I have a confession to make.
I am guilty of second child neglect.
While I was pregnant with daughter, I daydreamed about the kind of mother I would become as I moved from one child to two.
I swore blind I would do everything I could to make sure I would treat both my children as equally as possible. I would be making sure there were photos of the baby on her own (not just with her brother).
The baby would have a perfect baby book, just like her older brother. (Okay, confession, I didn’t even do a proper baby book for him. Worst. Mother. Ever.)
Both children would have equal one-on-one time with us.
We would read to both of them every night.
Yeah… right.
I started reading to my son at bedtime when he was just weeks old. I built it into his bedtime routine, like many of us do. We would sit together in his bedroom and I would point out the animals in his board books, make roaring noises for lions and say “fishy fishy fishy” pointing to the fish in the river.
He’s four and a half now, and to this day he expects, nay demands, that either his father or I read him a story every single night.
My daughter is nearly one, and I can probably count on my 10 fingers the number of times I have read her a bedtime story in her entire life.
I cannot shake the feeling that I have set my eldest up with the best foundation to develop his future literacy skills and a lifelong love of books, while I’m leaving my youngest behind to languish.