There are several myths that surround children alone. Some have some truth behind them, but not all, at the same time, more and more couples decide to have a child, either for financial reasons or because they do not have enough time to care for more children. .
Of course, being an only child is not the same as growing up with siblings, the kind of family the child grows in has a great influence on personality creation, but this is neither good nor bad in itself. brothers doesn’t necessarily make you more sociable and supportive, and not having them doesn’t make you a little intractable tyrant.
- “The best gifts you can give your children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence.
- “- Denis Waitley-.
The fundamental thing in all cases is the style of creation and the example that children receive at home, however, the most common thing is that only children end up developing specific personality traits, there are pros and cons, as well as there are pros and cons of growing up. even with siblings, what’s the difference? We’ll see below.
Many wonder if children’s parents behave differently from the parents of several children. The answer is yes. Still, the fundamental question is not how many children the couple has, but the desire that existed in relation to the number of children.
Parents for the first time? And that they’ll end up having only one child?That they are not quite sure what is the best way to play the role of father, but that at the same time they wanted to have a child, they will tend to be a little concerned about raising the child.
They may consult many books and manuals for tips. They are also likely to easily feel guilty about anything that doesn’t go as planned. The child will receive the entire weight of this tension and may become stiff in some way.
There are parents who consciously decided to have a child, but basically did not want to be parents, most commonly in these cases they end up delegating their child’s education to others, perhaps grandparents or an employee. The only child in this case will feel more loneliness than usual and may have difficulty creating emotional bonds in adulthood.
Finally, anyone who does not want to be a parent but ends up having a unique child can still assimilate the situation in a positive way and do the education of the child naturally or, in addition, the child could become the exclusive recipient of all the consequences of this conflict in adult life, a conflict between awareness of responsibility and desire. In this case, children often have difficulty finding their place in the world.
Dr. Toni Falbo of the University of Texas has studied in depth the phenomenon of children alone and, according to their findings, one of the effects of this situation is that children live most of the time only with adults, so they end up feeling more comfortable among adults and behaving like them before.
Because of this situation, unique children tend to see adults, and even their parents, as equals, perceive this distance between generations differently and then can come to see all the elderly and their peers. Themselves. They demand maturity that should only be demanded of adults, or aspire to age-incompatible autonomy and success.
On the other hand, Falbo says that unique children also tend to have greater self-esteem and self-confidence, it is easier for them to understand what teachers and other authority figures expect and easily become leaders among people of the same age.
Unique children often have a little more difficulty adjusting when doing group work, they are used to organizing things their way and making decisions based on their individual problems, however, everything indicates that this difficulty only occurs in the first few times that this happens. a kind of work arises. Most commonly, they gradually adapt and integrate into the group.
There is also some evidence that only children tend to have fewer friends than those who grew up with siblings, they do not feel comfortable in large groups, they prefer to have friends with whom the ties are very deep, in fact, they end up establishing with friends a attachment similar to what others do with their siblings.
What can already be said more precisely is that unique children have slightly different traits than siblings, however, big differences only appear when parents have a problematic relationship with parenthood, for several possible reasons; otherwise, they have peculiarities. that are not decisive.