Naturally, as the first born in my family, I was the designated guinea pig child. Every rule that was set in place was a result of my parent’s mostly irrational fears and worries about being new parents. Of course, many of their rules and regulations made sense and were set in motion only to further better me as a human being, but as far as parents go, mine were the epitome of strict. So finally, when my brother and sisters came along I was overjoyed by the idea that I would no longer be the only child who was succumbed to obey the rules created by the Dictatorship my parents put in place. Once my siblings came along, a few things did change in ways I had not originally expected. I went from being the guinea pig child to the older sibling; a low level promotion with a hefty job description.
Depending on the age gap, your siblings are more like your own children : In my family there’s a pretty wide age gap between me and my siblings; I was seven when my sister was born, nine when my next sister was born and 12 when my brother was born. Since their arrival into this world, I became sort of a mini-mom, which leads us to the non-glamourous part about being the oldest: diapers, lots and lots of dirty, runny diapers. As a mini-mom my first job was to change diapers and I won’t even begin to try to explain how awful those experiences were, I’ll spare you all from the gruesome and traumatizing details. Never in my life have I ever seen a small child go through so many changes of clothes due to unexpected leakages of a diaper. No thanks, I’m quite content that that part of my life is long over with…
While my mom was busy cooking dinner, I would be in charge of giving the kids a bath. This activity was by far much more enjoyable than changing diapers. The only messy part that came from giving the babies a bath was the heaps of water that would be splashed at me and the copious amount of bubbles used. While their little fingers would begin to prune from the water, I would use the shampoo to style their hair in weird mohawks and up do’s; I’m not sure who had more fun, me or them.
When I wasn’t changing diapers, giving baths, or putting them down for naps, I was the in-house entertainer. I felt like I was the court jester who was hired by the King and Queen to keep the ill-tempered Princess entertained and content and far away from her next emotional rampage. I sang and danced to all the Wiggles and Sesame Street songs known to man-kind just to keep them from screaming bloody murder when my mom or dad had to put them down.
They take your belongings without asking: As they get older, they become less entertained with you and more entertained with the things you own. Nothing aggravated me more than when I would come home from school and see my sister wearing one of my shirts or sweaters. She has an entire closet filled with clothes, why must she take mine? I should be grateful we weren’t the same shoe size because that would have been the next thing she would have claimed as her own. After my clothes, she started to take my make-up and my hair products, using them all up and leaving me with nothing. When I would freak-out on her because of this, do you think she showed the slightest bit of remorse? Nope, nada, zilch. I believe that she has it set in her mind that everything that is mine is hers as well. My simple request was that she asks me first before she uses my things, but apparently that concept is too challenging for her to grasp. Now, every night I come home from work I find her using my extremely important and highly expensive laptop and every night it’s a fight about how she shouldn’t be using my things without first asking me. *Insert eye-roll here*. Anyone with a younger sibling knows the fight over their belongings has proven to be an endless battle; things are always taken, never put back in their rightful place and sometimes returned in a lesser condition than it was originally.
You become a personal taxi service: From the moment I received my license, I was a personal taxi service; all I was missing was the yellow car and meter. When my parents were busy with work, I would spend my spare moments going food shopping, picking up the kids from school and then dropping them off at volleyball, soccer, basketball or baseball practice. Every time my siblings wanted ice cream for desert, it was my job to take them there. The perk behind this job was sometimes my parents would allow me to drive their vehicle, saving me from depleting my own gas.
When you are the oldest you start to notice that the rules that were once implemented for you, no longer applied to your younger siblings. So that PG-13 movie you were never allowed to watch in middle school was perfectly fine for your younger brother and sister to watch (seriously?). You begin to notice that your parents say ‘yes’ to them more often than they ever did with you. And remember those endless times when your phone would get taken away from you as a form of punishment because you either had an attitude or looked at them funny? Well, those punishments are now simple and most of the time empty threats made by your parents to your siblings. I recall a time when I went a month without my phone; I’m almost positive my sister has only been separated from it for a day or two at the most. It’s all smooth sailing from here for double standards and unfair punishments.
Being the oldest child can be quite the un-glamourous role, but with it comes a sense of appreciation and maturity. I realized that I was a great help to my parents when they needed me most and their gratefulness never went unnoticed. I learned that by being the oldest, you are setting the trend for your siblings to follow. Though they may drive you up a wall with their incessant attitudes filled with whining and eye-rolls, they look up to you as role model. It’s you that sets that bar for them and they will spend their entire life making giant leaps to reach it.
