Laat Lammetjie

Laatlammetjie – An Afrikaans word that loosely translates as 'late lamb'. It is a word that is often used to describe those unexpected and unplanned bundles of joy, which are gifted to couples that are often past their child rearing prime.

I'm a last born "laatlammetjie" and there are traits many of us last-borns have that our siblings don't. No two people are alike, even if they are identical twins. We all are different with varying personalities and preferences but it's quite strange that the last born especially a much later born last-born is almost a complete opposite to the other children.

While I was cleaning the house, for some or other reason whenever I am cleaning I tend to think a lot…about all kinds of stuff. This time I was thinking about a childhood family friend and how well she is doing which subsequently lead to me to compare her to her siblings who are doing okay but she definitely is better off. Then I realized that like me, she is a last born. Then I started thinking of other last borns and wow we really are a breed of person set apart from others like the first born or middle child.

Research defined these common last born types:

• Risk takers
  
• Idealists
  
• Good sense of humor
  
• Hard working
  
• Immature
  
• Attention seeking
  
• Secretive
  
• Sensitive
  

Where do I fit in? Well, I'm a last born who felt more like an only child. Mainly because during my childhood and teen years my siblings were all marrying off and starting their own families. So for most of my life at home with my parents I was alone, sort of like an only child. But what makes my situation different is that an only child is also the last and first born so the parents devoted most of their time to the child. In my case by the time I came around my parents already raised 3 children and went through all the triumphs of raising kids so when my turn came they most likely slacked off a bit. This resulted in me falling into the last born type of: Risk-taker; Secretive; Idealist

Advantages of being a last-born:

• More parental care and attention
  
• Less expectations from parents since they already learned from their older children
  
• Last borns have more family support and are likely to take more risks in life – they always have a place to fall, or so it may feel.
  
• We tend to exude more maturity and wisdom than our peers
  

Disadvantages of being a last-born:

• If parents tend to show favoritism towards the last born child, they may become really spoilt and become low achievers
  
• Last born kids, being very close to their parents, tend to carry most of the family's responsibility
  
• The last child in the family is very unfortunate in that we tend to lose parents at a very young age, or at a younger age than our older siblings. Older siblings enjoy healthy parents for a long time, and enjoy the support of their parents when they have children of their own, while younger siblings are lucky to have parents around when they start their own families
  

Last born facts:

• Famous last born children: Howard Stern, Jay Leno, Bill Gates, and Danny DeVito, Margaret Thatcher, George Michael, Sir Laurence Olivier and Jim Carrey
  
• We tend to go against the norm
  
• Make the biggest stirs in life
  
• Know no boundaries
  

Here's to all last borns…WE ROCK!!!! :)