My Experience with “Academy Older Siblings” [MB2A inspiration]

Bill hit the nail on the head with the topic of “a father figure academy,” but he missed another nail that in my personal experience is equally important, the older sibling. While fathers and father figures help teach us right from wrong, dads are still “grown ups that just don’t understand today.” This is where the big brother or sister comes in, someone who has the necessary experience that comes with age but doesn’t have the authority over you that a father figure would have.

I personally have a lot of experience with this, having been the big brother to many non-biological little brothers to help them navigate the challenges of development. Growing up I had a lot of educational challenges; I have ADHD (real diagnosis, I quite literally cannot read a novel without getting distracted by the fibers in the paper it’s printed on, and if I’m off my medication my focus will jump around to every little bit of sensory input, nothing is “in the background”), struggled with spelling pretty much until I was graduating highschool (that’s why it’s “contriversy” not “controversy”), and really struggled in half of the subjects just because I could not connect to them. It also didn’t help that I was “the weird kid” (I didn’t like sports, I kept enjoying children’s cartoons long after it was “cool,” I wore cargo pants with an assortment of different tools and materials and a high visibility safety vest every day junior and senior year of highschool, and I was friends with other “weird kids”). My parents and other authority figures did everything they could to help inspire me with roll models to achieve all that I could, but I never had a personal connection with Albert Einstein, or the founder Amazon, or any of the other great minds that I will never meet. However, while I never had that personal connection with someone who was where I was, I was that personal connection for at least 3 boys that are younger than me. One example is my mom’s coworker’s son, who is 6 years younger than me and is basically me but 6 years younger; weird kid educational struggles and all (first time we met each other we started comparing the tools and materials we carried around with us everywhere). He too had difficulty with reading comprehension, probably because the paper fibers were more interesting than the words he was supposed to be reading. When I learned he was having trouble with reading, I loaned him some pokemon manga volumes I had (basically the Japanese equivalent to comic books if you’re unfamiliar) because we both like pokemon and I found manga to be far more stimulating than novels (mainly because I could physically see the characters and settings instead of having to imagine it). That worked really well for him and it showed him reading doesn’t HAVE to be boring. I wasn’t a parent or teacher saying “you need to be able to read to function in society,” just a fellow weird kid that said “I too don’t like novels, but I did like these books, maybe give them a try.”

This isn’t just for childhood and adolescence though, in my day job I learned a lot of what I know today from people in the same position as me just showing me how things are done and doing it confidently. They weren’t my supervisors or superiors, they were my equals doing the same thing I had to do; after I learned what to do they would ask me for help on their assignments not so much as a teaching opportunity but just because they needed an extra set of hands. They weren’t father figures, but older brother figures. Now when we get new people to the department or existing people get new assignments in things they aren’t familiar with, I’m basically the go to mentor because I fully understand the roll of “the big brother” and am good at it.

Sorry for the long winded stories, but hopefully this inspired you to think about the other family dynamics that help make good successful people. Maybe you’re not cut out to be “a father,” but surely there’s a way you could be “a big brother/sister.”