Middle child syndrome

Middle child syndrome is a coomon symptom felt by a child that is born in between two or more siblings. Common feelings such as feeling neglected, unloved, left out, easily forgotten and unfair treatment are some common sentiment felt by this child. I am a middle child in my family; born in between an elder sister by a year and a younger brother of 5 years. So you can see, I've always felt neglected by the fact that I wasn'st special enough as compared to my eldest smart sister (now a proud MD in a local hospital) and a younger brother which happened to be the only son that my father long to have. So through out my teenage life, I was deviant, most of the time against my parents' approval and mostly got my dad's attention for being the difficult one!

This is not about me, but I started to identify the same reactions & response I get from my only 6 years old daughter. She constantly envy her elder brother if I pay slightly more attention to him and certainly become agitated if I occupied my time with her little brother. She constantly repeat the same thing over & over again..of how much I don't care about her, I love the brothers more than I love her...I spend more time with her baby brother...I am nice to the elder brother..the whinning never stops when ever she felt...neglected.

Recognizing these symptoms, I have tried my very best to overcome this. I constantly give her the assurance that the feelings she has, was merely an outburst of bias feelings and it is a way of her to "get even" to me by saying things that would hurt me. I told her I love her and how special she is to me, since she's the ONLY girl I have. That we would be the best of friend when she's all grown up since by then we could share a lot of things and do a lot of things together. I told her this all the time. Sometime I get frustrated with the constant accusation and I cannot help feeling annoyed by her silly tantrum. Few times I lost my composure and I end up walking away feeling defeated. I know my behaviour would not make her feelings any better...to the very least I do recognize her insecurity and I realized that I need to acknowledge it.
So after a while, after I have cooled off, I would walk to her again...while she whimpering at a corner feeling all drain with sadness and unloved. I would sat across her, and put my hands onto hers; look into her eyes.."I am sorry you feel this way. I am truly sorry that what ever I say or do, I couldn't make you feel otherwise. I know you are feeling left out. But there is no way I feel less love for you despite of me spending my time with your brothers. I never in any way ever said I dont' love you or I never care about you at all..and you know that." By then she starts to nod and say how sorry she was for being difficult. She knows by then that what ever the feelings she had was not true...By then I realized that perhaps it's not the reassurance that she need but simply a feeling that I did not give up on her.

We hug and we kiss and we hold hands while walking to the kitchen to get ourselves a bowl of ice-cream. So today, I won the battle...and I know that it will not be our last fight. There will be more to come..sigh. But at least for now after a bowl of ice-cream, I'm just glad she is smiling again. Well at least for now..