I am a middle child, having an older brother and younger sister. I've been told there is no middle child syndrome and that's it's all in my head....

What are your thoughts - am I really as nutty as my family thinks???

Because the bigger sibling is the first born and typically an over-achiever, they are the most important and get the most privileges. A younger sibling is the 'baby' of a family and gets away with more as well as being the most looked-after. Middle-child syndrome starts when the middle child is squeezed between these two and have trouble finding their 'niche' in the family.

Middle children will sometimes...
-misbehave to get attention
-go with the flow
-work as little as possible
-be less parent-dependent then their siblings
-become the 'loner' of the family, not participate in family events unless told to.
-play the peacemaker
-be more likely to go to a friend for advice than a parent
-be very creative

In short its where the older child gets all the awards, the younger gets all the love, and the middle gets nothing.

A little bit of fact, with a lot of exaggeration. I AM a middle child. Five kids in my family. Two came before me and two came after. It is easy to be I guess "overlooked." On one side you got kids in late middle/high school...dating, driving, etc. On the other, you got kids needing diaper changes, learning to walk, entering kindergarten. Meanwhile you're in the 6th grade. There's nothing "special" about being in the 6th grade when your older siblings are graduating and your younger ones are in daycare, but it's more about your parents just constantly having their attention thwarted. Growing up I had a breezy rapport with my parents. I think they appreciated my calmness.

Rule Breaker wrote:

I am a middle child, having an older brother and younger sister. I've been told there is no middle child syndrome and that's it's all in my head....

What are your thoughts - am I really as nutty as my family thinks???

Because the bigger sibling is the first born and typically an over-achiever, they are the most important and get the most privileges. A younger sibling is the 'baby' of a family and gets away with more as well as being the most looked-after. Middle-child syndrome starts when the middle child is squeezed between these two and have trouble finding their 'niche' in the family.

Middle children will sometimes...
-misbehave to get attention
-go with the flow
-work as little as possible
-be less parent-dependent then their siblings
-become the 'loner' of the family, not participate in family events unless told to.
-play the peacemaker
-be more likely to go to a friend for advice than a parent
-be very creative

In short its where the older child gets all the awards, the younger gets all the love, and the middle gets nothing.

A lot of what you wrote above can apply to the "Baby" of the family which I am. I am the last born of 7. My older siblings would rather have gone out to play with their friends then to be bothered with their baby brother therefore I got very little attention from them. I saw in some instances where the older ones did get more attention than I did. I was the Loner of the family, now the peacemaker. I was different and yes I was creative too. I never had what you would call a brother/brother relationship with any of my brothers until now, that I am an adult, I have a relationship with one of my brothers. I once thought about this, how I never was allowed to hang out, play ball or just sit with my brothers and it made me very sad.

My mother did spoil me yes but she also taught me to be strong and to be a leader and to be responsible.

I'm a middle child but I always stood out because I'm a girl sandwiched in between two brothers. If anything the "middle child" thing worked more to my advantage because I got away with a lot more than my brothers did.

It depends on the family and the child. Birth order is certainly a significant factor, but the effect it has is qualified by other modifiers and can end up having opposite effects in different families. For example, the youngest child can sometimes mature more quickly as he/she always has older siblings to emulate and interact with. But sometimes the youngest matures later as he/she is always treated like the baby of the family, and so acts like it.

Middle children tend to get less attention than the youngest or oldest, but whether that helps or hinders them depends on the child. For some, it helps to develop their social and intellectual skills as they need to be more pro-active in leading their lives, but in others it holds them back if they lack the confidence to take control themselves.

Older children usually have the most pressure to succeed, and they suffer from the fact that their parents have to learn how to be parents with them - this is particularly the case when they are young (babies to toddler age) as first-time parents are usually over-protective. But having younger siblings to take responsibility for helps them to mature, and they usually benefit from being the first to achieve milestones in their lives.

Single children tend to get the advantages and disadvantages of both youngest and oldest children. They get a lot of adult attention - sometimes too much - and, like oldest children, suffer from the fact that their parents used them as a testing ground for their parental skills. Single children tend to be intellectually precocious but socially unskilled as far as peer group relationships are concerned.

I dunno. I'm the oldest.