Being The Youngest Essay

Some may say that being the youngest in a family is the best, but I disagree. When you are the youngest, you never become older. At least that is what I thought until last Christmas. On my mom’s side of the family, I am the youngest. She has four older siblings, and 3 of them have families on top of mine. It can get very hectic around the holidays but because of the large age gap between my cousins and me, I always had particular attention. The special attention was something I cherished until I got older. When I was older, I did not want to be treated as the youngest; I wasn’t a child anymore. I did not like that people talked down to me even when I was 17! I wasn’t knowledgeable enough to join the dinner conversation, but I still

In the matter of one year, three new babies were born. All of a sudden I wasn’t the youngest. In this newly found freedom, I also gained the status of being an adult. People did not talk down to me, less attention was focused on me, and the age gap somehow vanished. The only real mention of me was my mom and her recalling baby stories from when I was a baby. This new addition to the family changed my whole status as an individual and the entire family’s dynamic. As my Auntie Chrissy recounted when she visited me a college this fall, “Its so strange how Hannah used to be the youngest, and in the course of one year, three babies were born.” After the new children had been born into the family, I was finally an adult. I was almost invisible compared to the spotlight that was on me before.
This reaction is similar to how in a typical family a middle child is treated. A middle child is often forgotten since they are not the first born or youngest. The middle child at one point was the youngest and then went to being in the middle, so they know what the attention the youngest gets feels like before it is taken away. In my case, I am like the middle child, used to the spotlight until new children force me to be