Charlotte Observer presents tips for treating kids differently.
Gregory Ramey writes (excerpt):
• Stay flexible. Don’t strive to treat your children alike. They have different personalities, needs, wants and temperaments. Parents seem reluctant to treat their children differently from each other for fear of being criticized as being unfair.
Children are very sensitive to real and perceived differences in how their parents interact with them and their siblings. Any hint that one child is receiving any type of special treatment evokes an outcry of “it’s not fair.”
Parents should not be held hostage to this accusation. Stop trying to be fair to your children, and instead focus on being effective. Their needs are different, and you should adjust your discipline and parenting style accordingly.
• Respect individual differences. One of the many exciting things about having more than one child is an appreciation of how children from the same family can develop so differently from each other.
Don’t compare your children. You can enjoy both the achievement of your first born while appreciating the humor and outgoing personality of your second child. One is not “better” than the other.
• Talk with other parents. Talking with other parents and reading about second children helps parents develop realistic expectations of what it will be like to parent your second child.