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Ch. 21 How Mothers Aid and Abet OCSs

When your mother makes the mistake of revealing your sib's IQ but can't seem to remember yours, that's one clue that you not only have a lower IQ than your sib, but you also rate lower.

That's what happened to me when I was a preteen. At the time I didn't recognize that my sib had OCS, but I definitely recognized that my mom had blooped in bringing up IQs and was now struggling to quash her mistake. Her fumbling didn't pass muster and I again had ammunition to believe I was a second-class citizen.

Another time my sister was charged with setting up the Old Bell & Howell projector to show some footage of when the family lived in Belleville, Illinois. It wasn't an easy task so when she succeeded, my mother went ga-ga over her job. Naturally I heard this compliment and made the unfair comparison that I would never be able to thread the projector as well as my sib. Ironically I had to learn how to do this when I attended library school.. I may not have been the fastest "gun" in the West, but I managed to learn the technique. Of course it was 20 years later, but let's not talk about that.


Why am I picking on mothers? Don't fathers play a role in putting the OCS sib on a pedestal? Fathers definitely can enable the OCS sib to rule the roost, but mothers, even working moms, usually spend more time with their kids than dads do. So that's why mothers can be unwilling accomplices.

Look around your friends, neighbors and relatives and I bet you can now spot the mothers who are reinforcing OCS behavior. Even strangers are easy to spot. Everyone has been in the supermarket and watched a mother try to pacify her screaming toddler. She's embarrassed, the other shoppers are annoyed, and the kid is threatening to hold his breath. Why is he pulling a temper tantrum? Now I don't know what the child parenting mavens would say, but I do know that catering to the child's wish for a candy cane, a package of fritos, or whatever he wants at the moment will transfer a lot of power over to the child--power that can accumulate until, presto, an OCS is born.

Here's another example inspired by Hollywood's production of "1001 Dalmatians." Millions of children saw this film, and the reports from pet stores and shelters reveal a sad truth. Many kids talked their parents into getting them a dalmatian puppy. That's a lot of power, and it's not good for OCS sibs to get an opportunity to pressure their parents into something they probably don't want. (It's also bad for the puppy, who gets neglected when the novelty wears off and the OCS sib moves on to bigger challenges.)

Next time: The OCS adult who changed my life

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