My wife and eldest son were at a function earlier tonight, so I decided to take my youngest son to his favorite restaurant: McDonald's. It's not the best food for him (definitely not for me either), but he loves to play on the playground.

While I was reading a book (on my smart phone... greatest way to read IMHO), I noticed 2 kids doing something oddly familiar. The older child was telling the younger child to go ask their parents a question. The question had something to do with what time it was and if they could play a little longer. Now, the reason this caught my attention is because of interactions developing over the past several months between my children.

We have a rule in the house restricting video games to the weekend. A couple of years back, I read a story about some research showing children perform better in school when there are no video games during the week. Needless to say, this means the boys are itching to play video games when Friday afternoon rolls around. By Saturday morning, they still have not had their fill, so they're up around 6-6:30.

My eldest would walk into the room as gingerly as possible to ask if he could go downstairs to play video games. (I always get asked, because I'm closest to the door. Lucky me.) He had to do it gingerly, because my wife and I are not too thrilled about getting up when we don't have to, i.e. Saturday morning. We typically let them go, so we can have a few more minutes of sleep. If anything happens, we'll hear about it quickly unless, by some freak accident, they kill each other simultaneously.

About 6 months ago, though, things changed. The youngest one started gingerly walking into the room. For a while I figured this was because he was starting to get good at the games and was anxious to get started. Until one morning, the question was, "my brother wants to know if we can go downstairs now to play video games."

Now, at 6:15 on a Saturday morning, I don't have my full wits about me. I simply answered the question and let them go. I unconsciously filed the way the question was worded in the back of my mind and went back to sleep. As the days and weeks went on, I started paying more attention to the interaction between the boys. You can usually tell when there is something afoot and some request is coming. I noticed my older son was convincing the younger one to ask on their behalf.

Over the years, I've heard and read about studies about how children have different traits based on birth order in a family. First children tend to be successful leaders. I can't remember what traits are common to children further down in the pecking order, but I would guess, at least, they are more socially adept. As my boys grow up, I notice they have different traits and I attribute them to birth order. For example, the youngest walked and talked earlier in his development stages than the eldest. He had to in order to keep up with his brother, which he desperately wanted to do.

I'm a first child. I'm 2 years older than my brother who seemed to get things easier than I. I do not normally remember specific details from my childhood, but I distinctly remember one event that demonstrates how much easier I felt my brother had it. The way I remember it, I fought an excruciatingly long time for a later bedtime. I was getting older and 8 o'clock wasn't cutting it any more. I remember convincing my parents to let me have the later bedtime. It was a huge win until I find out my brother got it, too. I was angry.

This is just a long winded way of setting up my theory about the older child getting the younger child to ask for stuff. My eldest son must believe his younger brother gets things easier than he does. As he develops some leadership skills, he identifies a his younger brother's "strength" and delegates the task of asking my wife and me for stuff.

Assuming I'm not off my rocker, I want to encourage this, but I'm not putting up with it all the time. I started telling my younger son to go back and tell his brother to come ask.