Being the oldest means you’re the first draft your parents wrote. Be gentle with the next edition.

Whoever came first got parents who had never done any of it before, which means stricter rules, more anxiety, and mistakes that later children never had to live through. That is not favoritism, it is practice, and the practice happened on you. Knowing that takes some sting out of the comparison, because the different treatment was rarely about who anyone loved more.

Be gentler with the ones who came after, since they are living in a house you already renovated. And be gentle with yourself about the parts that were harder, because being first is genuinely its own job.