Diksha Purohit

Sandwich Child

There is something quietly brave about a 20-year-old girl sitting down with a lined notebook, a pen, and a mission: to speak up for a group of people that the world has mostly chosen to overlook. That is exactly what Diksha Purohit does in Sandwich Child, and the result is as warm, honest, and refreshing as a first book can be.

The title is a metaphor Diksha uses proudly. Just like the filling in a sandwich is the most important part, without it, the whole thing is incomplete, so too is the middle child in any sibling group. They are nestled between the eldest and the youngest, holding together the whole family dynamic, and yet society has somehow decided to make them the punchline. Diksha, herself a middle child with an older and younger sister, wrote this book to push back against that.

She begins by acknowledging the stereotypes that follows middle children everywhere: ignorant, antisocial, less creative, overlooked, rebellious, and not quite "the first" or "the favourite." These labels, she argues, are not truth, they are noise. Social media reels, viral memes, and influencer content have packaged the middle child as a tragic figure, and enough people related to it that it went viral, becoming a "truth" that nobody actually examined. Diksha examines it.

Her most compelling argument is in separating narrative from reality. She names and dismantles the five most common myths one by one. "Middle Child Syndrome", the idea that middle children are psychologically neglected, is, according to researchers, not a real clinical condition but a hypothetical perspective. A study of over 700,000 people and a national sample of 2,200 adolescent middle siblings found no serious illness or unique personality deficit tied to birth order. In fact, researchers from Brock University and the University of Calgary found that middle children displayed more honesty and humility than their siblings.

What about feeling less ambitious, invisible, or trapped in an identity crisis? Diksha flips each myth with warmth and data. Middle children, she writes, are not conflict avoiders, they are mediators. Because they grew up absorbing the qualities of both an elder and a younger sibling, they develop a rare emotional intelligence. They know how to hold two different perspectives at once and bring people together. That is not weakness; it is a superpower.

She also turns to history to make her case. Abraham Lincoln, Warren Buffett, Princess Diana, Bill Gates, all middle children. People who led nations, built empires, and changed the world were "the filling" of their families.

Her chapter on parents is both personal and fair. Diksha doesn't paint parents as villains. From her own experience, she never felt deliberately less loved, if anything, when she asked her parents directly, they told her they never saw any of their children differently. The discrimination, she concludes, often comes from parenting patterns and unconscious habits, not malice, and is made worse when children absorb social media narratives and start believing them.

The book closes with a simple, powerful call: let's normalise it. Middle children are not broken, not lost, not invisible. They are just complex, and complexity is not a flaw.

Lessons from Sandwich Child

Don't let a viral trend become your identity. Social media does not research what it posts. Before you accept a label about yourself, investigate whether it is true.

The middle phase of anything holds the most value. Whether it's your career, a friendship, or your personal growth, the messy middle is where the real transformation happens. Don't skip it or dismiss it.

You carry the blueprint of everyone around you. Middle children observe both those older and younger than them, which makes them adaptable and empathetic. That duality is a strength, not confusion.

Birth order does not determine your character, your choices do. Researchers confirm it: your personality is shaped by your decisions, experiences, and thinking, not by where you fall in a family tree.

Being a mediator is a rare gift. Not everyone can hold two conflicting truths at once and find the thread that connects them. If you can, that is extraordinary.

Judge people by their morals and uniqueness, not their circumstances. The world would be kinder if we stopped using birth order, background, or birth order as a measuring stick for human potential.