All children need to feel special particularly from their parents. In fact one of the advantages of being brought up an only child is often considered to be the extra attention you receive. The assumption is that the more attention the better and this can lead the only child to feel particularly ‘special’. I mean special in the old fashioned sense of a child who is very much loved and nurtured. However the special child can also be the child whose parent’s are blind to behaviours the child acquires as a result of their attention, which are not useful as the child moves from childhood to adolescence and finally to adulthood. With no siblings to counteract the sense of specialness that an only child experiences within the family, it can be a rude awakening to enter the real world where people are not going to treat you in this way. [...]
