After the birth of our first child, the boy we affectionately dubbed “Monkey”, we waited a good long time before we even considered providing him with a sibling. It’s not that he was so horrible that we just couldn’t bear the thought of bringing a second child into the world; it’s just that as time passed we enjoyed the little luxuries that come with having an older, more independent child (sleeping and showering mostly). Eventually though, feeling well rested and clean, we decided it was time to procreate again (sexy, isn’t it?) and along came the “Ladybug” four years after her brother.

When the children were younger the spacing seemed ideal. But now we find ourselves in a tricky situation. It has become a challenge to let an 11 year-old enjoy his well-earned liberties while still determining what is too mature, inappropriate or unhealthy for a seven-year-old. But, being the vigilant parents that we are, we’ve faced the problem head on, looked at it from all sides and decided, in the end, to simply lower our standards for our second child.

Stringent guidelines we once proudly touted, such as “We don’t allow the children to watch anything with violence,” have morphed into anemic attempts like “Well, can you actually see the blood coming out when he gets his head cut off?”

Curfews once diligently enforced slip later and later into the night. Words like “stupid” which never passed our lips in front of the children have become part of the household vernacular. And the difference in the meals we serve now vs. when the Monkey was seven can be summed up in six words: “Is this for delivery or pick-up?”.

The Monkey is fully aware of this great injustice and often voices his displeasure. It’s made worse by the fact that, while life seems to be one great National Lampoon movie for his sister, he is still forced to sit through things like “Disney Princesses on Ice”.

We’ve tried to give him more independence and privileges. We even tried bribing him. In the end, the only thing that seemed to make him feel better was the assurance that we were clearly doing a better job raising him than her. We’ve comforted him with the fact that he’ll likely, someday, be a great success while she’ll probably end up a degenerate and need to borrow money from him.

That seemed to make him feel better.

Let’s just hope we don’t have to borrow money from him too—or, if we do, let’s hope he’ll have long forgotten the injustices of being the older brother.