sibs.

so i went to this workshop on families today. it was about sibling order and family dynamics. it was good, but just a taste of things. i was thinking during the presentation and stuff that i would love to just talk to someone about my family. someone who was really interested--you know not someone who was barely listening or only enduring. i would love to just talk talk talk talk and delve into our family. i don't know of anyone who's interested. everyone is interested in their own families. maybe i should write a book. i am so into families. i'm so interested in how they work and of all the different dynamics of families and how you take your families into your ways of being with other people, into relationships and your work. i would love to study, talk, discuss, eat, drink, sleep families. i can't wait to study them more.

and our family is hard to put into a mold and there are so many more dynamics in a large family like us, analyzing it would have to be done more on an individual basis, but still there were things i recognized about us in what she said. here are few tidbits:

she said oldest are often really hard workers and high achievers. hello andrea. she said they often have a harder time goofing around and being silly and are often more serious. i don't see that in andrea as much as doug. doug has a sense of humour, but i've often seen him try to quell silly goings on. oldest are also nurturers and protective. definitely andrea.

middle children often feel invisible. yes i've felt this way. especially as a teenager--nobody knows what's going on with me and nobody cares. middle children are very concerned with what is fair. katie comes to mind here with her "you got this when you were this age and i got this.." in depth analysis, but i think all of us middle children have aspects of this, like how it still rankles with me to this day how when i got to the houseboat, there was no spot for me, no bed, no pull out, but spots for everyone else, even grandchildren (this also ties in with being invisible). middle children in large families turn out to be good mediators and often choose jobs to help heal or save some part of society. oh! and since we don't have a spot in the family, ie. special spot of being oldest or special spot of being youngest, we go outside the family to the community or to peers to find some way of finding ourselves. i totally did this with my friends from grades 6-10. they were so important to me and i wanted to spend all of my time with them and none at home. mom and i would get into fights about it. also we waffle a lot and are indecisive--go back and forth to please everyone--we try to make everyone happy and we're flexible--adapters.

it's funny because at the start we were put into our sibling order groups and had to decide the perfect vacation--where, how we'd get there, what we'd pack and what we'd do. then we reported to the group. our group was the only one that everyone said where they'd like to go and then we picked the place that would be the best fit for everyone. all the other groups just agreed on a place.

youngest can be the ones that have the easiest time having fun and goofing off. they can also see themselves as insignificant and that people don't take them seriously--which they hate. they often ask for a lot of advice and opinions and then argue against it. they often expect help without asking for it, and can be selective hearers--the hearing thing totally reminded me of amy. i remember so many times when we'd be speaking to her and she wouldn't respond and then later she was all 'i didn't hear you'. also she said that rules don't mean as much to the youngest because they have been raised more leniently.

they also talked about twins and about how especially identical twins often occupy a single spot.

i know that we used to always say that katie and i were raised as twins and that we were the preliminary twins etc, but interestingly i saw a lot of katie and i in the discussion of the 2 siblings--an older younger pairing. like how the one went a totally different direction than the other and i can see that in us. the classic "i want the biggest one, i want the littlest one" story about katie and i that katie doesn't like can be seen in a different way. it's not that she was greedy and i was unselfish at all. it was she went one way and so i went the other way. i was always trying to find ways to be different, especially during grades five and six, as i remember. that's why i was maybelline and she was cover girl. she was seen as a competitive sports player, i did writing, etc. anyways, it's interesting to me.

other interesting tidbits are that parents of a certain birth order have an akinship--understanding with their children of the same birth order.

someone in the group brought up what happens when an oldest sibling dies, do other siblings step up to the role of oldest. and we talked about how that role can never be taken exactly but how different siblings can take on different roles etc... it made me think of our family and how we didn't have andrea for so many years and how, in a way i grieved for her and her missing spot. maybe that's why doug had that oldest characteristic of no silliness. maybe that's why i felt such a nurturing responsibility to the younger siblings. i don't know. i just know that part of having her back in my life is remembering, oh yah, that's what it was like to have an oldest sibling--the bossiness, yes, but also the leadership and the nurturing. i look at what kind of older sister i've tried to be and a lot of it has gone back to what kind of older sister i had. (yes katie was my older sister but we were more contemporaries and best friends). she sang me songs and told me stories and taught me fun songs and took me on drives and did my hair (ok i never took that on, but katie did), and spent time with me talking to me, going for walks, writing me letters, inviting me to her house to do fun things perpetually. i would have to say it really influenced me. that's why on the sister's bike hike katie and i wanted andrea to sing the old songs to us that night in the tent and tell the stories. andrea, i'm really glad you're back in my life.

we also learned that rebellion in the family is often not against the parents but against the authority/power position of the oldest child. interesting.

anyways i'm sure i've blah blah blahed about this more than enough for all of you. my head was so full of ideas and thoughts after tonight that i had to verbalize....in a non verbal typing kind of way... :)

oh just one more thing! we were talking about how people in the family can join together and gang up on other people. their example was of youngers to challenge the oldest, but a guy wanted to know more about that and who usually joined with who etc and i shared that in our family the ganging up groups are very fluid, that you join with people against one person and then later you can join with that person against someone else--whatever it takes to win, i said--a very clarke attitude. and so the facilitator asked more about our family and when i told her and my place, she said "you must be very good at conflict resolution." "yes," i said "and very good at starting things." then the two people from my work totally started laughing. i'm always stirring the pot at work. it's just fun. i like to cause some mischief. not serious stuff, but some fun, you know. i know you guys know. and the facilitator who came from a family of 6 said that in her family stuff was always going on, and so you just get used to it etc and i was all ya..

ok, i really am done.