And then came Axel, a sweet, mellow, quiet little brother for Thumper to play with.
Axel is Aspen Real Life’s middle son: a savvy, skillful, empathetic, compromising, trailblazing risk-taker. Sound like your middle child?
Having a yellow lab of an older brother is not an easy fate. Axel always had to be on guard for Thumper to come barreling into him to start a wrestling match he would never win because of his smaller size. But as tortured as he may be, he has always adored his older brother, closely observing as Thumper navigates life with an insatiable curiosity for diving into anything and everything without weighing the dangers.
When they were little, Thumper’s quiet sidekick changed the course of many of Thumper’s poor decisions without Thumper ever realizing his little brother was leading him away from danger.
They have always worked well together, with Thumper’s creative ability to immerse them in a world of imagination and Axel’s engineering abilities. Whether they were building cities in the streams that ran through our land before we built our house, or snow castles, Thumper would design elaborate structures out of whatever they could find, and Axel would lay down the foundation so they wouldn’t get swept away.
Middle Child Syndrome
Psychologists who study birth order note that middle children, often overlooked by parents and researchers alike, tend to benefit from it in the long run. They become more independent, think outside the box, feel less pressure to conform and are often more empathetic, which makes them great team players, partners and innovators. Many are motivated more by principles like justice and social causes than by money or prestige. They’re frequently skilled negotiators who can see all sides of a question, are willing to compromise and tend to side with the underdog.
As the boys get older, I see how their place in the family shapes their moods and personalities. They all need time alone with their mum to reset. With three children, it’s difficult to get one by himself, but when the occasion arises, it makes for beautiful bonding time. When Axel was younger, we would go off into the wilderness, where he would inevitably find treasures like dinosaur gizzard stones and rock crystals and load them into my backpack to be placed in his own Zen rock garden in our backyard (now somebody else’s garden). But those harmonious moments would soon dissolve when he was set back into his place as the middle child.
As with each child, we’ve had weekly discussions where we agree to communicate better instead of getting angry with one another. It has been a work in progress for Baddy and me to be understanding when Axel absentmindedly didn’t complete his everyday tasks: leaving the door wide open in the middle of winter, tracking mud through the house, taking my pens apart and not putting them back together, leaving a trail of tomatoes or cereal into the playroom, emptying his drawers of every particle of clothing while looking for one shirt, leaving his socks in wet clumps in every corner of the house, leaving a toilet paper trail out of the bathroom, and so on.
In an attempt to learn how to parent boys, I went to numerous parenting classes. But after an embarrassing class where I led the parents away from discussing their troubled teenagers to advising me on our sock problem, I decided to go to Walmart and buy three dozen pairs instead. Some battles you just don’t have the energy for.
Recognizing that Axel has always needed time away from his brothers, I try my best to give him that time, and it all started with escaping to other worlds in books at bedtime. Slipping away, we would go upstairs to read quietly together, a luxury I wish I could enjoy with each of the children every day. As he proudly sounded out each word, I filled with pride. As he drifted off to sleep, I found it hard to leave the room, wishing I could always make him feel so completely loved and safe, repeatedly kissing his sweet, soft little face and breathing in his scent, trying to imprint it on my memory forever.
Sometimes when the world gets too overwhelming, he still quietly crawls close to me to recuperate, and I sit there hoping that being the middle child will better prepare him for the complexities of life. Fortunately, he is a wise old soul and understands that life will not always stick him in the middle.
