Second Child Syndrome Another Name For Neglect

Your elder child takes the praise from everyone while your younger child is famous for his mischievous or impolite attitude. The huge difference between their personalities, in spite of living in the same environment and having the same upbringing, makes you wonder what went wrong the second time.

This difference worries the parents a lot and they try to eliminate the entire factor that may be a cause of this pessimistic attitude. Every parent wants best for his children and even if the child is not scoring well, parents do love him but a little less than the successful one and this attitude of parents becomes a problem.

The second child feels that he is second in everything and even his parents do not like him better than the first one. Children are very sensitive about the parent’s behavior and develop second child syndrome.

This concept was first established by Alfred Adler who was an Austrian psychologist. He emphasized on the importance of birth order to explain the behavior of children. However, his theories until to date receive a lot of criticism.

According to Adler’s theory, the attention and affection that the second born gets can never match up to the level of affection that parents give to the first born child. They remember all the small moments parents are very excited themselves. But when the second one arrives, nothing is new as everything is already expected.

From the age of one-year, the child starts to notice the difference of treatment and when he feels he is been left out by his parents in many situations then he is just left behind in the pace of development and life. Some lucky children who have strong will take it as a challenge and strive hard to get the attention and affection of their part.

Parents can easily avoid the child from developing second child syndrome by giving unconditional love and affection to both their children. Whether one is a first-born child or second-born, you, as a parent, should shower the kids with equal attention and love.

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