Julie Jay: Kids are like pancakes — the first is always a trial run

Turning to the internet for comfort is never a good idea - especially when you happen upon the phenomenon called second-child syndrome

LATELY, I’ve been fretting about my number two. Every time I go to give him a cuddle, I am intercepted by number one, who demands a hug or a kiss just at the moment I am about to give number two a squeeze.

The problem is, number one is still a baby, too, albeit a tall, pretty erudite baby, but a baby nonetheless. We’re all babies at heart if we want to get really profound about it. What I’m saying is the three-year-old needs a hug, the baby needs a hug, the husband needs a hug, and my DPD delivery man probably needs a hug, and if he stands there long enough, he’s getting one.

Of course, the order of birth doesn’t impact what a parent feels for you, but it can affect their parenting, purely because their attention is split when more than one small person is pulling at their heartstrings and misjudged dangly earring.

Carrying number two down the stairs is, for some reason, particularly incendiary for number one, who sees this as nothing short of a personal attack. Every morning over the last two weeks, he has mounted a peaceful protest so as to get me to carry him from the bedroom to the kitchen for breakfast until I eventually acquiesce, hand over number two to his father, and lift him down the steps, all 19kg of him.

Diplomacy is paramount when dealing with more than one child, so my skills often fall short. The other day, I accidentally referred to number two as ‘my boy’ and was soon face to face with number one, whose nostrils were flaring.

“But I’m your boy,” he reminded me in a not-so-chill kind of way. I spluttered an apology and corrected myself, telling him he was indeed “my boy” and that number two was “my baby”, which seemed to appease number one momentarily. All was well for a solid five seconds before Daddy entered the room at that precise moment and announced that he was also my boy, sending number one into a tailspin that could only be ended by my agreeing to let him play a chaotic game called ‘flood’, which involves him drenching himself and my long-suffering IKEA pot plants out the back with the garden tap.

The baby seems happy enough, but it’s hard not to feel he is somewhat sidelined, much like Mel C in her Spice Girl heyday. As our eldest channels a Geri Halliwell centre-stage energy, I am increasingly concerned that I am somehow not giving number two all the love and attention he deserves. So, I have been turning to the internet to make me feel better (always a good plan) and stumbled upon what is terrifyingly referred to as second-child syndrome. The term may sound alarming, but it would appear not necessarily to be a bad thing. The second child’s experience is very different from the first’s, if for no other reason than that parents are usually too busy telling the first child to stop playing with sockets to fret that the second one is falling behind on the tummy time.

Most parents would probably agree that their secondborn’s arrival is different. It consists of much less hullabaloo, and while the household is turned upside down the first time around to accommodate the new cherub, the second has to row in with their environment. Is it any wonder so many number twos are easy-going and well used to going with the flow? As adults, second-born children are generally easiest to spot in a hen WhatsApp group, where the eldest sisters will take control of organising activities, and the number-twos are just happy to be out for the night.

However, my anecdotal experience of younger siblings being blessed with a sunny disposition is not always the case. In a moment of panic that a sense of inferiority would forever mar him, I Googled celebrity younger siblings to get a sense of what awaits number two. I based my projections on an arbitrary list of random celebrities and their informed and not-so-informed life choices.

Of course, one of the most obvious celebrities suffering from a younger-sibling inferiority complex is Liam Gallagher, whose endlessly endearing pleas on X to Noel Gallagher for reconciliation clearly point to someone who wasn’t hugged enough, or was hugged too much, as a child.

Like our nine-month-old, my beloved Britney is also a second-born, and if you think I’m going to say anything negative about this second child, you clearly have never read this column before. It’s Britney’s world, and we all live in it, especially Brian, her older sibling, whose professional occupation since 1999, it would appear, has mainly been being Britney’s brother.

Second siblings, as I say, are generally the best of a bad lot in my experience, but still can assume a feisty disposition when they have to, because it’s everyone for themselves when a bathroom has to be shared with other people and their hygiene products.

Kids are like pancakes: The first will always be a trial run, and we apply the lessons to the second.

But no matter how they turn out, just like our kids, we love all our pancakes equally. Even though they all come from the same batch, no two will ever be the same, and that’s what makes it — and, indeed, parenting itself — magic.