We all grew up in different versions of the same family.

Siblings often remember their childhoods completely differently because parents evolve with each child, creating different family experiences despite the same household.

• Birth order significantly impacts how we experience family life
• Oldest children often function as unpaid parental assistants
• Middle children become masters of diplomacy but feel overlooked
• Youngest children typically experience more relaxed parenting rules
• Parents aren't the same with each child due to changing circumstances
• Each sibling gets their own "director's cut" of family memories
• Shared experiences create bonds only siblings can understand
• Siblings become living time capsules of family history
• As parents age, sibling relationships become increasingly valuable
• Sibling relationships provide support during difficult times

Don't forget to subscribe. Share this episode with a sibling who swears you had the easier childhood and remind them: "Of course I did. Mom was too tired to ruin me the same way she ruined you."

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Personal Updates
• 4:16 The Myth of the Same Childhood
• 7:22 Birth Order Shenanigans and Parenting Styles
• 10:09 Different Memories of the Same Family
• 14:07 Why Siblings Are Important Relationships
• 17:18 Final Thoughts and Call to Action

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Hello and welcome to Inside Marci's Mind. My name is Marci Backus and I am your host. Well, hello everyone. Today's podcast is an interesting one. It's on siblings. Did we even grow up in the same family? The answer is no, we didn't. But that's the short answer. We're going to break it down just a little bit.

Speaker 1: 0:30

If you've wondered about childhood and so on and so forth, the mysteries of our childhood, all of the trauma we grow up with, yeah, I thought that would be fun. I don't know why I just it just came to me. I have an interesting dynamic in my family. My siblings are eight, 10 and 12 years older than me. I was called a whoopsie kid, whoopsie daisy yes, that is me. So my siblings again are eight, 10 and 12 years older than me. So it's obvious that we had very different childhoods. But even the three of them had different childhoods, and we're going to get into that a little bit later.

Speaker 1: 1:14

What's going on with me? I am taking off and flying to Arizona tomorrow, going to spend some time in Arizona. It'll be nice and warm. It's cool. Here in Chicago it's giving fall vibes, which is kind of freaking me out. I love fall, but now that I've moved here I know what fall means, that winter is not far behind, so I try not to rush it, but we are in the seventies and sixties this week and seventies and fifties coming up. So as soon as those mornings get into the fifties, it's, it's here in Chicago. It doesn't turn back very often. We might get a few very warm days, but not as many as we used to get in California.

Speaker 1: 2:00

Let's see here what else. This will be my first flight after getting my directives from my hematologist, so this will be exciting, a little scary, but I know what to do. I know what I have to take and we're going to do it. And after that I got a whole bunch of more flights. So I got to figure this out. I'm feeling good, feeling alive.

Speaker 1: 2:20

Had a great weekend in Michigan with some friends. It was a lot of fun. And now back in the city, had a couple days in the city and then I'm heading out. So I hope your summer is winding down beautifully. If your kids are back in school, congratulations. If you've sent someone off to college, congratulations. Trust in yourself. You've done a good job. They're going to be fine. My great nephew, chris, is going to school in Colorado, where my son lives, so I'm hoping that they will strike up a friendship. They've already spent some time together and it would be a dream come true to have my nephew, david's son, and my son be friends. So, talking about siblings and all of that mishmash and mix, that's something that means a lot.

Speaker 1: 3:13

I became an aunt when I was 10. David, my nephew that I'm going to visit in Arizona, is 10 years younger than me. I've been an aunt since I was a 10. I am an aunt many times over. I am a great aunt many times over and, believe it or not, I am a great, great aunt many times over. Being an aunt was one of the biggest blessings of my life, and it was definitely a blessing in my childhood. I have a niece, patrice, who is six weeks younger than David. I have a niece, patrice, who is six weeks younger than David. Unfortunately, she's not a part of my life, but David certainly is, and so are many of my other nieces and nephews, and that is on both sides of the family.

Speaker 1: 3:58

Let's see here, let's get started with siblings. What the heck is with siblings. Anyways, let's get started. Hang in there, all right. Well, why does your sibling remember your childhood completely differently than you. I mean, apparently we grew up in a family, a good family, but siblings remember things differently Same house, same parents, completely different childhood. Who's lying? Or maybe plot twist, our parents were just too tired to parent the same way twice. Spoiler, it's the second one. Really, it goes to parenting. So let's talk about it, the myth of the same childhood. So here's the deal. Siblings don't grow up in the same family, they grow up in different versions of the family, kind of like spinoffs of the same TV show. Kind of like spinoffs of the same TV show.

Speaker 1: 5:07

Season one the parents are energetic, rules are strict, dinner is organic, bedtime is enforced. There is no 10 second rule. You can go on and on. Think about it First child, they read the books, they follow it to a T. They try to do it perfectly. And, fyi, parents, if you're a young parent out there listening, or even a middle-aged parent, nobody gets this crap right. Nobody is perfect at it. We all are doing our best, are doing our best. By season three, the plot line gets a little wobbly Bedtime, negotiable, dinner, whatever you can microwave. And by season five aka the youngest child that would be me Parents are just happy that nobody's in jail. This is why your oldest sibling still thinks curfew is sacred, while your youngest sibling thinks curfew is a type of perfume.

Speaker 1: 6:12

Honestly, I didn't have a curfew. I'm sure that's going to piss off my siblings, but no, I didn't. In my house, though, you never snuck in, you never came in quietly. My dad kept a gun under the bed. Yes, he did. I don't think it was loaded, just an FYI, but it was a big shotgun and you knew. As a teenager you would say Dad, dad it's me, dad, it's me Marcy. Dad said no one was to ever sneak in and I never did. I always let him know it was me and I never got in trouble, not for that. I got in trouble for a bajillion other things, but not for that. So that's the first part of why it is different, because our parents are different people with each child. Think about it. If you have your own kids, were you the same parent twice? I don't think so.

Speaker 1: 7:17

Birth order shenanigans let's talk about birth order stereotypes. Oldest children are the responsible ones. They're basically an unpaid assistant to their parents. If you're the oldest, congratulations. You raised your siblings. You should be able to list them as dependents on your taxes. So there's that.

Speaker 1: 7:44

Now we've got that middle child. Ah yes, the Switzerland of siblings, perpetually overlooked masters of diplomacy and the only ones who can sneak out at night because mom and dad are too busy yelling at the oldest and the baby to notice you even existed. So if you're a middle child, there's a reason you feel that way. It's kind of how it falls. And the youngest chaos incarnate, that would be me. I'm raising my hand. They get away with murder. Oh, little Timmy sat the couch on fire. Oh, he's just expressing himself. Meanwhile, if the oldest child forgot to say thank you at dinner, it was basically grounds for excommunication. And that's pretty much, I think pretty much true in all families.

Speaker 1: 8:31

I don't think, even with all this fancy parenting. And now, what is it? Gentle parenting, asking children how they're feeling all the time. You know, I've seen a lot of things about this gentle parenting and I'm just going to say something. It's ridiculous. But I'm also going to say that there's parts of it that I agree with.

Speaker 1: 8:52

I think there's a middle ground from what I was raised with, which was my dad was a tyrannical dad, my dad. He changed with age and was a loving, wonderful man, but when we were kids, my dad was awful, awful, and I think there's a there's middle between letting kids run the show and being tyrannical parents. I think there's a happy medium. Not sure how I was with my kids. I think there was a little bit of each on me. I think I would swing one way and then I would feel bad and I'd swing the other. My kids probably grew up with a more chaotic mom than a stable mom. That is my thoughts on my parenting.

Speaker 1: 9:42

So here's the thing about siblings you can sit at the same table, eat the same spaghetti and 20 years later you'll swear it was two completely different meals. One sibling will say mom made gourmet Italian pasta every night and the other will say we lived on Chef Boyardee straight out of a can. Same dinner, different lens. So think about that. We all have our lenses in our eyes that we reflect back on our lives. My lenses aren't the same as Cindy's. Cindy's aren't the same as Devin's. Devin's aren't the same as Jeff's. Those are my siblings In birth order it's Devin, cindy, jeff and then, eight years later, there's Marcy.

Speaker 1: 10:26

I consider myself an only child raised with siblings. By the time I was nine, everybody was out of the house. It was me and mom and dad Completely different childhood than the others had. I guarantee it. It's like your family life was filmed on multiple cameras and everyone got their own director's cut. When my siblings and I talk about our childhood, I'm convinced we lived in a parallel universe and I can say that in my family because I was. I was raised very differently and there's nothing I can do about that. It's just where I landed in birth order. I landed where mom and dad were not as stressed out about money and finances and all those things that they were stressed out about when the kids were young, climbing the corporate ladder, so on and so forth. They were already at a pretty stable place when I came along probably not when I was born, but at least by the time I was 10. Long, probably not when I was born, but at least by the time I was 10. We'll remember things differently, but we will also remember things the same. Certain things have meaning for me that are different than my siblings Traveling with mom and dad alone.

Speaker 1: 11:51

I didn't have anybody else in the car with me. My dad thought I was the greatest traveler. You know why? Because I never asked to stop to go to the bathroom. You know why I didn't Because my mother at that time was older, she couldn't wait as long and I always knew mom would ask and dad would stop them because he was more relaxed. But I never had to ask because mom always did.

Speaker 1: 12:14

And here's a pretty funny story One time we were coming back from a trip up in the Northwest and driving back to California and we'd stopped in Fresno for gas and I had been sleeping in the back seat and we stopped for gas. So mom got out to go to the restroom and dad was pumping the gas and I thought you know what? I should probably go now too. So I got up and went to the bathroom. Dad finished pumping the gas, got in the car, mom got in and they took off as I came out of the bathroom. There they go getting on the freeway on ramp. Dad thought I was still asleep in the back seat and I remember the young gas station attending going and there were no cell phones back then. People they're like what are you going to do? They'll figure it out sooner or later and they'll come back for me, and they sure did. But it was pretty funny, it was one of our funnier family stories and again, there's no one else to remember that story, because I'm the only one alive. That was a part of that story and I didn't share it with my siblings, so my memories are my own.

Speaker 1: 13:22

But I can understand, if there are three of you or four of you or two of you, how you could see things very differently, why parents change with each kid. The truth is, parents evolve. The first kid gets high-end strollers, organic baby food and lullabies sung in multiple languages. Not in my childhood, I don't think Devin got all that, but Devin did get something different than the rest of us. The second kid gets whatever hand-me-downs still has wheels, and by the third kid they're eating french fries off the car floor and everyone's fine. I think you see my point. The items might not be the same wheels. And by the third kid they're eating French fries off the car floor and everyone's fine. I think you see my point. The items might not be the same, but the sentiment is it's not neglect, it's efficiency. Parents realize oh, you don't actually need Mozart in the womb to survive, you just need snacks and Wi wifi.

Speaker 1: 14:10

Each kid is raised in a slightly downgraded but somewhat more realistic version of the family. And let's not forget siblings are your first frenemies. You fight like gladiator over who gets the front seat, but the second, someone outside the family, messes with you or your siblings. Boom, you've got a ride or die, army Like. I can call my sister annoying, but you better not. That's my annoying person. Birth order even affects the fighting. Oldest child fights for control, middle child fights to be noticed, youngest fights for sport, and somehow mom always blames whoever looks the guiltiest at the time. So why do we need our siblings? At the end of the day, siblings are living time capsules. No one else knows exactly what your house smelled like at Christmas, or how terrifying mom's disappointed face was, or dad's. Let me tell you my house it was dad was the terrifying one. They may remember it completely wrong, but at least they were there. And as much as they drive us insane, siblings are the only ones who can turn your family trauma into an inside joke. They're proof that comedy really does equal tragedy plus time.

Speaker 1: 15:30

If you're lucky enough to have siblings, keep those relationships open. My family relationships aren't so great. I think I talk to everyone. I don't know if everyone talks to everyone. Siblings are important. Keep that in mind. They know your history. It's something that you share. It's something that you only share with them and, as your parents pass on, you only have each other. I have two kids, kyle and Alec. I know they're much closer now than they used to be. They talk on the phone, they live in separate places, but they have each other's back.

Speaker 1: 16:15

When my oldest Kyle attempted suicide a couple years ago, I wasn't able to go. I had COVID. Kyle's brother was on that plane and nothing flat and was there to support and help Kyle through that horrible time. Craig flew too. It was a hard time for our family, but the two kids were there for each other. It was probably a good thing I wasn't there. I think Alec was the perfect person there for Kyle.

Speaker 1: 16:57

Siblings are important. So do siblings grow up in the same family? Absolutely not. Each one grows up in their own alternate reality where they were the hero of the story and somehow, despite all the contradictions, we still love each other Well, most of the time. I do believe that my siblings, if something went down bad, that we would all be there for each other. So I want to thank you for hanging out inside my mind today. Don't forget to subscribe. Share this episode with a sibling who swears you had the easier childhood and remind them? Of course I did. Who swears you had the easier childhood and remind them? Of course I did. Mom was too tired to ruin me the same way she ruined you. This has been Inside Marci's Mind and until next time, stay sassy, stay sarcastic and maybe call your siblings. Just don't bring up a sore subject. Go out there and do something positive.