Family Dynamics

I know families that have only 1 child, I know families that have 6 or more children. I know a few that had very little trouble with their teenagers, very few! The norm seems to be that somewhere between 16 to 20 years old they decide to drive their parents crazy! The age of 16 wasn't so bad for us with the older three kids. 18-20 was the rough phase for us. The age where they figure they can do whatever they want, even if they are still living at home, because they are adults now...hahahahahahaha! If that were true they wouldn't need their parents to fix their problems, or pay their bills, or get them out of trouble.
The oldest child usually tends to be the hardest to deal with when these issues arise. It is the first time you have to handle that type of situation. It is a hit or miss scenario. We try to avoid how our parents handled things because when we were that age, our parents did everything wrong... right? We also want any younger siblings to learn from other's mistakes, and have to think ahead to when we have to deal with their possible teenage angst.
It isn't the same with every family, but I notice middle children tend to be more mature, & do tend to learn from their older siblings experiences. They also tend to be less demanding on us than our oldest or youngest children. They almost tend to be invisible. Not intentionally, never on purpose. But I think we go to autopilot sometimes when we have stress from one child eating up our emotional resources. The youngest child is "our baby", no matter how old they are. We tend to give in more, tend to allow more than we do with the older children, again, not on purpose. We feed all our emotions about them being our last baby, about the mistakes we made with our older children, into how we react & respond to them.
Chad kind of went from our youngest to sort of a "middle" child when we took in Hunter. That was quite a switch in dynamics. It changed things for him, for us. Kierra's death in itself was another major change for our family, then add the twins to the mix and WOW. Bringing other children into your home changes the dynamics just as much as giving birth to another child. No matter how old they are, your other child/children will react accordingly. The dynamics change wether you want them to or not!
Changes in any family, any type of change, makes the dynamics change too. When an oldest child moves out, the next in line kind of steps into that slot, becoming the "oldest" in the household. Then the domino affect happens and the whole family has to adjust to the change. Sometimes everyone steps into their new slot seemlessly, other times it is not so smooth & easy.
I could not go "back home" to my parent's house when I left Indiana & came back home. The dynamics had changed too much & there wasn't that same slot waiting for me to step back into it. I wanted, and expected to be the "oldest" with all the authority & priveleges that came with it.
But I had become a mother as well & I didn't fit into the slot of being anyone's child anymore. My younger siblings also weren't going to step back into the roles they had before I left. I had expected them to change back for me, I had to change to the way things were at that time, not before. It didn't last long. I moved elsewhere. That was probably for the best. They say you can't go back home again, in many ways I believe that is true. It was for me.
I see the families around me all going through different stages of what I have already been through with the older three children. I am not so eager to go through it all again with these younger three! I can hope I have learned from my previous experience. Yet every child is different, parenting every child is different. So I will do the best I can, which is all any of us can do. All the best to you & your family, whatever the dynamics are.