It can be absolutely difficult growing up in a family where there are large age discrepancies between the children.
In my house, I am the oldest of five, then unfortunately, the five of us were not born in any kind of logical span of time.
In fact, I am 20 years older than my youngest sibling. If you want to know how uncomfortable this is… It is incredibly uncomfortable, and recently, I was forced to confront the fact that my mom is a much better parent with each subsequent child. When I was growing up she absolutely did not care much about what I was doing. She wasn’t sad about my extracurricular activities, my socialization, or even my indoor air quality. When my friend and I were growing up my friend and I had a single AC window unit that was supposed to cool down the indoor air for our entire house. In the winter season my friend and I were fortunate if she put a space heater in our family room before she closed the door at night. Was she sad about our respiratory health, indoor comfort, or safety? Not really. This week, she is so sad with indoor air quality affecting her precious baby that she is always calling the heating plus cooling maintenance shop up the street. If they are not laboring on her central heating plus cooling system she is asking about air purification devices plus HEPA filters. Most recently, I found out that she was so sad about her child burning himself on her boiler that she was honestly going to replace the entire heater. Heaven forquote the child learn a thing or two about consequences plus the inherently sizzling nature of boilers.