described my 5yo almost perfectly. He can be very frustrating. Okay, that's kind. He can be just awful to his siblings. And he is a master at both picking and instigating fights. But one on one with me, he is exemplary. I just do a lot of separating (children) where appropriate, applying punishment where appropriate (like, if they earn a privilege and he doesn't, then he doesn't take part), and I keep reminding myself that this too shall pass.
I don't know about middle child, but that sounds just like my 15 yo. He didn't become a middle child until he was 9.
I have three boys, 9,7 and 5. I dont see the middle child syndrome that we had been afraid we would encounter after the third one was born (insecurity, jealousy etc). However, my middle son does, like you were describing, compete a lot with his elder brother, trying to do everything he does, and getting upset when he cannot. The fact that they are almost the same height and wear the same size clothes makes matters worse. He fancies himself equal to his brother in height, and therefor equal in skills as well. We try to give them a lot of one on one time, and praise them all equally. That's hard to do, I know, but we make a conscious effort, and hopefully we are fulfilling each of their needs...(we hope!)
I have four kids and that sounds like 3rd born child syndrome to me. My 3rd is very much the same. He likes to push his limits and boundaries pretty much ALL the time. And the kid could sell air conditioning to an Alaskan. He's just that um..... charming? Oh and my third thrives best when he gets more one on one time with us. We don't have as much of the passive aggressive stuff but he's only 3.5 so time will tell.
I couldn't tell you. My middle child is very compliant and easy going. Her two brothers, however, are the ones that give me fits. LOL. Very headstrong, high maintenence and argumentative. I personally think it's just their own unique personality rather than a birth order issue.
