http://dft.ba/-middlechildsyndrome
One topic about which I really wanted to talk did not talk much about was the birth order ideas that the article brought up. Something that I personally have always heard about and wondered about the validity of was the idea of the "middle child syndrome." The article did not delve into this at all. I could not find any concrete data about the validity. I did, however, find an interesting blog talking about way to prevent one's children from suffering from such a syndrome. What do you think about the validity of "middle child syndrome?" What do you think of the solutions that the writer of the article suggests?
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0816/is_7-8_25/ai_n42089803/
ReplyDeleteAmanda, I don't support middle child syndrome. I believe that middle children are just as capable as only, youngest, or oldest children.
The above article discusses the performance of children in small and large families on IQ tests. The article suggests that "first-time parents tend to be quite diligent when it comes to monitoring language development and are extremely conscientious about correcting mistakes their only child or first-born child may make." Specifically, the article argues that as families have more children, the amount of time spent on each individual decreases, thus causing a drop in the parent's monitoring of each child's s language development. Since language skills are regarded as a crucial part of performing well on IQ tests, any child after the first is ultimately set up to register a lower IQ score. Such performance leads to the notion that "middle child syndrome" does not exist, but that parents have difficulty in raising larger amounts of children. After reading this article, I believe that there is a sense of "first child syndrome," and that first time parents raise their first born in a different manner than their subsequent children.
Dear Amanda,
ReplyDeleteBased on the article you gave us, it seems the only scientific proof given was the one objective story. And instead of a list of facts, there was a list of parent to-dos that again had no scientific backing. The only things that came up in my searching for this supposed syndrome were child abuse syndrome and sudden infant death syndrome. Personally, I don't think there is any basis to it.
I also do not think there is any scientific basis behind 'middle child syndrome.' I was just curious what others thought.
ReplyDelete