Of our three children aged 3, 5, and 9, I often feel as if fathering the middle one is the hardest.

It seems that he is constantly torn between siblings. The 3 year old thinks he is amazing, he can do so many things and easily completes all the projects she’s interested in, as soon as his ego is inflated, he tries to play with the 9 year old and discovers he can’t seem to do anything right. He seems to bounce from what is easy to what is impossibly hard.

In truth he isn’t 5 yet. He will be 5 tomorrow. Part of my dilemma shows itself in his planned birthday celebration. My, soon to be 5 year old, has been planning his birthday ever since my 3 year old had hers in February.

My 3 year old was born on Super bowl Sunday. As a result when it was her birthday we went shopping and two things had changed in the stores.

First all the Valentine’s Day marketing had come out, and secondly the supermarket had lots of specials and sales for the super bowl.

My daughter saw all the heart shaped balloons and pink cakes and asked, “Does that say happy birthday?”

No matter how hard we tried to make her understand, she just thought the whole world was celebrating her birthday. She ran up to complete strangers, talked to them and laughed with them, and truly seemed to think that everyone was just at her party. The more she did this the more attention she got and the harder it was to convince her all this decoration and excitement had nothing to do with her birthday.

The bakery gave her a sample of a cake they had on sale that was, by anyone’s standards, a whole piece, and the woman from the florist dept gave her a free balloon.  We went to Toy’s R Us and got the free birthday balloon and walked her around letting her pick out what she wanted to get with her $5. She chose some candy bracelets and necklaces.

It came as no surprise then that, when my middle child was telling us what he wanted to do for his birthday, it very closely mirrored what our 3 year old did.

It’s hard to look at a 5 year old and explain that envy never brings happiness. He is so consumed with his memory of how he felt on that day, that all he wants to do is relive it with him as the center of attention instead of his sister.

My wife and I have taken special effort to plan out the day allowing for things that he wants to do, but mainly doing things we think he’ll like. When I look into her eyes though, I see that she is just as concerned as me. Will our son be so consumed with this envy that he’ll miss the chance to have his own birthday experience?

We talked about this and we both wonder where it ends. When our oldest was younger he was in T-ball. He hated it, but our middle child wanted to go up and hit the ball. It was all we could do to keep him from running out onto the field. Now he’s older and can’t wait to start T-ball for himself, but we ask ourselves, is this because he likes T-ball or is this because he remembers having to watch and not play?

At every opportunity we wait for him to show himself. What is he attracted to? What does he enjoy? Where are his own talents? Still there is so much influence and competition between siblings. It’s just so hard for us to encourage him in the things he wants instead of the things his siblings have sold him on.