EADER’S DIGEST
June• 2019 | 89they can often end up feeling left out.
“The younger one feels like, ‘Hey, how
come my older brother can ride on a
two-wheeler and I can only ride on
a tricycle, what’s wrong with me?’”
says Wallace. “Young children do not
understand the differences between
them and the older kids, and so the
youngest child can feel very inade-
quate and f lawed.” Plus, older sib-
lings often don’t want the younger
siblings around.
“I watched an older sister who was
about three or four setting up a tea set
really carefully, and then along comes
the toddler straight towards the tea
set, and the older one is going, ‘Stop!
Stop!’” says Wallace. “So the youngest
often feels unwanted and neglected.”
They also have less opportunity to get
their parents’ attention. “The youngest
can be cute because of ‘forever being
the baby,’ but manipulative because
the family doesn’t take the youngest
seriously,” says Campbell. To an even
greater extent than middle children,
youngest siblings have to find a way
to blaze their own trail, as evidenced
by a study from the UK that showed
lastborns were most likely to become
entrepreneurs.YOUNGEST CHILDREN
ARE MORE RELAXED
Because parents are inexperienced
with their eldest, they tend to be up-
tight with them, a trait that can rub
off onto the child. But by the time
they get to their youngest, parents
know what they are doing, so that
child “benefits because parents are
calmer – they know they raised a
three year old who they didn’t kill,”
says Wallace. “The parents feel more
relaxed and easygoing, and so the
youngest tends to be more relaxed.”
Plus, because the parents’ attention
is divided, the youngest child tends
to get away with more. “The rules
for the second child are much moreR