Some of the best things about being the youngest have little to do with being the most spoiled. While many older siblings will argue this point, truly one of the best things about being the youngest is the time spent learning from these sibs. The youngest child is privileged in some ways growing up, and challenged in others. All in all, depending on the family, being the youngest can be a blessing, not a curse.
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1. Learning from Your Elders
One of the best things about being the youngest is the opportunity to learn from others who are older. While they may not necessarily be wiser, your elders have lived more life, and adjusted their lives from the lessons learned. The youngest can also learn from these lessons if they take their elders to heart.
2. Parents’ Practice Makes Perfect
Whether you are the youngest of two or ten, your parents learned lessons before you came along, which help them to know how to handle parenting better than ever. While some of this is merely from experience, some of it is also from honing their patience through the years. As the youngest, you benefit from this not only in reaping the fruits of patient parents, but also in becoming more patient yourself, through their example!
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3. The Creative Flow
There is something about youngest children which make them exude their creativity more than other sibs. From Halle Berry, Jim Carrey, Drew Barrymore, Billy Crystal to Cameron Diaz, younger siblings are seen as the more creative ones, the ones who eschew rules and color outside of the lines. While the eldest are more likely seen as the rule breakers, the youngest tend to be seen as the rule benders.
4. Hand-Me-Downs
As the youngest, you have the opportunity to partake in the ways your older sibs change their fashion sense as often as they change their boyfriends. No matter if your older sibs are boys—there’s lots of opportunities to steal…or inherit….their clothes too!
5. All Oops Have Been Made before You
The older children in the family have tested the waters, and jumped in with both feet. Your parents had to send out the lifeboats for them more than once. It makes the things you as the youngest do seem like child’s play, doesn’t it? The older siblings gave your parents the gray hairs, now all you have to do is smooth them down every once in a while.
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6. Peace
There’s a certain peace in a home when you’re the youngest; no smaller siblings tugging at your shirttails the way you used to do to your sibs, following you around, and causing drama. The peace in a home can be two-sided, however. That peace can sometimes be lonely enough to make you call up one of your older siblings and ask them out to a movie.
7. Knowing Your Parents in a Different Way
The youngest child knows their parents in a different way than the older ones did. Because the parents are different people than they were when your older siblings were growing up. As people age, they tend to relax more, find their definitions of themselves through the trials and tribulations they’ve survived. They also cherish what’s important more. As the youngest you experience this with your parents as they do. Just pay attention and bask in it, as some day, their shoes may be on your feet.
What’s the best piece of advice you could give to youngest children?