Blog - Parenting & Family

Only children can't share. First-borns are bossy. And the youngest child gets away with murder. We all know the stereotypes connecting personality with birth order, and no matter where you sit in your family tree, you likely have some assumptions about how your position in your family helped to shape your personality. 

Do I give my baby a pacifier or let her cry herself to sleep? Should I force the defiant toddler into a coat or let him feel the pain? Shall I let my child make his own decisions or enforce the rules with an iron fist?

“Can you imagine what this will be like when they’re older?”

I heard it in my voice before I had a minute to say more. There we were, my husband and I, watching our kids play, carefree, on our last night of vacation and I was already living in the future. I was dreaming of something better than this, whatever that might be. We had planned and dreamt of this trip, our first time introducing our children to the beach, and still I was struggling to stay there, in the moment, with the people I loved the most.

The signs are as clear as the nose on your face: as a toddler, your daughter had extreme stranger anxiety and a great deal of trouble warming up to new people (even her grandparents); as a preschooler, your son came home from daycare and immediately escaped to the privacy of his room; as a teenager, your child could speak beautifully in front of the whole class but avoided the after-school social because she said she couldn't deal with large groups of people. Congratulations! You're raising an introvert. How on earth are you going to cope?