Public Address | Cafe | Busytown: Word!

Emma Hart

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 12:37:05 +1200

No, second children exist so they can play with the first child and give the parents a freakin' break for 5 freakin' minutes!!
(Can you tell we've only got one?)

Yes.

Kyle Matthews

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 12:34:15 +1200

No, second children exist so they can play with the first child and give the parents a freakin' break for 5 freakin' minutes!!

I think the 'ohmigod' of having your first children be twins is seriously overstated. I'm sure the first year or two would have been hard, but having…

InternationalObserver

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 09:19:49 +1200

The Easter Bunny is still stupid though.

The fun comes when when your athiest 4y.o. child (the product of atheist parents) comes home from kindy and tells you all about how Jesus Christ got nailed to a cross and buried in a cave and then came back to life and thats…

Deborah

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 20:27:41 +1200

The day after she turned two, our first born got up, looked me in the eye and said, "No mummy. No nappies today. Today I wear purple knickers."

"Right," I thought. "Good. Whatever."

First born child, academic parents, 'though not firsties ourselves, lots and lots and lots of one on…

Ben Gracewood

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 19:27:16 +1200

Great article, Rob – ta for the link. Guilty as charged, as a firstborn... married to a firstborn...mother of a firstborn.. and very glad to have our little revolutionary/convention-buster on board to shake things up a bit.

Cue flashback to Christmas discussions (the good ones!). As fourthborn of the greater…

Aidan

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 17:02:44 +1200

Re: "num num for tum tum"

Me either. In fact, we didn't do the whole Easter Bunny thing because it seemed really silly and involved large scale deceit on our part. All our rellies thought we were mean and nasty marxists (or something). When the preschool went to the trouble…

Allan Moyle

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 16:59:58 +1200

Second kids are always different ....maybe partly because of the reduced parental attention. We found with our 2 girls (26 months apart) that the

regulatory framework

was often usurped due the observation time the second child had of the first child's experiences and interactions that meant sometimes the opposite approach…

InternationalObserver

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 16:21:26 +1200

I never baby talked my child, and as a result she spoke properly from an early age.

There was no plan. I just felt stupid saying "duz bebe wanna num num for her tum tum?" so I didn't. :)

Aidan

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 15:34:01 +1200

IO:

I never baby talked my child, and as a result she spoke properly from an early age.

Wow! What confidence. I think I prefer the formulation "I did X and child did Y .. thankfully .. the two did appear to be correlated in time so I sometimes claim…

Julian Melville

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 15:00:16 +1200

Sounds like little brother would get major kicks out of Fix-It Duck by Jez Alborough – the mechanics of the story are carefully exposed so that you can see it all coming on later readings (you never notice the details first time through). Both our son and my brother's could…

InternationalObserver

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 14:20:57 +1200

Recent research into language acquisition suggests that the higher an infant's socio-economic status, the more adult utterances are addressed directly to that child.

I never baby talked my child, and as a result she spoke properly from an early age. Leading all our friends to comment on how smart/clever/gifted she…

kmont

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 11:58:36 +1200

The Frank Sulloway link was really interesting, but being a girl and and only child I guess it has limited relevance! Girls just get one chapter WTF!

Jolisa, I am back from Japan and now in Wellie. I should change that info, get a Gravatar, and stop stalking Japanese people…

Jeremy Andrew

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 11:47:43 +1200

Then I read the Sulloway link and realised he had plagiarised my post before I even wrote it :-)

Jeremy Andrew

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 11:44:31 +1200

I wonder if it would perhaps also give the second child a natural ally?

With three kids allegiances will vary fluidly on a minute to minute basis – they are generally incapable of forming and adhering to a firm supply & confidence agreement. At any moment two will be ganged up…

Jeremy Andrew

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 11:40:05 +1200

Second kids are always different – often because all kids are different, but they also have some commonalities of experience that inform the second child community:
The first child has 100% of the parents available child-rearing attention. The second will have on average 50%.
The first child is a test-bed…

Jolisa

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 11:32:31 +1200

Ta, Kowhai! You still in Japan?

Lisa, it took me a second to realise you meant a *sign* saying "poo in the pool", and not the act itself!

Great article, Rob – ta for the link. Guilty as charged, as a firstborn... married to a firstborn...mother of a firstborn.. and…

Rob Stowell

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 10:23:29 +1200

Better not to ever open The Tale of Tom Kitten, then. As a 4-year-old it scared me witless- I wouldn't let mum read it. I still have dreams about hidden passages and secret byways in old houses.
Second kids are entirely intruiging tho- number one, you tend to think: that's…

kmont

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 10:12:59 +1200

You write nice sentances, big ups!

Lisa Docherty

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 09:36:05 +1200

At Karori Pool in Wellington we live in fear of the small yellow plastic "fecal accident" sign!

I've always thought a quick "pooh in the pool" would be just as effective.

Public Address

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 09:34:15 +1200

Discussion from blog post.