If you were the quieter child in the family....

[Mallowmarshmallow]

If you were the quieter child with a rather more challenging sibling what do you wish your parents had done differently/better/more/less of...?
Trying to work out how to do my best for my far quieter who struggles to express his emotions....

I don't feel comfortable with how my parents compared us; I don't like my praise at their expense. It didnt make them behave better.

My parents were also critical of me being too quiet, I was often scolded for being antisocial.

I often scold one child for how he dominates other DC, with specifics about what the older one is doing that is not nice. Am trying to give the quiet DC good (age appropriate) understanding of what the noisy one does that is objectionable & let quiet one know I will defend him if he complains or protests.

I reality, the quiet one holds the cards. He could employ "I refuse to play with you!" strategy to quickly gain advantage over the noisy needy one. Younger one doesn't think in terms of being manipulative, though, so never plays his trump card.

I was early teens when my elder sister went off the tracks majorly. Best thing my parents did was acknowledge we were very different but allowed me also to test my own waters.

They never gave up on dsis but accepted it which meant it didn't rule our family and we didn't have to pretend. My sister was acting like an arsehole and while we still loved her we were able to verbalize our disappointment.

I've never said this to my dsis but her troubles really shaped me and made me go on and be the best I could because I wanted to get out of our small town and away from her rep.

Well the squeaky wheel gets the grease so I wish they had paid attention to me rather than always assuming I would be 'fine' with whatever else was going on.

1. Spend more one on one time with me so I could express myself/ be heard.

2. Not allow the sibling to have their own way all the time just because they would kick up more fuss.

3. Encouragement to socialise more in groups or do drama something like that to help me gain more confidence/be able to assert myself.

I was going to add one more point along the lines of letting the child know that they're loved and that even though sometimes the sibling might demand more of your attention that you will always make time to listen to them. I hope that doesn't sound trite and the very fact that you're asking this question makes me think you're a lovely mum and probably already doing that!

I wish that they had realised that just because I didn't look excited and happy didn't mean I wasn't. I just didn't show it in the same way as my extrovert brother.

I wish they'd realized why I was so quiet and paid more attention to my older sisters domineering behavior and the way she belittled me. The quiet sibling might be quiet because a fellow sibling has made them believe that they are worthless or merely a punchbag for said siblings negative emotions