Family Dynamics

I am sorry that I haven't been posting anything these last few weeks. As I have mentioned before, I don't blog really, or social network much for that matter, so I forget easily. Anyways, I wanted to talk about our discussion last week on the family dynamics. On thinking about my own family I was amazed at how many connections and varying relationships exist in a family. We talked about how families can have a special connection between a parent and one of the children, or a certain dynamic between siblings. When I analysed my family growing up I found that we have so many different bonds between us. I come from a family with five women and a man-boy. My four older sisters are close in age, followed by my brother who is quite a lot younger than them comparatively, then there is me, closing up as the bookend of the family. You would think that being the youngest, I would be the spoiled baby who received all the parental attention. Not in my family. i admit I am spoiled compared to my older siblings who were raised when my parents were just starting out their family, my father still in dental school, and struggling to provide for his little girls that just kept coming. Yet, it is my sister, the youngest of the four, that is the favored child in our dynamic. I have heard of the middle child being the forgotten, squished in between the oldest siblings who take on a parental-type role toward the younger members, and the youngest who experience the laid back parental control that has weakened as the married couple grow older and too tired to enforce the same strictness they did in the beginning. It is interesting to me that my family is near the opposite. The children fall into a pyramid-like pattern of attention.
I was also intrigued at Brother William's several statements on the importance of a strong marital unit in the home, and how it is vital for a family to succeed. Despite the fact that we don't completely fill this requirement, I would say that my family is a success. Yes, we have our problems, but for the most part we children are quite close and loving toward one another. Our parents however are another story.