Micheal In The Middle: The Pros & (mostly) Cons of Being The Middle Child

Now You See Me, Now You Don't

I've always been skeptical of the idea that parents love all their children equally. Now, to be fair, I'm not a parent, so I can't say with any degree of accuracy that I know the type of bond that is hardwired between a parent and their children. And perhaps, if we're speaking specifically about love, it is possible to love all of your children equally. But what I think is much less likely is to desire all of your children equally, and that's due, in part, to the universal human nature to prefer the company of some people more than others. What I can say for sure is that I never felt like the 'favorite' child growing up. I'm the middle child both among my mother's children and my father's children, which means that I spent most of my conscious adolescence in obscurity, or at least feeling like the least important kid in my familial group, and that was primarily due to the timing of my birth.

There's this idea in psychology called 'middle child syndrome,' which suggests that middle children in families often feel neglected or overlooked compared to their older and younger siblings. The firstborn child always has a special place in the parent's heart and mind because they were the parent's introduction and initiation into parenthood as they are the child who first granted the person the role of 'parent.' The last-born child also has a special place in the parent's heart and mind because they represent the opportunity to get parenting 'right,' as the parent can use all the experience they've gained from earlier-born children to give the youngest child the physical and emotional environment most conducive to success. And then there's the middle child, who probably also has a special place in their parent's heart, but it's a place that's only visited from time to time—somewhere in the lost and found section, right next to the other hopes and dreams they've forgotten or abandoned, lol.

To be fair, I did enjoy several years of my childhood being the 'baby' of the family and relishing all the rights and privileges therein. It was a glorious time filled with lots of attention and affection and compassion and grace. Though my older brother and cousins would attempt to bully me every now and then, they knew that if they hurt me, they'd have to face the wrath of Hurricane Dee Dee (my mother's nickname), and that was often enough to make them treat me with care. But when I was ten, my mother decided she wanted to have another child—a girl that she'd honestly hoped I had been.

A few months after I turned 11, my little brother was born into the world, and though he was not the girl my mother wanted, she adored him no less. With his arrival came a swift departure of my babyhood and an introduction to the harsh reality of insignificance that being a middle child often brings—a jarring shift from being the apple of my mother's eye to feeling invisible, except for when I was in trouble. Though this invisibility often left me feeling unseen and uncared for, it also granted me a unique power and a comfort with living in the shadows. Being a middle child and often feeling a lack of attention made me very good at observing—watching instead of being watched, and now, a big part of my magic is how good I am at peeping a scene, making a subtle, yet critical impact, and then quietly disappearing.

A Masterclass In Being Alone

Around the same time that my little brother was born, my older brother had entered high school, which meant that he was officially too cool to play with or even be associated with me outside of home. And though I did spend a lot of time helping to take care of my infant baby brother, the fact that he couldn't talk, had no motor skills, or self-consciousness meant that he made a poor playmate for me as well. So, from age 11 on, I began spending a significant amount of my free time alone. Perhaps not physically alone because my childhood homes never had enough space for one to truly be alone, but mentally and emotionally, I was definitely alone. I wouldn't say that I thrived being alone, but I did find a strange comfort in it, in how being unseen and forgotten provided a certain freedom to explore not just my surroundings but myself, and I think it's this freedom that caused me to lean so hard into the loner identity—an identity that I still carry to this day.

I am a loner to a fault. I used to think that I had a hard time asking for help, but I've discovered that I have a hard time needing help. It's incredibly difficult for me to depend on others for anything, and I think this is a direct result of being a middle child and the self-reliance it often demands. One of the key characteristics of those with 'middle-child syndrome' is that we are often the first in the family to leave home, and we move the furthest away, two things that both proved true for me when I moved 1,000 miles away from my hometown in South Carolina to work my first job out of college in Boston, Massachusetts, in 2012. And again, after returning from Boston, I moved 1,500 miles away to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in 2013. I think this urge to move far away from our families physically is a manifestation of feeling distant from our families emotionally and is subconsciously driven by a desire to seek an environment where we can exist independently from the position we were born into, and, in doing so, hopefully connect with an environment and a group who can actually see us.

While I understand logically and rationally that I am cared about, it is really difficult for me to feel cared for, even when there's evidence to suggest that I am. Being a middle child and doing a pretty good job of caring for, clapping for, and being strong for yourself means that eventually, people expect you to always be strong, and this means that people seldom genuinely inquire about how you're doing because they feel like they already know. People will sometimes hit me up and ask me how I'm doing, but I can tell that they're asking more as a courtesy than out of genuine concern, and that it's only a matter of time before they inevitably ask me for whatever it is they've hit me up about. You see, something else being a middle child makes you skilled at is problem-solving, because often the only person you can depend on to solve your problems is yourself. And when people discover your problem-solving skill set, they can't help but want you to help solve their problems as well. This means that I often feel valued, not for who I am, but for what I can offer.

I do take pride in the fact that I do a very good job of taking care of myself, but I have to admit that it is also a bit of a burden, especially when it comes to connecting with others. On paper, you'd think that someone who is hyper-independent would be the prime candidate for a partner or a friend because you wouldn't have to worry about them needing you, which would provide you with the freedom to live your life for yourself. But I've discovered that much of human connection is rooted in needing and being needed. Similar to how it's impossible to feel an intimate connection with someone you haven't had conflict with, I think it's also impossible to feel an intimate connection with someone you don't have some sort of dependence on.

And it's tricky because too much dependence puts you in a co-dependent situation where you're likely to lose yourself in the connection, but on my end of the spectrum, too much independence often makes others feel like they're unnecessary or even unwanted. It creates an unstable situation of emotional distance where people fear getting too close to me because I could leave them at any moment. People want to feel like they matter in your life, that they're contributing to your well-being in some way. But when you do everything yourself, you inadvertently shut the door on deeper intimacy, leaving others unsure of how or if they can support you. And that creates a vicious cycle where I often find myself in situations where I simultaneously feel unsupported by and disconnected from others, while unconsciously communicating that I don't want the support or connection that I deeply desire.

I had a situation with my friend group in college where I tried to break up with them because they were friends with someone who didn't like me which often created tension & drama within the friend group whenever we'd all hang out together or when I'd get word of what this other person would say about me behind my back. I ended up writing a long message that I sent to everyone in the group, including the person who didn't like me, where I essentially said, that he (the friend of my friend group who didn't like me) could have them (my friends) because he needed them more than I did and us continuing to engage in the dynamic we had would ultimately result in violence. Though my friend group wouldn't accept my desire to break apart from them, the attitude that I had, that I didn't need them, affected how our relationship manifested from that point on and has also affected every type of relationship that I've ever had with anyone. Not relying on others is both empowering in the sense that I know that I can survive despite having consistent assistance from others and disabling in the sense that I know I'll never reach my highest potential alone.

A Rebel Without A Cause: Fighting to be Recognized

Another key characteristic of those who suffer from middle child syndrome is feeling the need to rebel. I'm sure the 'why' varies from child to child, but for me, it was rooted in wanting attention, even if that attention was negative. Shortly after my little brother was born, I fell into the first depression I ever remember experiencing. Upon telling my mother that I was sad all the time, I was not met with compassion but with frustration. "What do you have to be sad about?" honestly probably seemed like a fair question to ask an 11-year-old who didn't have a ton of experience in the world, but the truth is, I had a lot to be sad about. I think parents make a mistake in assuming that children are somehow less conscious and less capable of feeling than adults. As if, just because I was a child, I was invulnerable to picking up on my mom's suffering, or the fact that feeding us and keeping a roof over our heads was a constant anxiety for her, or the fact that I no longer felt nearly as important to my mom as I had for the first decade of my life.

My mom took me to the doctor, to whom I relayed my troubles, and he prescribed me some antidepressants that honestly did nothing to make me feel better. Which is because my depression wasn't rooted in a chemical imbalance in my brain but in an emotional imbalance in my home—an imbalance that made me feel like an outsider, even among family, and contributed to a self-image of being a rebel, despite not having a true cause to rebel. Or maybe my rebellion did have a true cause, a cause that is shared by all rebels at our root: to raise awareness, garner attention, and hopefully find belonging. I grew my hair out and got braids, started listening primarily to gangster rap, and began dressing and behaving thuggish whenever I could sneak out from the immediate gaze of my religious and conservative family to do 'hood-rat' things with my friends.

Once I was old enough to move out of the house, I rarely looked back and did all the things my mother forbade me from doing while I lived under her roof—like drinking, smoking, staying out all night, getting my ear pierced, getting tattoos, and regularly enjoying the company of fast women. All things that I didn't try to hide from her because they were deeper than just being means of self-expression; they were also cries for attention, a method for hopefully making the small and forgotten child within myself big enough that I could no longer be overlooked or forgotten. Until we heal, all attention feels like good attention, which explains the current climate of 'influencers' we see on social media these days, doing whatever it takes to collect enough likes to hopefully fill the void left by the lack of their parents' attention and affection. Not realizing that the superficial sense of connection that fame provides feels substantially less alluring when we feel deeply connected to those who should know us best. But when those who should know us best can't or don't, we inevitably rebel against them and do whatever it takes to force them to pay attention.

All Guts, No Glory

Being a middle child with a younger sibling means that I have all of the responsibility of being an older sibling without any of the recognition. Middle children naturally feel like mediators, as they are literally in the middle of their siblings, which brings with it a sense of responsibility that's even greater than what the oldest sibling feels, because the oldest sibling often has a substantial gap in age between themselves and the youngest child. This means they often cannot, and are not expected to, be as involved with the youngest sibling. The middle child, on the other hand, is close enough in age to be more involved in the younger sibling's life but still close enough to the oldest to carry the burden of their parents' expectations. This leaves the middle child in a state of limbo where they’re expected to offer support, guidance, and protection to the younger sibling while also not being granted the same rights and freedoms as the older sibling, forcing us to exist in a space where our efforts are expected, yet simultaneously unacknowledged and unrewarded.

To my fellow middle children, I see you. I get you. I recognize the unique path you've had to walk and the courage you've had to develop to walk it alone. I know the unique struggle of trying not to be resentful that your younger sibling could get the things you longed for as a child, like gentle parenting, a basketball goal, a trampoline, and braces (no, I don't keep a list. What makes you ask? lol), and instead trying to be happy that they had a better childhood than you did. I know the pain of often feeling like your accomplishments, achievements, and yourself in general were unimportant or, at least, less important than those of your older and younger siblings. And I also know the joy and fulfillment of not needing to depend on anyone but yourself. I know the freedom of knowing that you could be dropped anywhere in the world and 'figure it out' on your own because you have so much practice doing just that. I know the peace of not needing to be the center of attention and of being able to retreat to the quiet, safe space you've fostered within yourself whenever you need to.

I'm 100% sure that my capacity to empathize and share with others is a direct result of me being a middle child, and in that sense, it's a gift that has put me in a position to do something that I genuinely love, which is helping others. It allows me to be a true servant in how I don't feel the need to be centered or to feel important or significant and instead direct that energy towards being there for others. And though I would absolutely love to be genuinely celebrated from time to time, and though I'm sure that the hyper-independence birthed from my experience as a middle child makes it significantly harder to rely on and connect with others, having gone so long without those things ensures that when I eventually do find people who are as interested in serving me as I am them, I'll always appreciate them and never take them for granted. It places me in an advantageous position where I no longer need to feel seen, but if anyone ever notices me in the shadows, then I'll know that they see me because they share an inner light that is similar to my own.

What's Going On With Me?

All is well. Nothing major to report. I'm honestly in a hurry to get this newsletter published so that I can go out on my bike and enjoy this nice day. One interesting thing that happened to me yesterday is that I was watching a travel vlog of Brazil and heard literally 5 seconds of a song that sounded familiar but couldn't quite put my finger on so I decided to look it up. The song in question was "Fat Family - Jeito Sexy" which is a dope song on its own but still didn't feel as familiar as I expected it to be since it is in Portuguese, not English.

Direct Link - Fat Family - Jeito Sexy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2PS0i1TAlE

Further research revealed to me that a singer named Diana King covered this song is the 90's with her own version being called "Shy Guy" and when I heard this version, it clicked! I think this is one of countless songs that I heard in passing while out shopping or in the car or out at someone else's house as a child and was enchanted by but since Shazam didn't exist back then, I had no way of finding out what the name of the song was or who sung it. So stumbling upon this song yesterday was a bit of a nostalgic treasure.

Direct Link - Diana King - Shy Guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szjaHbjhauk

I've been feeling nostalgia a lot lately which I'm sure is due to reminiscing so much about my childhood and while it's been emotional at times, it's also been healing and even a little fun to revisit that period of my life with fresh and les jaded eyes. I hope my words and perhaps these songs might remind you of good times from your childhood as well and I'll see you next week where we'll close out this series on self-image.

With love,

Micheal Sinclair 💜