Growing Up As The Oldest Child In A Family Of Five Siblings

Climbing trees was something I was good at. Why? I had three younger brothers. Did my younger sister climb trees? No, she did not climb trees.

I spent some time thinking about that when I was younger. I decided it wasn't a big deal to climb trees but having a younger brother that said he could climb a tree better than me was a challenge that I couldn't pass by.

Then my middle brother said, "You can't get me!" as he was looking down from a tree in our yard. Want to bet. And there I was right with him in that tree. We had a lot of fun growing up or at least that is what I remember.

We played ball, we rode bikes to go swimming. We picked berries and worked in the garden. We had our separate friends. I took care of my siblings in the best way that I knew how.

It wasn't always easy. I spoke at a roundup about my recovery from alcoholism and in that talk I kept referring to my siblings as my children, my kids in the earlier years of growing up.

I made many decisions about who my friends would be and what I would do based on feeling responsible for my siblings. That was an interesting talk as now that I have it on tape, I have reviewed it and can see some ways I thought that I wasn't aware of until after that talk.

In an alcoholic family, the family roles for the children are family hero, scapegoat, lost child, and mascot. When I got into recovery I could relate to those descriptors in my family.

How do you have four descriptors with five children? I was a hero, and so was my brother, the next oldest. He was considered a jock. Sports was his thing and he spent most of his time with friends and sports.

Our sister was the scapegoat. She spoke the truth. She identified problems in the family and named them. She took the attention away from the problems.

We had a brother who never got caught doing anything and would easily blend into the wall. My mother forgot him napping at a relative's house and we got way down the road before we discovered he was not with us. He was the baby then.

The baby in our family was ten years younger than me. He was the mascot. We used to laugh as he would clomp around on hands and knees to the baby elephant walk. He wasn't told anything about what was going on in the family.

If he was asked he didn't know as everything was kept from him. He was protected from everything.

My mother was a single parent for most of my time at home after my dad died when I was ten years old. When she met my youngest brother's dad, I was more out of the house than in the house.

I was married when I was 17. When she was pregnant with my youngest brother I had already been married for two years and if people didn't see her pregnant, they thought he was my baby.

I made a conscious decision to not have children as I thought I had already done that. Raised children.

A couple of years later my daughter was born and she was more of a sibling to my youngest brother than I was, as they were just a couple of years apart.

Being in recovery, I was able to break the alcoholic family rules with my children. They had their own support from others that understood alcoholism.

Because of that, we have more of a chance of living a better life without alcoholism and addiction. The other part of this is outliving my younger siblings, due to my long-term recovery. I do not like this part and still know it can be a reality. I had that conversation with my husband as his younger brother died this week.