Big Brother Woes

My sister was born five days before my 5th birthday. To say that I was less than thrilled about her arrival is an understatement. I am told that one day, when my mother was about 8 months pregnant, I threw my head down on the dinner table and sobbed, “Now who’s going to do crafts with me?” Even before her birth, I was worried about her displacing me! When she was born, I visited my mother in the hospital, and I didn’t care to see Megan. I wanted to play with the straws on my mother’s lunch tray, and sit on her bed. When asked if I wanted to walk down to the nursery to get a peek at the new baby, my response was, “Do I have to?” Later, my mother tried to involve me in the baby’s care, hoping that it would give me a sense of worth. “Do you want to help me feed and change the baby?” she asked. My reply? “It’s your baby. You wanted it. You take care of it.” I probably heard those words in reference to a cat or fish or some other pet I had cajoled my mother into buying before the birth of my sister!

I would like to say that things level out as the years passed, and that my sister and I grew to be great friends, but that’s not exactly how it worked. I always felt like I paled in comparison to her. My personality has always been dark at times, even since early childhood. My impatient, sometimes brooding, and emotional personality is deep seated, and it really has only been in my adulthood that I have begun to learn how to temper these qualities. Conversely, Megan was always a happy child, even tempered, outgoing and light spirited. It‘s no wonder that her “easier“ qualities drew more people to her than I drew to my self. This is not to say that I didn’t have friends, or that I was a depressed, grumpy child. I have always made friends easily, and related to others well. And although I have my temper, I’ve never been mean to anyone outside of my mother (for which I am now greatly sorry) and myself (Ok, and maybe my husband from time to time too, for which I’m also sorry).

Megan’s easiness made me feel that my more difficult personality was a huge disappointment to my family. It’s not that my mother did anything in particular to make me think this, it was more of something that I sensed, and a burden that I placed upon myself. I always felt like everyone looked at me and thought “why can’t she be more like her sister?” I often thought that of myself too. I never resented Megan, but I frequently wished that I could emulate her, or at least what I perceived her status in the family to be.

Who knows how Megan felt about me. It’s not something we’ve ever really talked about. I have found that gaining other people’s perspectives can be quite enlightening. Other’s often view things in such vastly different ways, that it can be surprising. Perhaps I should ask Megan what it is like to be the younger child.

At this point in our lives, my sister and I are great friends. We talk like adults to one another and share a history that only siblings can. But that bond came only in adulthood, after my sister and I both graduated from college and began our own families. It was a long time in the making, but at this juncture, I can say that I am glad to have a sister. Like the bonds of a parents and children, husbands and wives, and friends and family all have their own uniqueness, so does a sibling bond.

It was because of that sibling bond that we decided to have Andrew. Greg has a daughter to a previous marriage, but we don’t see her often, so she is not really a sister to Jacob. Greg comes from a family of 5, and I have my biological sister and a step sister as well as a large extended family. We both agreed that Jacob needed a brother or sister in his life, and so along came Andrew. Of course, there was a little more thought than that in the decision to have another baby, but we needent go there now.

Jacob has much of my personality - the stubbornness, the short temper, impatience and the need to be right all the time. He does not, however, have the painful shyness or transition problems that I had as a child, some of which I even carried into adulthood. Those of you who know him can attest to the fact that he will talk to anyone. He loves company, and he has adjusted beautifully and smoothly to some major changes in his life. He changed day cares, adjusted to my marriage to Greg and adapted to having a sibling after 5 years of singledom with barely a blink. I have always given him a lot of credit for those attributes, but lately, I have been wondering if I’ve given him too much credit and not enough support.

I’ve been noticing a lot of attention seeking behavior with Jake lately. Nothing monumental, just little things with high frequency. I’ve been feeling like I am constantly redirecting him, correcting him, and even yelling at him. I hate that we have so many negative interactions, and I have been wracking my brain to determine the source as well as a solution.

Then I remembered: a little while ago, Jacob told my niece that “nobody wants to play with him anymore, they just want to be with the baby.” Well, that statement just isn’t true, but it made my heart sink. At the time when I heard it, I tried to set aside some extra time for Jacob, and I think that it helped him some. But then the holidays rolled around, and in the hustle and bustle we got back to our hectic routine. I believe now we are at the point where any attention is attention, even if it’s negative. I know all too well from working in the field too long that attention seeking behaviors are often negative, because they necessitate action more readily than positive behaviors. I also know that positive redirection and feedback are two of the best ways to circumvent undesirable behavior.

Greg and I have talked and we have decided that there is no room to slip back into our old ways. Just because Jacob is more capable, doesn’t mean that I should expect him to take care of himself more. He is only 5, after all. The baby demands more attention, but Jacob deserves his fair share too. So we plan to set aside at least 30 min, 4-5 times a week to spend alone with Jacob. One of us will take Andrew, to allow full attention on Jacob. We’ve already started and I think it has helped some. It’s really a simple solution. Like any other routine, the hard part is establishing the initial pattern. The rest follows easily.

I have been ruminating about this for a few weeks now, not so much because I am worried that we won’t be able to change things, but because I know exactly how he felt when he made that statement. I see so much of myself in Jacob, and when I think of some of the emotional anguish I put myself through over the years, it sickens me to think that Jacob would ever feel even remotely as bad as I have at times in my life. I suppose we all need our share of struggles, for without them, we would never reach our full potential. They make us stronger, fuel our desires to strive for better and help us to appreciate the good times. Still, as a mother, I can’t help but want to take those struggles away. I also don’t want to be the source of any adversity, especially when I know in my heart that Andrew was in many ways a gift to Jacob. They are gifts to each other. I pray that Greg and I parent well enough that our actions do not drive a wedge between Jacob and Andrew, but rather instill a strong sense of brotherhood between them.