Have your second, third, or fourth kid first

Wisdom from moms who have had kids over a span of time

There’s a lady in my 3rd grade son’s class who also has a 7th grader, high schooler and college kid so I am interested in the spread of concerns she has to consider. I’ve always wondered what it’s like to be an older, more experienced mom on your last young kid when your child’s classmates have largely first-time parents. Is it kind of lonely? Or do you give no shits? Turns out, according to the moms I spoke with who fit this category, it’s typically the latter.

Here are a few thoughts from three moms who have both little kids and big kids, and what the experience with the bigs taught them about the littles. The moms I spoke with include:

• N., a 41 year old mom of 4 whose oldest is in 6^th grade and youngest is in kindergarten.

• R., a 54 year old mom with a kid out of college, a kid in college, and a kid in 4^th grade.

• G., a 52 year old mom with a 21 year old, 17 year old, and twin 8 year olds.

How are you as a parent different for your youngest kid vs. your first?

N: You realize nothing’s that big of a deal. You get kind of hung up on school and stuff early on. My first two kids had the same kindergarten teacher. She’s my favorite person in the world; she’s a seasoned veteran. I was like, “Yes!” when we got her. “They’re going to be in such good hands.” Then my youngest got the teacher I heard terrible things about. I could be upset, or I could be like, “Even though she has this teacher who isn’t the seasoned vet, she’ll be OK. She’ll still be a functioning human at the end of this.” It’s been a great year, and I don’t care. I did not lose one minute of sleep over this.

R: My oldest was an only child when she was 7. With her, I had more energy. She was also a very shy kid, so I had to do more about arranging some of her social life. I did imaginative play with her.  She did no screens and didn’t watch TV. We didn’t have cable; she could watch some Disney movies on VHS. She played a lot by herself and started reading a lot when she was in kindergarten. She wanted to do stuff with us actively, wanted to cook with us. When she ran errands, she wanted to come with us. My youngest will do anything to avoid running an errand with us. We leave him alone at age 10 and joke that the dog is sitting him because he does not want to go to Target, not even for bribes. Is that bad that we don’t take him anywhere? Would he be better off if were dragging him along on boring errands?  

G: It’s the perspective. Even between my two kids who were three years apart, the diapers, car seats, the sleeping changed. Ten years later, if they eat a strawberry before age 1, it’s fine. I have that confidence. When I dropped the kids at kindergarten there was another mom there who was sobbing. I wasn’t shitty to her, but I went in my car, and I sat there and giggled, and I went home and watched TV, like, “This is so great!” It was not tragic in the least for me. It’s nice because I have the snuggles from the younger kids because the older ones want none of that. When I’m really struggling, I have this perspective: before I know it, they’ll be in high school. Second grade to high school went so fast. I take it a lot less seriously. I know this is going to pass. Also, this is a twin thing. When we were in the hospital, the pediatrician came in and said, “Guess what, you’ve got twins so all the rules go out the window.” We fall back on a lot, and we didn’t have that with the older ones.

Do you get involved with school differently than you did with your first?

N: This year for Valentines Day I sent all my kids with a bag of candy. As time goes on, you’re like, “Who the hell cares?”  In preschool everyone’s sending a gift bag. I’m like, “Here’s your bag of hearts; you don’t even need to write your name on them.” I am less likely to volunteer for a party because that’s just not fun. Every time I volunteer for anything in kindergarten, I’m like, “Why did I do this?” I get they need help sometimes, but at the same time, holy shit is that a mess. My oldest’s class never had mass text messages which is interesting. Somehow we managed to know the important things. Now, everyone can ask anything, and I’m like, “Seriously? You want to run this by 60 moms? We all just got text message from the school about this.”

R: All three kids went to the same school. When my oldest was there, because fundraising is my job, I thought I had to help volunteer with real fundraising and I hated it. I no longer feel like I have to do any of that. I don’t have guilt about this stuff. I never email teachers. My oldest was this super duper sensitive, shy kid and so a bad kindergarten teacher would have messed her up. But nothing’s going to mess my son up. He is barely aware of his teacher’s existence.

G: I knew the teachers better the first time around because I was divorced and a coparent and homework wasn’t getting done at the other house. A lot of it was me being petty, going, “Half the week, the homework’s not coming back completed.” I had more of a relationship with those teachers. Back in my day, they wanted volunteers in the classroom but not so much this time. I don’t have a very close relationship with them, but both my kids have IEPS, and they have a ton of therapies. Another thing that’s different is that we don’t do homework. With my oldest, it was “You gotta write all your numbers to 100 or else.” Now I know he’s in college, and he’s fine. I wish I would have stressed about it less the first time around. They will all learn to read or whatever.

Do you ever find yourself guiding the teacher?

N: I try to be supportive of teachers no matter what because they’re trying their best typically. There’s one teacher in particular who is struggling, and both of my boys have had her. When my oldest had her it was during COVID and I was kind of freaking out. Then my second son had her and I was more removed. She was his favorite teacher of all time. You let go a little bit more. Some people take it as a grade on them like it’s a test of their parenting. I might have a different opinion if I were called to be an advocate more. I haven’t had a single parent teacher conference this year. I don’t have a rapport with anyone. I haven’t met one teacher in 6th grade. I’m not losing sleep over it. My oldest has to be an advocate for himself.

Do you know as many parents in your youngest’s grade as your oldest?

N: I know more people in my oldest’s grade than the rest of my children. I made it a point to be very present during lunch duty and all those things. Then COVID happened, and I didn’t really have a choice, but I missed out on a year of my middle two kids. I’m doing some of that stuff with my youngest and I do it a little bit with my third, but I still don’t know anybody. My second has a lot of classmates where they’re the youngest and I just met their moms a month ago. Those kids have high school siblings. The parents were kind of apologetic to me because they were like, “Sorry we’ve never done anything,” but we’re all kind of in the same boat. High school is another ballgame of commitments and stuff and parents go to those sporting events.  I absolutely socialized my oldest more. My kids have friends that they’re both friends with, friends we’ll get them together just because it’s easy. I’m a terrible playdate person. I’m too busy. You have the one night of the week, and you don’t have anything to do, and it’s kind of nice to not have anything.

R: When it comes to playdates, I have zero ability to do this. I only contact other parents when my son bugs me. I’m happy if they contact me but I don’t want to text any other parents.  I’m friendly with people, but I don’t hang out with anybody. If I wanted to hang with any of those people, I would. I’m happy not to have to hang out with anybody. I had to do more of it when my son was littler and we were at the park, and we’d have to have conversations with people. They were nice, they were fine, they were not people I wanted to be talking to. I have friends I go drinking with. And most of them don’t have kids.

G: I don’t. It feels like a new generation. With play dates, I don’t stress about, “Oh, I have to hang out with this adult.” The kids may not be friends in another three months. I don’t feel the pressure of having to impress someone or be someone’s friend on these playdates. All my friends are from the first time around. Other parents who have kids on the spectrum are the ones we tend to gravitate to. My son had a big meltdown in the schoolyard as school was getting out, and this other dad came out and said, “Need any help? If not, OK see you later!” He knew to offer help but not embarrass me. Those are the younger parents who will live in my heart forever.

Are there things you find the parents in your youngest kids’ class care about/value differently than you do? have you felt a harder time connecting with those parents (or do you not even worry about that?)

R: The kids in my son’s class are also third children. My oldest’s class had a lot of only children of older parents. A lot of people had a lot of weird shit then about healthy food, and I didn’t care. I felt pretty strongly about you just having snacks available and letting them eat what they want to heat because that’s what went on in my house, and it worked for me. I think the pandemic has thrown this wrench into the analysis of all these things. I can’t tell if the parents are more relaxed about food because there was the pandemic to worry about. They had a completely different thing to obsess over than whether the kids had Doritos in their lunch.

G: My impression is that the parents are just exhausted. It seems none of the kids are OK, regardless of what is going on. I feel like what’s going on is less attention to detail because everyone is trying to figure out how to work and get their kid to cross country and still have time for an extracurricular. It seems the parents I know are not over-programming the first time around when it was like you have to have an instrument and a sport and whatever else the third one is. I fell for that, too, the first time around.

Is there anything you wish you could have carried towards parenting your youngest that you could have applied to your first? Or vice/versa?

R: I tried to help my first with school issues that I now know were ADHD related, like trying to help her set up a homework calendar. I looked at her online homework stuff all the time, and that made me crazy. I will not help with homework again. Nothing matters. You’re still going to get a brain tumor [the way my spouse did], and there will still be a pandemic. Keep your kid fed. Don’t have a power struggle over homework. I don’t fight with them because I don’t want to get worked up. It doesn’t have anything to do with you. You have no control over his personality. The only thing I’ve worked on with my kids is making them be kind people.  I have come to think that two kids are not enough and three kids are too many.

G: I wish I had more energy for playdates and to set up parties and things. That’s the negative. The positive is that I wish I had known to assume everyone’s going to turn out great. Kids are weird, kids are gross at times; they turn into these adults and they’re lovely-ish and everything’s fine. My daughter last night was like, “Should I have two roommates or four in the dorms next year?” and I can’t believe they’re talking about this.

I was volunteering in the class when my youngest were in kindergarten. There’s not really any parents I knew from before and they all seem young. I got to the classroom and the teacher wasn’t there and there was another woman in the classroom my age and I was like, “Oh cool, another older parent.” She introduced herself and she was the teacher’s mom.

When it comes to my younger kids’ special needs: it was a huge learning curve for me, but I’m like, this really sucks right now, but in three months, it’ll be better, and three months after that, it’ll be better. Before you know it they’ll be leaving high school. It’s a really nice perspective. Last summer was a low point because we had a diagnosis but not the strategies we’re using now. It is nice to know my older two are launched and they’re great. But it wasn’t easy.

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