LTBD: Experience with first child vs second child?
I loved reading on page 181 the following and I wanted to know if those families with more than one child can relate to her thoughts. If so, in what way?
"Through our experience with the first child -- with his or her personality, eccentricities, inclinations, needs -- we learn to define ourselves as mothers. When our second child is different from the first in every way, we are thrust into a redefinition of ourselves, of motherhood, of our perceptions and choices. I can never unlearn what my first taught me. And yet these hard-won lessons may find little application in the mothering of my second child... I realize, in a cold sweat that often accompanies starkly obvious revelations, that these are two separate people. I must mother them equally and absolutely individually."
"Through our experience with the first child -- with his or her personality, eccentricities, inclinations, needs -- we learn to define ourselves as mothers. When our second child is different from the first in every way, we are thrust into a redefinition of ourselves, of motherhood, of our perceptions and choices. I can never unlearn what my first taught me. And yet these hard-won lessons may find little application in the mothering of my second child... I realize, in a cold sweat that often accompanies starkly obvious revelations, that these are two separate people. I must mother them equally and absolutely individually."
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