New parents tend to keep their first-born in a protective bubble. These eldest children often do not get so much as a scratch on them before the age of two. Once parents see that the first child survived and turned out okay, though, they realize they can relax more with their second offspring. Often, this more casual stance is something that they have little choice in anyway, as there is simply not the same amount of time and energy available to fawn over both children. As a result, you’ll find that you allow your second child to do many things you never would have imagined letting your first child do. Here are 10 of them!

• Play in the Dirt – You would never have dreamed of allowing anything that might contain germs, not to mention anything that threatened to stain the new designer baby outfits, to touch your first child. However, if your second baby grabs a handful of dirt and even tastes a bit, you may find yourself strangely unfazed.  Don’t worry, you have not become a monster parent. You simply know now that a little dirt won’t break a child. You’ve learned to let go and to hope for the best.
• Explore the Outside of the Baby Barrier – While many parents placed their first-born within a playpen or baby gate that was padded with pillows and floored with thick comforters, the second child is more likely to roam free in the wild of the home. Somehow, with the older child out and about, confining the baby seems silly and like a whole lot of work. Moreover, you probably have less child-proofing in place in general. The toilet and cabinets are probably not as restricted and you may have forgotten all about covering the coffee table corners. While your first child was like an endangered species kept safely in the zoo, your second is more like the king of the jungle.
• Watch TV –  With your first baby, you were probably busy having sing-a-longs, attending Mommy and Me classes and counting piggy toes. With two children, it’s almost impossible to provide constant entertainment and stimulation. If you need to devote time to the older child, take a break or accomplish a task, the television flips on regardless of what your former stance on the tube may have been.
• Skip Naps –  First children are typically highly regimented. Their early lives are predictable, and they follow a strict schedule. This allows first time parents to delude themselves into feeling a sense of control when, in fact, they no longer have much. Once the second child is born, the delusion of parental domination is shattered and naps happen when they happen. Often the older child’s activities and other outings turn sleeping on a schedule into a mere fantasy. When your second child misses his nap or only catches a few winks in his car seat between errands, you learn that the world does not, in fact, end, despite the deviation from your routine.
• Stay with a Sitter – Every new parent is leery when it comes to leaving their first baby with anyone, especially anyone outside the family. When the first born is left with someone else, parents check in often and frantically to ensure that everything is okay. They even leave detailed lists so that the sitter can follow the baby’s schedule, sing the baby’s favorite songs and tuck the baby in with her favorite blanket. By the time the second child is born and the parents begin to experience the weariness that only parents of two or more can understand, the outlook on babysitters has drastically changed. Suddenly, just about anyone who is willing and able will suffice as a caregiver so that parents can get some rest or some quiet to clear their heads. Sitters will no longer be given extensive instructions. Instead they will simply be handed the baby, a diaper bag and a wad of cash.
• Cry – Letting their first born “cry it out,” just seems cruel to new parents. So, with each nighttime whimper the baby was responded to, held, fed and cuddled. After all, eventually the baby would sleep, and when she did, the parents did, too. With the second child, daytime napping is no longer an option, therefore, the second child simply must sleep at night. Helping a child learn to fall asleep on his own is no longer cruel; it’s a necessity that benefits everyone, including the baby. The second child, therefore, learns to sleep at night.
• Sleep with You – Because sometimes letting them cry it out is just too noisy, and you need your rest, even if that rest is a few winks here and there because you’re worried about the safety hazards associated with co-sleeping.
• Take Their Time Hitting Milestones – Anxious parents eagerly await their eldest child’s first steps, first words and first solid food experiences. They are also careful to keep their children right on track, according to what all the manuals instruct. Thus, the bottle is taken at exactly 12 months and the pacifier is given up accordingly. With the second child, there is no such rush. Parents now wish for the baby years to last as long as possible and they know now, from experience, that the marks will be hit and their children will grow up regardless of the milestone timeline. So, the second child is permitted to move at his own pace.
• Climb Stairs – First time parents would never conceive of allowing their first baby or toddler to climb up steps. In fact, the stairs were probably gated off and an alarm may have sounded if the child got anywhere near them. Yet you’ll find your second child will be zipping up the stairs after his older sibling faster than you can say, “panic attack.”
• Pretty Much Everything – Yes, there is truth in what your older child is bound to say to you some day: the younger sibling gets to do whatever he wants. Parents are harder on the older kids because they worry about them more. They’re reaching new milestones and developmental phases, while your little one is still in familiar territory.

You may start off parenthood with a lot of wild ideas, believing that if you do things a certain way you will have a perfect child who will have a perfect life and is always perfectly happy. With each new phase of your first-born’s life, you start a new model for excellence and you experience a new level of fear. When the second child reaches these same chapters, you know better. You know there is no perfect and that things are perfectly imperfect all the time. Therefore, you let go, you relax and your second child lives without those same boundaries. You realize, thanks to your older child, that the world won’t end if your offspring gets a C on a math test or suffers a sports injury. The first child reaps the benefits of extra attention and doting, while the younger child gets to experience more freedom and adventure.

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