Second Child Syndrome
I am having serious mommy guilt lately! I look at my son and I realize I am inflicting the second child syndrome on him and I fully realize that I (and my husband) are the cause of this. What is this ‘second child syndrome’ I talk about?! It’s the empty photo album, half written baby journal, video lacking syndrome… this is a problem that I’d say 90% (if not more) of second children face. My husband and I are definitely guilty of this. Two things happened recently that really brought this issue to light. The first one was when my daughter found her baby book and then wanted to see her brothers’. She had a beautiful, full photo album. My son, well… he had photos on my computer *blush*. I can’t believe that I had to sit down and turn on my computer just to pull up some pictures. That is wrong! The second episode that happened that slapped me in the face was a few emails I received from people who had seen my daughter grow up on You Tube asking about my son’s signing progress. Then I realized that I had taken so many videos of my daughter and her signing skills but not many of my son. He is a great little signer and I should have the camera on him as much as I did my first child. Life is just busy. It’s not that we don’t love our second child as much or are as equally fascinated with this little kiddo… no. That’s not the issue. The issue is time! Balancing family life is hard. We all do it but we also all know our second child doesn’t have as many pictures as our first.
This post is for my second child. My beautiful baby boy who is just as good a little signer as my daughter was at his age. Here is my little munchkin signing!
If you have any signing questions don’t hesitate to contact me. I am happy to answer your questions!
Laura Berg
Founder & President
My Smart Hands, ‘educating young minds’
www.mysmarthands.com
I am totally guilty of the second child syndrome. But multiply that. I am having baby #5 soon and never even got around to putting anything in the baby book for baby #3 or 4. ::guilt:: I do have special boxes that I put mementos in for the day I am not busy raising kids to be able to look back on these memories and put them in a special book. For the special milestones I use a wall calendar and write on it and save it to my main box of family memories. At least I have something written down that I can later add to the baby books. When i finally get around to it.
Wow, 5 kiddos! I commending you for keeping anything organized 🙂
That is a great idea. We’ve been putting special memories and keepsakes into boxes for our kids. It will be fun to pull them out and look at them when they are adults. I just wish I had written more little memories for my son when he was a baby. I think maybe during the holidays this year I will make a point to jot down some special memories for him 🙂
We’re finding the same thing with our 3-month-old not getting the same devoted attention that our now 3-year-old did. Adding a second child had just as much an impact on our lives as having the first one did — there’s no down time! Our first was getting stories and songs in utero — #2 not so much. I’m hoping that the trade-off is that she’ll get lots of attention and instruction from her older sister.
This is true, the second one at least has an older sibling to entertain them. And most of the time they do a good job entertaining and way better than we could do! It is definitely a different experience. And I totally agree with you about the second child having as much (if not more actually) of an impact on our lives! 🙂
I’m guilty of “Second Child Syndrome” BUT I’m only have one child. 🙁 Yup thats right – Baby book purchased not filled out, photos taken not printed (well minus a few on the fridge)… I try to not have too much mommy guilt but telling myself that at least things will be even for whenever we decided to have baby number 2. However, I’m worried if its this bad to start what will it be like when “I’m too busy to do things”???
That is too funny! I love it 🙂