For the most part, I loved growing up as a second child. Sure, I din’t get to play sports or join the band (because, “we tried that with your sister, and it didn’t work out,”), but, in general, the advantages far outweighed the disadvantages. For instance, I didn’t have a curfew (because, “we tried that with your sister, and it didn’t work out,”). With my kids, however, I think things might be turning out differently.
Half of the fun of being the second (or third, fourth or even fifth) child is the anonymity—you get away with so much more because your parents tend to forget you’re there. Not literally, of course—the dirty towels and ever decreasing supply of frozen pizzas make sure of that—but quite often figuratively. While the first child is busy getting chewed out for not calling when they stayed after school late to work on their science project, the second child is sneaking in the back door after spending a week on the road touring with Rancid.
Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but the point is the second child tends to get away with a lot more than the first child. A lot more. And not just because dealing with a strong-willed first born tends to wear parents out (although there is that, too). No, the reason seconds get away with so much more is that they have learned the subtle art of lying by omission. And how did they learn this? By watching their older siblings try it the other way—and fail.
A first born child will argue about their curfew. Bitterly. Passionately. Endlessly. They will produce graphs, and statistics, and testimonials, all designed to get you to change your mind and allow for just one more measly hour. A second child won’t ever need to do this, because a second child will avoid the problem entirely by simply neglecting to tell you they were going out in the first place.
It is amazing to me that so many firstborn children end up going into politics, because they tend to be the worst at lying and sneaking around. I’m not saying they don’t try their best—they do—it’s just that they’re not very good at it. Or at least not as good as their younger siblings.
I think it probably has something to do with the way different children tend to regard conflict—or, more importantly, the way the oldest child tends to relish it. I know that when it comes to my own children, there are times that I am convinced my oldest, Clementine, has changed her beliefs just to have something we can disagree about.
Clyde, on the other hand, is not a fan of disagreement. In typical second child fashion, he tends to avoid conflict by simply avoiding the person he has a conflict with—usually me. Which, as a second child, should work out for him. Unfortunately, however, Clyde failed to get the memo about second children being somewhat invisible—if Clyde is in the house, you know it. And yet, he still gets away with more than his sister ever did, because he overcompensates for his lack of invisibility by relying on another one of those traits that is more common in second children: charm. (Some would argue that charm is just a side effect of being a better liar, and they wouldn’t be wrong about that. Being charmed is another another way of being lied to—one so enjoyable that we don’t really mind it.)
It will be interesting to see what happens to Clyde’s second child traits in the next few months, when his sister leaves the state for college and he inherits the tile (Rank? Throne? Millstone around the neck?) of being “first born.” Early reports suggest that he is going to take over both roles, which would make him aggressively sneaky.
Save me.