I suspect that my parents would say something similar about my sister and me. I was the firstborn (by 3 1/2 years), and my parents later commented on how easy (relatively speaking) it was for them with me – I rarely misbehaved, I did as I was asked, I was a star student in school, and a happy kid.
My parents have also said that, due to how “easy” it had been with me, they were totally unprepared for how challenging it was going to be with my sister. She has several learning disabilities (which weren’t diagnosed until well after her school years), as well as some lifelong emotional problems, and all of that meant that childhood (and, for that matter, adulthood) was a struggle for her.
I’m really hungry, so I’m going to be totally invested in that first pancake, even if it’s a little off. Each subsequent pancake might be more dialed in at the cooking phase, but none will get the devotion and attention than that first. Maybe even by the third I’ll be putting it in the refrigerator to eat as a midnight snack. And at some point I’m just making pancakes because, well, I’ve got all this batter and the pan is hot, so why not?
I think what it translates into is that as a parent, you know how to navigate a lot of things better with your second child- for example, the first kid usually requires a lot of trial-and-error on figuring out how you do stuff like enroll in a magnet school. By the time the second kid rolls around, you have a better idea of how to do that. Or that you don’t need to take the kid to the doctor for every time they run a 99.5 fever.
But it doesn’t mean that the learning experiences the older child participates in are necessarily signs of incompetence or somehow traumatic or injurious to the older child. At best, stuff just goes smoother for the parents and sometimes the child on the second and later kids.
I mean, my brother is more screwed up than I am, and he’s the younger one. But it’s not due to any parental machinations, AFAIK, and is more due to personality and circumstances. At best, you could say that my parents were generally more permissive to him than they were to me. Mostly because I have a couple of fuck-up cousins, and my parents were desperately not wanting me to end up like that. At some point they realized that it wasn’t the length of the leash that determined whether or not we were going to be fuck-ups or not, and relaxed by the time he was a teenager.
I’m the first of 5, hence I had years of hearing “You’re the oldest - you have to set the example.” Guess how many of my sibs followed my example? Go ahead, guess!
I do know my folks were a lot less strict with my youngest sister than with me - maybe they learned to relax, or maybe they were just tired by the time she was a teen. Who know… As for me, I just have one kid, but I’m definitely a lot more relaxed with my granddaughter.
I’ve raised a lot of kids and I just gotta say No to the OP. Looking back I’d say you need to include in the metaphor the batter itself changes between pancakes. They all respond differently to what you do (extremes of “do” excepted, of course), even if you do the exact same thing with each, which you won’t because when [action 1] doesn’t work on kid2 like it did on kid1, you have to come up with [action 2] thus exposing kid 2 to both actions which gives them better insight into your methods. kid3 is a whole nother thing because when it comes time for [actionX] you’re so damned busy working out other actions for the other 2 kids that you may not care as much whether the action has the desired effect. Too late you learn those suckers cook themselves just fine as long as you keep the dog from eating them.
I’m the second child of a two-child family. Both my sister and I turned out OK. I have two kids that are now young adults. They turned out OK. The burnt pancake idea sort of makes sense, but I haven’t seen it in personal experience, so I’m going to say that it is at the very least, not inevitable.
If the batter was all out of the same bowl, yes. But it isn’t.
In my case, the first one my mother spent a whole lot of energy on, paid attention to, corrected for everything, wanted her to be a good example of her parenting blah blah. Very extroverted kid. Really did fine with it all. Remains close to both my parents, only one who is close to my mom. The next 3 (I’m the 3rd of 4) my mother really was tired of being a parent and did everything by rote, without much attention. We all suffered a great deal from being raised by someone who wished nothing more than to be left alone. We all dealt with it differently, due to us being very different people out of the box. The burnt pancake was the only one where someone was watching the stove, in this case.
From what I remember the opposite it true in that first born children are more likely to have high iQ and be successful then their younger siblings. The first hit on google and 10 second of reading seem to confirm that too. Now smartest and most successful dosen’t have to correlate to least burnt pancake but I’d bet there is a strong correlation.
If you look at various studies that use birth order as a premise for X, they tend to show that firstborns are more likely to have a marginally higher IQ, to get good grades and be more successful, are less likely to commit suicide or drop out of school or become pregnant as a teenager, and are more prone to obesity, depression and anxiety as adults than their younger siblings.
I haven’t read this entire thread, but I thought it was:
First child: achiever or total burn out.
Second: initially rebel, but later family glue.
Third: a bit lazy, kind of baby but ultimately easy, cool and relaxed.
This from a third. My siblings hated me until adult. Now they love me.
In my mom‘s family, the first child was the “sun” and then five girls who had no love or attention.
My grandmother just had no interest in taking care of the girls. My mother was the oldest girl and was a foster mother for the younger ones.
My uncle went on to become a professor since he was used to being thought of as the smarted person in the room. (No offense to other professors here.)
The girls all married losers, abusive men, perverts or a combination of the above.
The difference in the cousins between my uncle’s kids and the rest is remarkable. All grad school for the boys, married high achievers for the girls. (Mormons of my generation so it wouldn’t do for the girls to go on to grad school.)
The other cousins have really struggled, with lots of depression, lower rates of college, etc., etc. many have worked hard at ending the cycle of abuse and dysfunction.
For that second line to be true it requires two things: it requires the parents to give a shit about their firstborn (my mother rejected me hardest; rejected the second born as well but didn’t abuse him as much; third one was the charmed one but still, she objectified him as much as us two) and also about the second (not true for one of my cousin-groups; the firstborn was the golden boy who peed cologne no matter what, the other three will never be worthy).
You must be the baby, Gato.
I was slap in the middle of 7. Three older, three younger. I saw it all. My oldest brother was and is Mr. Perfect. My baby sister is a recovering ( poorly) pill head. The others are variations on the theme. I’m the only perfect child. My Daddy told me so;)
I should also add that, as long as I’m paying proper attention, the first pancake I make out of a batch is usually OK too. You don’t just have to learn from your own mistakes.
I’m the fourth of five. My younger sister was the most fucked up person I ever met, mostly because my mother was convinced she could do no wrong. Everything was someone else’s fault (and I was often the “someone else”).
