Chacos: Middle child syndrome

My son has “middle child syndrome” despite my exhaustive effort to avoid such a diagnosis. Over the years, I’ve been careful to give my children equally-sized birthday presents and let all three get their favorite treats at the movie theater because they compare these types of things. My husband and I dutifully attended all their extracurricular activities and own more youth team sweatshirts than a Chinese e-commerce company. I never bought into the idea that birth order affects psychological outcomes and personality traits, yet my middle child overwhelmingly presents all of the symptoms of the syndrome. Now that he’s an adult, the label fits him perfectly.

I imagine middle children grow up feeling like they are being overlooked or neglected, like the middle piece of cake, the middle of a story, or the middle seat in the car. The syndrome says that middle children often feel less special than their siblings and don’t receive the same level of praise, perhaps similar to supervisors in middle management or the ones with the middle job on an assembly line. In my observation, no one ever praises the monkey in the middle in the childhood game unless they learn to become resourceful, creative, and adaptable along the way. I think middle children grow up having to navigate pretty tough waters, especially if he comes from a bustling, high-needs household, like ours.

When my middle kid was young, he was the biggest sore loser at all the family games we ever played. He’d cry and lash out during a game of pure luck like Bingo and melt down if he couldn’t put the last piece into the family puzzle. He would sabotage a game of chess with his sister because she was more patient at its nuances and he would routinely put his younger brother in a headlock when he was losing a hand at the card game Uno. For our collective mental and physical health, our middle child’s cutthroat ways needed a different outlet until he could work through some of his big feelings. We put the board games away for a while and signed him up for other things instead.

In outdoor pursuits, we found out our middle child was ambitious, competitive, a dedicated team player, and extremely accident prone. As middle children often do, he wanted to command our attention in unique ways. As a family, we toured many of Colorado’s emergency rooms when he played football and lacrosse. In soccer, our middle protected his teammates like a bouncer at an exclusive nightclub and received endless yellow cards for being too aggressive. Off the field, our middle child appeared to associate being clumsy with being rebellious. He could sled his way off the edge of a hill, through the snow, around a turn, and head on toward another concussion and bloody nose. Our middle child graciously helped us meet our family insurance max-out-of-pocket needs for eight years counting.

When our middle son was little, he displayed a complete disregard for time and space. He’d wake well before five o’clock in the morning and bounce out of bed ready for the day ahead. On the occasions we didn’t get up to supervise our enthusiastic child, we could hear him outside acting like a stuntman in an action flick. I would look for him up a tree or on the roof wishing I invested in a few extra mattresses to keep on the side of the house in case of an emergency. If not up high, he’d be on his bicycle, a unicycle, or on his scooter launching himself over a homemade wooden jump he crafted with scraps and screws found on the garage floor. I spent years exhausted before the sun came up and thankful we were all up-to-date on our tetanus shots.

As our middle child got older, he became more affable and confident. He would no longer wake us up early in the morning because he found a friend in his grandfather who also liked pre-sunrise breakfasts and morning dips in the river. He began to develop strong connections with similarly-wired buddies who were also looking for creative adventures that fed their need for independence and self-reliance. We’d learn to look for the sticky note left on the counter with coordinates letting us know where to find our middle child and the time to expect him home. I was beginning to see “middle child syndrome” as something pretty special.

When I needed help smoothing over a delicate family situation recently, I had to find an individual who wouldn’t break under pressure. I needed someone willing to see all sides of the situation and one whom I could trust. Most importantly, I needed someone willing to compromise his own winter break plans without hesitation to hop on a ten-hour plane ride for his family.

My first choice agreed to the mission and he nailed it. I’ve come to see that a well-written story has a great beginning, a robust middle, and a satisfying ending. We should think of middle children more like the middle of an Oreo cookie, the middle of a Boston Crème donut, and the top center of the bell curve. That’s where we can find the sweet stuff often overlooked at first glance. 

Andrea Chacos lives in Carbondale, balancing work and happily raising three children with her husband. She strives to dodge curveballs life likes to throw with a bit of passion, humor and some flair.