Only Child – Part One

How do you feel about your place (birth order) in your family? If you have kids, how does your own family planning reflect your upbringing?

I didn’t really like being an only child. I wanted a brother or sister. Actually I wanted a twin, but I knew this was sort of impossible. All of my friends had brothers and sisters, until I met my other only child friend in grade 5. In high school, boy crazy, I really wanted an older brother so I could flirt with his friends. My friend had an older brother and his friends were dreamy.

Well, they were stoners with mullets and jean jackets with corduroy collars, but at the time. You know.

I wanted a sibling, too, because I wanted someone to take the focus off me. My parents were always watching me. Telling me things. Making sure I was behaving myself. I accepted this to a point – it was the only way to grow up that I knew about, except from reading books and watching my friends with their siblings and parents.

I was like a little adult. I listened carefully when people talked, I waited until cookies were offered. When we went to parties, I would stay in the living room with the grown-ups until someone told me to go play in the rec room with the other kids. I did the right thing, almost all the time, and I learned to lie really well about those other times. *

When I got older, I would argue with my father but I knew he would always win. He was always right. He had the last word, on everything, no matter how insignificant. It was that control that I bucked against in my teens. It was his unflinching eye always staring at me that began to look like it was daring me, after a while. It was my birthright to put my foot down and say no, no one controls me, I am my own.

It is how they raised me; to think for myself, to be an individual, though it didn’t feel like a positive thing at the time and I’m sure “leave home at 19” wasn’t what they were expecting me to take from the life lessons they’d imparted.

Consider; my dad left his mother and sisters and moved across the ocean alone when he was in his 20s. My mom left her large family and moved across the country to start a life of her own in a city where she knew no one. It wasn’t as though I didn’t come by my rebelliousness honestly.

It is interesting to me now, to imagine what it would have been like to have a younger sibling. (I mean, obviously I can’t imagine having an older one – I’m clearly the oldest!) I don’t think my parents would have been able to control two kids in the same way they did me. They would have had to adapt their strategy. As a person who both inherited and learned some control issues, I can tell you that with one kid, I kind of had it figured out. Two adults, one small child. Golden. I mean, not all peaches and cream, but still. Raising two children has been the nail in control’s coffin. Controlling everyone, all the time, is an illusion. And it is also, unless you are far more dedicated to it than I am, an impossible way to raise children and build a family.

And for that, I am glad that I have two kids. They have forced me to figure out other ways than my dad’s ways. They teach me daily that a person can not – and should not – control another human being. Watching them figure out how to push each other’s buttons, freak out, apologize, and move on to laughter in the space of five minutes is awe-inspiring.

So incredibly loud. But awe-inspiring.

And now I am at the end of my allotted time and I didn’t get a chance to talk about what rocks about being an only child. I will have to do that tomorrow.

* For those of you who have/want only one child, I wish to clarify here that I do not think ALL only children are like this, or that YOUR only child will be like this..I had the parents I had and you are the parents you are and I am a special snowflake and etc.