AIBU to ask whether you give your second child things of their own`

[Kneehigim]

Don't ask the train of thought that led me to this because it's a long wandering path starting with watching MJ and the Jackson 5 perform I'll be there.
They were all so beautifully turned out, could you ever have known what life they lived.

Anyway, the mind wandered a bit, and I had one toy that was purely mine (I had an older brother). And I loved it. But it got me to realise that any toy I had as a kid was never mine, it was always my brother's or to share

So, do you ensure your second and subsequent children have things that are purely theirs?

I think the eldest gets an unfair advantage in life sometimes.

Hit back, get revenge, hide your favourite toys, burn his with a magnifying glass 🤷🏼‍♀️ that's what most siblings do/did.

Don't you think you need to move past it at some point? It was what, almost 50yrs ago?

God I've moved past it. I was just ruminating.

op, perfectly reasonable to be jealous, sad and resentful. Being bullied by a sibling and for your parents to do nothing about it is absolutely horrendous.

I didn't say that I had an overwhelming urge to stab my brother in the neck with a knife in the middle of the night or anything.

I just asked whether other parents recognise that second children and subsequent children need things of their own.

I have 4 children, 3 of whom (in a row) are boys. All three get their own things, always. We do pass clothes down but they also get new bits. I’m very lucky my kids aren’t particularly fussy with brand/designer names etc so they truly don’t care.

They have very different interests though, so they have different possessions.

I don't think it was anything that was consciously done though. I think looking at it through a child's lense, you can see how it might be construed.

OP - sorry to hear about your childhood. It wasn't normal

I'm a second child, and I occasionally post on threads and get shouted down about PFB and SNSPB (Second Not So Precious Born) treatment. I presume by first borns, or by pp who have multiple children and feel a bit guilty...

For example, the current thread about a pregnant mother not wanting to lend a friend a car seat because it was being saved for her PFB - what about the second child? Do they not deserve the pristine seat?

Stokki prams (those high up ones so you can speak to your baby and they can see lots of the world around them) - loads of PFB have them, but come the second, they are relegated to a double buggy or (even worse) those in-line tandems where the baby is practically on the ground in a hang down cot thing. Do second children not deserve the eye to eye contact with their parents too?

Etc etc etc etc

Clothes hand me downs were never an issue, as we'd often get passed on fancy labelled gear that we would never have been bought. It was just the toys thing really, and I suppose my big brother having a monopoly on things. It's no biggy.

Yes, I guess you do everything so right with the first, the second is almost an afterthought and you're more relaxed in the first place and more stressed out in the second place.
It would have been my mother who did the rearing. I know she didn't have it easy, she had 1 miscarriage, then my brother, another mc, then me, then 7 mc's, then my sister, then one more mc.
She was also very isolated and young. She came from a family of 4 siblings and they wouldn't have had much, so I suppose it never occurred to her that I might have felt the way I felt. Plus she had a lot of stress to deal with over the years too, so was less than an exemplary parent.

I didn't even buy new for my first child. She was born after my brother and sister had girls and she had their hand me downs. She occasionally gets new clothes but tbh she really doesn't care. She does get her own toys though. Now my second on the other hand did get new clothes, but that's because he was a boy and no one in my family had had a boy yet, but his clothes were passed on to someone else who had a boy after

I would agree in that my older brother was favoured for gifts especially those that encouraged his interests. Sibling rivalry is fairly common in families.

there is 6 years between mine so never in the same age bracket to share and i knew i wasn't keeping old toys for no2 as it would be years before he was the same age and by then there was either a new toy craze or toys have evolved so no 2 always had everything new and as i waited 4 years to have him(4 years of fertility treatment and fortnightly scans)anything needed fpr babies was brand new

no2 does have a cousin 4 month older than him but as no2 was a big baby(27 inches 8lb10) he was bigger than a 4 month old at birth and put on 3-4 pounds per week so was always way bigger than his cousin

there's 7 years between me and my only sibling(sister)and she never had anything of mine 2nd hand and this was the 80s when my parents were poor,they might have been market stuff but still new

I have 2 13 months apart, so same sex and same season. I did pass some stuff down when they were small but when they got to school age I avoided it so they could have their own style and also by that point they wore more or less the same size anyway. Again, baby toys were recycled but they had their own soft toys and their own birthday and christmas things. They shared a games console until they were old enough to have there own PCs etc.

I'm youngest of 7, some hand downs and some stuff of my own. Eldest brother probably didn't have new everything either as things were passed from neighbours/relatives. My eldest didn't have everything new either as we got some stuff from their cousin.

I'm a second child. We shared and I didn't mind. But my big sister wasn't nasty like your brother - maybe that is your real problem, not the ownership issue? My sis wouldn't have kept toys away from me out of spite, only if she actually wanted to use them. We bickered sometimes, but I don't think she got her way any more often than I did.

My younger child doesn't have many things that are specifically hers, but there is a seven year gap between them, so her big sister isn't too interested in most of those things anymore. I think too that my eldest is quite good at seeing which side her bread is buttered on. She knows that if she was very possessive of the things which have been handed down to her little sister, I would perceive that she (eldest) doesn't need new stuff because she is still wanting her old stuff. In this case I would buy things for the younger one instead, so the youngest could have something to play with. But that doesn't happen: the eldest is very generous and reasonable, gives things to her little sister (sometimes even things which she herself still sort-of uses, but which her little sis would appreciate even more), so the eldest does get new stuff.

I was second born, but my older sibling was over a decade older than me so very little was passed down to me.

I have three children. The Lego collection started with the eldest and is now mostly in the grubby clutches of the youngest. They all play with it still. Individual sets are given as gifts and only go into the communal box when the owner is thoroughly fed up of it/has lost a third of the pieces.

I can’t afford to buy big ticket games console type gifts in threes, so they share a switch, but have their own preloved older gen consoles each (a couple of 360s, a WiiU, some ds handhelds between the three of them). Having said that, my eldest is about to hit a milestone birthday and is getting a PS4, as family have chipped in. That will not be a sharing gift.

My middle child also likes to liberate old tee shirts from the older one, but they do all get new clothes of their own. They’re just all into recycling clothes - especially the eldest who is a charity shop fiend of the highest order.

They obviously share books, but usually only after the person who acquired it has read it.

They don’t share teddies often, though sometimes one is loaned to a sibling with great fanfare, usually in seriously stressful times.

My DDs are just 12.5 months apart in age and share everything apart from a special cuddly toy they each have which belongs soley to them. This is because they are into the same things and when we have attempted to give seperate presents they just forget what was for whom and play with everything equally. We try to get things that encourage sharing such as a big train set, art kit, a climbing frame, board games, a large dolls house.

Clothes are mostly passed down but the youngest does get new special items occasionaly such as a nice dress for a party. Buying two sets of everything is not always affordable for us and it's not great for the environment.

I've never really considered that this might be unfair and they don't appear to feel hard done by. Maybe when they are older and develop seperate interests we might have to do things differently.