So much is written about birth order and how it affects our development. The changes, over time, in the families can go unexamined or the genetic predispositions not considered enough.
What has been given a lot of print however is whether one is born first, middle or last.
I often wonder how for example, siblings, close in age, from
the same family can turn out so differently? Or two born
years apart can be so similar or in other situations turn out
like parent and child. The relationships affect many times
how each handles life or if either receives support from
the other to handle life's challenges.
Many parents come to my office with similar questions...how can
the children they gave birth to be so different? One does exactly as
they are asked by parents and teachers....does so well in school and the other, well ... just the opposite! How can it be? Parents will
ask me, desperate it appears for a simple viewpoint from me that they can then easily fix. Or as I experienced this past year, the last parent dies and the middle aged siblings who hardly know each
other as adults, perhaps, are thrown together to deliver what
is left of their family's legacy to their children. The perspective
sure changes from the one held earlier in life.
So much can affect how we develop and how we will act as the adults into which we grow. No simple answers, or easy solutions. Acceptance of others, as they are and how they may view the world around them...may lead to understanding that they are so much alike, but allow for big differences...even in siblings.
As is typical it brings me back to my husband's battle with myeloma...how people affected with this same "hand"deal with
it differently and if birth order affects that as well. I am the baby of the family and while well educated, trained as a counselor, allowed to be athletic before it was popular. Things always came too easily for me or were a given. I was blessed with fair intelligence, overindulgent parents... I was adopted I was the "chosen child"....spoiled rotten, you get the picture! Due to that, I wonder, if I am going to continue to be strong enough, as the storm winds of my husband's terminal disease start to blow at at speed that even the very best of medical science cannot lower for very long. I tend to grade myself on how I am doing as a caretaker ... knowing professionally what a wrong turn on this path we are on that is.
So like everyone else I wonder how positions, birth or otherwise in our family affects how we deal with the ultimate adversities. Or does it matter at all? Research has shown both genetics and environment have such an effect on perspective in daily life, but what about with great challenges? Change comes almost daily with this disease. I have always viewed myself as quite flexible. My favorite type of counseling is working with those in crisis. But instead, I find myself on a long roller coaster ride, sometimes almost daily. I am starting to try to apply the brakes only to find unlike where my big guy and I were years ago on this journey...the feelings of having any control over where we are going have changed so much with our position on this ride.
Jodi H. Underhill MEd. LMHC Licensed Mental Health Counselor #MH9166 Phone: 386.747.7148 Fax: 386.873.4311 http://therapists.psychologytoday.com/rms/61944
Jodi H. Underhill MEd. LMHC Licensed Mental Health Counselor & Certified K-12 Guidance Counselor License #MH9166 Phone: 386.747.7148 Fax: 407.264.8289 www.junderhilltherapy.com
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