The Exhausted Dad: Middle child battle for supremacy
With three kids, everybody has a classic role: Oldest, middle, youngest. It all makes sense!
Had my wife and I stopped at three, it might’ve been us with the multi-million-dollar TikTok channel instead of that TJ Therrien fella (although give that dude credit for being a Minnesota Twins fan).
With four kids, the power balance in our house remains forever unsettled. My oldest behaves like the responsible elder and the youngest behaves like the baby-who-can-do-no-wrong. The two middle kids play different roles at different times, but one thing is constant: The two of them fight with each other constantly.
They don’t fight for the attention of their parents. Believe me, we give them plenty. Instead, they exchange a constant barrage of verbal jabs about minor infractions.
A common exchange during meals:
Son: Stop making mean faces at me!
Daughter: I’m NOT making mean faces! I’m not even looking at you!
Son: Yes, you looked at me and you were about to roll your eyes if I didn’t tell you to stop!
Daughter: I looked at you because you were looking at me!
Son: Stop it!
Daughter: YOU stop it!
That’s how it always starts. Then, as Dr. Ian Malcolm explains, there’s running and screaming.*
The minor infractions happen in every house with kids of similar ages, I’d imagine. What extends the rifts in our family is each child’s insistence on helping the other understand why they were upset in the first place. The “why” is more important than the original offense. Like any human, they want to feel heard and seen. They want the other person to understand how their actions affected them.
It’s all very emotionally intelligent! But, boy, it makes what began as a small conflict stretch into an hourlong healing process. Oh, and I forgot to mention the at least 10-minute cooling-off period each child needs before they can start talking about the fight without screaming at ME about it. Don’t involve me! Me and the youngest child were way over here, playing video games and not bothering anybody!
The “I feel” statements are important, to be sure. I just wish we could skip all the anger and yelling and jump to the point. I wish they could stop fighting with each other and realize a Middle Child Alliance could reign over the entire house, and we’d all be powerless to stop it.
Alas, one of them wants to play “Minecraft” on the living room television, and the other wants to watch gymnastics videos. And then someone makes a “mean face” and we’re off to the races again. For other families with multiple middle children, I recommend noise-cancelling headphones.
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Tyler Wilson is a freelance writer, full-time student and parent to four kids, ages 7-13. He is tired. He can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com
*Not everything I write requires a reference to “Jurassic Park.” Case in point, this line of dialogue comes from the 1997 sequel, “The Lost World: Jurassic Park.”
