Hey guys, can I play too?
I'm starting to think that Elliott may have been better served as a middle child. Or perhaps even a youngest child. I don't know how much I buy into birth order dramatically shaping one's personality. Certainly oldest children have a tendency to be overachievers, middle children have tendencies to be people pleasers etc... but I wonder how much of that has to do with how they are parented as opposed to how much of it is a reaction to simply having older or younger siblings. The only thing that seems clear to me is that if you're the middle of three boys and then your family adopts a Bulgarian gypsy when you're in junior high, you're going to be awesome.
Elliott is certainly spoiled already and never starved for attention. He's outgoing, even for a one-year-old and, as the first grandchild on both sides of the family, will probably grow up with a sizable sense of entitlement. For the first nine months of his life, Elliott wasn't really exposed to other young children much. He wasn't in daycare, he has no cousins and I couldn't bring myself to sign up for any Mommy and Me yoga classes at Gymboree.
But, in the past few months, Elliott has been sporadically going to daycare once a week. He also has had the opportunity to interact with (chase and attempt to french kiss) the other younger kids in our home community and has spent some time in the nursery at our church. And Elliott adores kids.
He is transfixed and enamored with anyone who is significantly smaller than an average-sized adult. Whether it's an infant or an eight-year-old Elliott is going to come at it almost manically like a scene in a baby sexual harassment video. ("I like the way you shake that rattle. I'm drooling and it's not because I'm teething.")
Today, when Shelbi dropped Elliott off at daycare, she walked in the door and he immediately reached to be held by the five-year-old who answered the door, not caring that the five-year-old would have been incapable of holding him and promptly would have dropped him to the ground. And when she came to pick him up, he smiled at her and immediately went back to playing blocks with the other kids, one of which told Shelbi that Elliott was "pretty much" her best friend. When Shelbi told Elliott to say goodbye, he turned around and walked up to another child and gave him a sloppy kiss.
We recently had a visit from friends who have a four-year-old. He is a very well-behaved little boy and also fairly active. So he enjoyed running around our small house, up and down the hall, into Elliott's room etc... And I'm not sure if I have ever seen Elliott more giddy. The most fun he has had in his life was chasing this boy around and copying him. It was a game to both of them. Josiah would run to one end of the hall and Elliott would run after him, wailing in delight, occasionally glancing over at us with a goofy grin that said "Look guys! I'm playing with the big kids!"
I just hope when he is older, he will be just as happy and loving with little kids as well and that he will appreciate how much they will assuredly idolize him the way he, seemingly, idolizes big kids already.
I like the original study much better.
Elliott is very social; I love the kisses! Babies are enamored with older kids. One of the things that makes kid #2 (or #2 & #3 in my case) so much easier is the built-in entertainment of the older child. My boys have adored Rachel from birth. It is really sweet. Make you wanna have another one, huh?
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