Same name, different family?

My children do not live in the same family. Although this may seem like a nonsensical statement, it’s actually so obvious that most of us never recognize it until it’s pointed out.

In his six years, Spencer has experienced two years as an only child of novice parents, two years as an older brother of one boy with slightly more able parents, and two years as an older brother of two boys with yet even more competent parents. In his four years, Ethan has always had an older brother, and his parents were never amateurs. And in his brief 22 months, Sage always had two older brothers and basically expert parents. One simple implication of these facts is that whereas Spencer sort of knows what it’s like to be alone and then to lose aloneness, Sage will never even have a mental picture of privacy.

But more important than the fact that each boy is raised by very different parents and accompanied by different siblings is the fact that even in the same family at the same time, every child experiences it from his own point of view, a unique vantage never quite replicated in anyone else. And, of course, all of these differences are only compounded in families with divorces, remarriages, larger time gaps between children, or radical changes in location of residence or the occupations of their parents.

And once I realize that none of my children really live in the same family as each other, I become more aware of how I must adjust my own expectations and treatment of each of them as individuals who might just as well come from three different families rather than from the same one.