Changes in childraising strategies and philosophy

As a comment on my last post suggested, your view of children, and your approach to raising them, changes drastically with the arrival of the second child. The first child experiences doting parents who jump at every cry and monitor and chronicle every development. The second child doesn't get the same level of attention. Instead, you know that they aren't really suffering when they cry (at least, they're not suffering that much.) And that they won't kill themselves if you aren't constantly monitoring them, given that you've taken certain base precautions - like blocking the stairs - to keep them out of trouble. (When talking to a soon-to-be dad at the dog park, I searched my mind for any piece of wisdom that I could give, and I came up with: "They're pretty resilient little things. They seem so fragile, but they're really pretty tough. So you're unlikely to hurt them when you change their diapers, even if they cry a lot.")

Every achievement of the second kid also isn't documented as assiduously. The boy can pull himself up on stuff? Well, he'll fall back down to the ground pretty soon, so at long as nothing sharp is around, that's ok. The boy can walk a few steps? Same attitude that accompanied pulling up. The boy is babbling? Is he interacting when doing so? If so, that's pretty fun (Teddy likes to go "Uhh" to which I respond "Uhh." We'll then go back and forth grunting at one another, which is a blast. I don't recall Margaret doing this, but maybe grunting is a boy thing.) If not, let me get back to cooking dinner.

A friend of mine with four (yikes!) boys (double yikes!) noted how few photos were focused on his fourth kid, especially compared to the first. Instead, the fourth kid mainly shows up by chance in various pictures.

Now, this isn't a very insightful post because a decrease in attentiveness has to arise with later kids as does a decline in the novelty of the tricks that they display. But I got a chuckle out of the difference when archiving photos and videos tonight. For example, observe the care with which Margaret is fed in the first part of the following video. And the clear wonder that accompanies her ability to put food in her mouth. Contrast that to the clutter on the boy's tray and the absence of any concern about whether he's actually eating much of his food or is just making a mess. (Turns out that until very recently, he has generally missed his mouth with a good portion of the food that he has tried to eat manually. Maddie loves that.)