> The ability to teach your child to do something depends almost entirely on the child ...
Is this a summary of your personal experience or are you citing research?
Yes, children can piggyback off the achievements of their older sibling in social development and play.
However, I found that I am unable to devote as much time with my second child because my attention is split.
Big issue we had with the first was that he was reading several years above grade level, and we ran out of interesting things for him to read that were age appropriate. When they can read the Hobbit at 7, but are scared, it's really difficult.
Of course, he's now reading things like type theory and scares me with Nix advocacy, so I guess it all comes around.
The problem was coming up with enough to read that wasn't too scary when he was young. Even the Hobbit was rough. Harry Potter is downright scary. Book series were falling in a week. We never had Christmas present books that lasted till New Year's.
I'm pretty sure that we have The Dark is Rising, but it was never one that was a reread, if they ever got through it. I've read the Little Fuzzy and other H Beam Piper books, and they're a little 50's to really let a young kid loose on.
Terry Pratchett worked, specifically the Bromeliad Trilogy. Eragon was ok. There was a set of Wings of Fire. And bookshelves of others that are gone by now.
See my comment elsethread:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44126584
The problem of course is "the newspapers in utopia are boring" (to paraphrase Mark Twain) and "tales of the land of the happy nice people" doesn't make for much of a story.
Another couple of books which I enjoyed sharing w/ my kids were _Divers Down! Adventure Beneath Hawaiian Seas_ and _The Adventures of the Mad Scientists Club_ (and various sequels).
The sibling comments here primarily echoed a similar sentiment, while agreeing that there's variation and assuming that's just random, while also tacitly confirming that 2nd-child tended to perform less well.
> Is this a summary of your personal experience or are you citing research?
Strictly personal experience, not just my own kids, but also personally observed.
Which is somewhat ironic because I’m the one that’s bipolar.