All this got me thinking back to about 3 1/2 years ago when I only had 1 child and was pregnant with twins. John and I would talk about making sure we made the extra effort to take many pictures of the girls even though they were 2nd and 3rd children, because we have SO MANY pictures and videos of E1 and we wanted to be fair. I am an only child so this was never really an issue in my life growing up so I have no personal experience to extract from. John is a second child, so he knows how it feels like, his older brother has so many more baby pictures than he does. When E2 and E3 arrived, we did take quite a lot of pictures and videos of them but not as many as we did with E1, life was busy with 3 kids under the age of 2, we didn't always have time to take out the camera!
Once the girls arrived, we talked about how we would make sure we are fair to all the children and do our best not to play favorites. We didn't want E1 to feel like once his sisters arrived, he wasn't important anymore since they would be getting quite a bit of attention being twins and all. For mothers of multiples out there, you know what I'm talking about. Everywhere you go, people are always staring and curious to know if they are indeed twins and if they are identical. You cannot imagine how many times we were stopped in public, especially when the girls were babies, just because people were curious and wanted a better look at them. So during the early months of the girls arrival, John would take E1 to a playground near our house for some one-on-one time with him. For the most part E1 was a very patient child and would be happy just sitting in his highchair playing with toys during those early months. In fact, secretly in the beginning, E1 was our "favorite" child, just because he was older and better at expressing himself and we had "known" him for a longer time. E2 and E3 were still new to us and it took some time to get acquainted to them, does that make any sense to other parents with more than 1 child? But of course, that was our little secret as parents and we never really let the kids know this, unless they read this in the future =P
By the time E4 arrived, our house had pretty much been "set up" for the 3 older kids. Their pictures decorate our walls and things were arranged for 3 kids, which took some rearranging and we will need to print out new pictures and redecorate some of our walls to include his pictures in the near future. Now that E4 is one and I look back at his first year, we definitely don't have as many pictures of him compared to the other 3. In fact, we even missed witnessing some of his firsts! Like when he first flipped over, it happened while we were all busy doing something and not paying attention, until we looked at him and found him on his tummy! Poor kid! Good thing we did get a video of him when he first started to crawl.
I feel bad sometimes that E4 doesn't have the same amount of pictures, videos, and at times, my attention, because I have 3 other kids to attend to. Then I realized, first of all, I can't beat myself up about it, since it is a fact of life that the 4th child probably won't get the same amount of certain things compared to his older siblings. And more importantly, I love him just as much as his siblings because he is my child! And some might even say I love him more because he is the baby and he is a great baby, really patient and not fussy, content with sitting and crawling around playing along with his brother and sisters. Only "complaint" I might have is that he still wakes up at nights which is getting to be pretty tiring for me but I know this phase will pass as well.
*Image from flickr.com
So after all this reflection, I've come to the conclusion that you can't always have the equal amount of THINGS such as pictures, videos, birthday parties, new toys for all your kids but as long as there is an equal amount of LOVE for all of them, it's all good!
Parents of multiple children, what do you do to make sure the kids are treated fairly? Any thoughts about this topic?
Parents expecting your second child, have you thought about this topic? What are some of the things you came up with?
Parents with one child, do you have siblings? What are some of the things your parents did when you were growing up?
Zi
Hi Zi - although I am not a parent, I think a reason that E4 is at an advantage is that you have had so much practice with E1, E2, and E3, such that when E4 comes along, you and John are old pros at parenthood and are more comfortable with the baby. In a way, you are more "seasoned" now than when you were just with E1. In this way, E4 may have the best position in your family - don't you think? Amy B.
ReplyDeleteGreat to hear from you again Amy! When it comes to day to day things I definitely think E4 has an advantage since we are more "seasoned" parents, we know what we are doing in that aspect. But he definitely doesn't get as much one on one time with us compared to E1 and milestones aren't as big a deal either. Of course E4 gets attention from more people (John and I and his older siblings), so I think each child has their own unique situation and we do our best to make sure they are all treated FAIRLY but not exactly equally.
DeleteHi Zi! So many great discussion points following this post! I am the oldest and don't think there are more pictures of me than of my lil sis. I think my parents were good typical Asians and took a lot ;). I have a scrapbook of my family, which I gathered from old family pics, and I'd say that there's an equal number of me alone, my sis alone, and us together pics. Now that we're all grown up, I don't think either of us is bitter about the number of photos our parents took. Though sometimes I am still bitter that I had to do more of the chores at home :/, hehe.
ReplyDeleteAs for having a second child, I am not so concerned about giving them the equal number of things, but I am concerned sometimes about how much love can I give to another child when I already love J so much (like you said above, you know E1 longer). (I was gonna post about this sometime too). But I like that you said you want to treat them fairly, not exactly equal, because every kid will give and receive love differently. Even though I haven't seen you with all of your kids recently, I know that you're great parents and I know they all feel loved equally much!
Glad you enjoyed the post! Your parents did a great job then, making sure you two both had a good amount of pictures =) I totally find myself asking E1 to do more things than the other kids, just because he is the oldest and I want him to be a leader and a protector to his younger siblings. But I do need to be more careful because there are times that E1 totally calls me on it and says, "How come E2 and E3 aren't helping me clean up?" We read a book that a friend of mine we is also a mom of twins passed on to me and it taught us about the whole treating children fairly instead of as equals lesson. It was a pretty good book!
DeleteI have loads of pictures of Baby C on my phone, my problem is finishing her baby book. Ha ha! I think my parents were pretty good about getting pictures of me and my brothers. And I'm glad they did. It's always fun to look back at them.
ReplyDeleteI love looking back at my baby and childhood pictures as well! Glad to hear that your parents were good at getting pictures of you and your siblings. Of course nowadays with everything being digital, our kids will probably be looking back at their pictures on something digital instead of in photo albums like us =)
DeleteI'm glad to see you say fairly instead of exactly the same. When I saw Lisa's tweet about treating children the same, I was going to reply that "fairly" is the best you can hope for--and that the kids' future therapists agree with you. :)
ReplyDeleteSpeaking as an E6, I've always understood why the number of pictures declined with each suceeding child. But I ended up doing more chores than my elder siblings--I had no one to pass them to.
Thanks for your comment! Happy to hear from someone that is a 6th child, don't get that perspective too often. I wonder if the whole chore thing will happen to E4, maybe when the older siblings are not around as much.
DeleteWe only have one child, but my husband does talk about an inability to spread himself beyond loving my son and me. He just can't imagine being able to do it (or to remain sane trying). I know we'd be able to share our love for two children and I think he'd be an awesome father of two. Though, there are plenty of other reasons right now why we're one and done. =)
ReplyDeleteHe might be surprised at how much he could love another child if you guys ever decide to have another =) I'm an only child, my parents tried but it was just never in God's plan for me to have a sibling and I can't say I mind too much though there were times I was a bit lonely as a child.
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