The MamasteFit Podcast Episode 90 – How Birth Order Affects Your Relationships & Parenting with Dr. Bob Hurst

Gina: Welcome to the MamasteFit Podcast. In this episode, we’re talking with Dr. Bob all about birth order and how your position of birth impacts your personality and things that motivate you. Also, how it impacts your children and your relationships! There’s a lot of things that come with birth order. Obviously, I’m the primary speaker in this. If you didn’t know, I’m a one. I’m the oldest in our family. So we learn a lot about ourselves, about our relationships, and even how to help your kids adapt to a new sibling based on their birth order, because each child may respond to a new sibling in a different way. Really excited for this conversation and I hope that you enjoy it!

[00:01:33] Gina: Welcome to the MamasteFit Podcast. In this episode, we have Dr. Bob Hurst here, who is going to be talking all about birth order. So how does your position in your family and your children’s position influence you as a human being? So thank you so much, Dr. Bob, for being here with us.

[00:01:49] Bob: Well, good morning! And thank you for having me on your podcast.

[00:01:53] Bob: Let me tell you a little bit about myself. I’m an orthodontist, and I have been for over 50 years. And as an orthodontist, you have to rely on the cooperation of teenagers for your success. Now, I don’t know if any of our listeners or viewers have tried to get teenagers to clean their room or do their homework, but it is a struggle to get their attention.

[00:02:16] Roxanne: Yes.

[00:02:17] Bob: So I realized early in my career, I had to find out a tool that I could quickly find out what the cooperation was going to be of my patients. And I found out that in families, all children were different, and they approached everything differently. They weren’t all the same, even though they came from the same family, they were different and they didn’t want to be thought of as being similar to their siblings.

[00:02:43] Bob: I’m sure with you two, when you went to school, the younger sibling was always told, “Your older sister did…” and you didn’t like that at all.

[00:02:53] Roxanne: No.

[00:02:54] Bob: So anyway, I used the tool, I thought the tool of birth order was gonna be the one that was gonna answer all my questions. But I found out that only about a third of the time, did it work.

[00:03:05] Bob: And I was about to throw the whole idea away. And I went and I looked at each of these families and all the children, and I found out. The two thirds of all my patients were siblings that were separated from their other siblings by four or more years. And that’s when I came up with the concept of double birth orders.

[00:03:27] Bob: See, when a child is raised by themselves, with their parents, and the older siblings are away at school they get the characteristics of an only child, which is more self assured, much stronger personality. I like to say that it amplifies, intensifies, and magnifies all the characteristics of that birth order. So if you’re a number two, but raised like an only, you’re a two only. And you use the term sometimes, “middle child,” there’s only a middle child if there’s three, but really they’re talking about the number two child. And they say the number two child is very stubborn. The number two child doesn’t like to be told what to do. They want to protect their own space. But number one child likes to tell people what to do. They like to be in charge. Okay, but number two isn’t really stubborn. They just, they want to protect their space. They don’t want to be told what to do.

[00:04:25] Bob: So by understanding these characteristics, now, if you’re a two, you don’t want to be told what to do if you’re a two only you’re an immovable object. You are so strong. Okay, so, when I found the double birth orders, all of a sudden, I understood everybody. And everybody fell into, a little group personality characteristics. Now, I know you’re dealing with mothers that are pregnant and ready to start their families or add to their families. It’s really important to understand what kind of family you want. Do you want all the children close together, and they work like an internet family, they all interact with each other? Or do you want separate little families? If you separate them four years apart, then you have separate families, but you have children that are very, strong. Because they’ve added that “only” birth order to their number.

[00:05:25] Bob: Now, you two are a 1 and a 2. And what’s interesting with two girls with a number 1 and a number 2, and I know people want to hear about themselves.

[00:05:35] Roxanne: Oh, we do. We do. 100%.

[00:05:37] Bob: When you’re growing up, number 2 looks up to number 1 as the older sister and follows whatever she tells you what to do. And number 1 wants to control that number 2. She doesn’t want to get knocked off her throne. And usually number one is the better student. And number two, they have to find another role and they usually become the better athlete.

[00:06:02] Roxanne: Oh!

[00:06:04] Bob: They might be the cheerleader where the other one is the very good student.

[00:06:09] Bob: There’s a lot of sibling rivalry between the number one and number two, especially if they’re boys. With girls, it’s not so obvious. But what happens is, when number one graduates from school, and number two is there, by herself, without that influence of number one, she blossoms into a different person. She finally finds her own self. So that probably happened with you two also. You were, number two, was in the shadow of number one, until number one graduated from high school, and now you’re there by yourself, and now you become your own person, and you really start to bloom.

[00:06:54] Gina: Roxanne always says that I stifled her creativity growing up, because everything was like, Gina’s ideas. I was the leader, I was making our decisions. She’s like, “Gina made it so I wasn’t creative, because she came up with all of the ideas.”

[00:07:08] Roxanne: I have no imagination.

[00:07:09] Gina: “I never had an opportunity.” And so I am now the more creative between the two of us. Roxanne’s very smart though. She did…

[00:07:16] Roxanne: I am smart. But I was the better athlete in high school.

[00:07:24] Bob: Now I’ll mention something else because you’re dealing with women that are having babies and increasing their family size. There’s another type of double birth order. It’s when you have groups of children in a family that are separated by four or more years. Now I’ll let that, we don’t want to get into the weeds here, but I’ll give you an example that everyone knows: princess Di. Princess Di had two older sisters. Then there was a big gap of four or five years, and then Princess Di was born, and her brother was born two years later. So Princess Di was the third born, but she was the oldest in the second family, so she becomes a one and a three, so she has two distinct personalities, but they don’t always interact at the same time. Remember she wanted to be in charge. That was her number one side, and she butted heads with the royalty. But then on the number three side, she was very concerned about people. Remember she was looking at landmines, at wars, and trying to protect people. She had two very different sides. And then her brother, he becomes, he was the fourth born, but he was the second in that second family. So he has both characteristics of a two and a four. So that’s another type of double birth order. It gets a little complicated, but once you get the drift of it, it starts to all go together.

[00:09:01] Gina: So what if the first child is a girl and the second is a boy, because that’s what our family setup is, where our oldest are girls, and then the second child is a boy. Because you talked about if it’s boy/boy, and girl/girl, but what if they’re different sexes?

[00:09:17] Roxanne: Oh, yeah.

[00:09:19] Bob: To find your real birth order, there’s about eight different things we have to look at to find out who you really are. Just because you’re the second born, doesn’t mean you’re operating as a second born. If it’s a boy that’s a second born, and the family is very macho- in the South, the second born kid, the boy is usually called Hunter- he might be elevated to the number one position without doing anything because he’s the boy. And so number two becomes number one and number one, they’re trying to hold onto the throne, but sometimes they’re demoted and they get very angry about that.

[00:10:04] Bob: So between the two, it depends if it’s girl/boy, boy/girl, girl/girl, boy/boy, and in my book, Life’s Fingerprint- by the way, I was forced to write the book about this because one of my patients is a pediatrician, and he kept saying, “You understand all these kids so well, you need to write this down!” I said, “I’m not an author!” He says, “You better be because nobody has this information and you need to get it out there.” So I wrote a book called Life’s Fingerprint: How Birth Order Affects Your Path Throughout Life. And in that, I give you all these examples, families of people that you know, that have two girls or a girl/boy, boy/girl, all the combinations. And then when you get to number three, the number three child, when they’re born, there’s 17 different relationships they have to understand. They have to understand the relationship of the two kids above them and their relationships to the parents and to them, when you put it all together it’s 17.

[00:11:05] Roxanne: That’s a lot.

[00:11:05] Bob: Number three is really good at understanding group dynamics. When they get into a group, they’re very comfortable. They don’t get intimidated. They really, they sense intuitively how everyone’s relating to one another.

[00:11:19] Bob: And then the last birth order in the line is a number four. That’s the true baby in the family. That’s the one that everybody takes care of. Okay, now I know one of you has four children.

[00:11:29] Gina: I have four kids, so I’m like, tell me all the information. Break down each child for me.

[00:11:36] Bob: If you just, as a general rule, we say, okay, number one, it wants to be the leader, they want to be in charge. They want to give orders. Number two doesn’t want to be told what to do, and appears to be stubborn, but they just want to go their own way. Number three, looks at number one and number two like, “What are they doing to each other?” And they can be the instigator behind it, because they really understand what’s going on. But they see life very differently. They want to save the world. Or they may be artists, or they may like to commune with nature. And number three, you do have to be a little careful with them because they can be influenced by drugs and things like that because they’re very open. And number four is a true baby, everybody takes care of the baby. He’s not intimidated by older kids because he has older siblings, but he’s, he’s really good with the public. But, he sees life as fun. Everything’s gotta be fun for him.

[00:12:40] Bob: What happens is, you have these four, and if you have a number five, it starts the process all over again. Number five is like a number one. But it’s like primary and secondary colors. It’s the same, but not as intense. So a number six is like a number two, but not quite as stubborn, you might say, okay? That’s how it goes with these larger families. And then, it just keeps repeating itself.

[00:13:08] Roxanne: Yeah.

[00:13:08] Gina: So what are some of the key characteristics of the oldest? Because I want to know about myself and our oldest daughters.

[00:13:16] Roxanne: I guess my question, also, so like you say that there’s like these double birth orders in families, does this get affected if like you are very close to like other families and your kids are around a lot. So like Gina’s oldest and my oldest, we’re around each other a lot, does that make my oldest almost like a second?

[00:13:38] Bob: Let me just mention to find the real birth order, because you’re right on track, you’re trying to say, there’s other influences that are going on that are influencing my kids. It, birth order affects everything in all your life, but you have to look at the family and the interactions. Was your oldest child really living with the grandparents? So they were taken out of the family, and that changes the whole birth order structure of the family if the oldest kid, let’s say it was a girl, and all the rest are boys, and she was raised by a grandmother, and she wasn’t even in the house, or not in the house all the time.

[00:14:15] Bob: Here are some of the things you have to look at. First, the first thing is the spacing between the children. And then you have to look at, and we’ll get into it later, stepbrothers and sisters. If we have blended families, birth orders change. Because if you get increased, well, the simplest thing to understand birth order, it’s your number, in relation to your children in order of birth, but, if you blend families together with a divorce, birth orders can change because now they’re in with other children that could be older or younger. So if your birth order goes up, you respond to this new family great. If your birth order goes down and you get demoted, you do not get along well in this new family. It works out, it’s not very good.

[00:15:03] Bob: I’ll give you a story. One of my patients, she was an only child, and they’ve been divorced, the parents have been divorced for a long time, and she really wanted a father. And in my office, in a small community, I treat lots of patients with they’re brothers and sisters, and they’re all interrelated. Her mother decided to get married, and he happened to be, his girls were in my practice. So this little girl, when her mother married, she got two older sisters.

Now remember, she started as an only child. So what happened to her? She got demoted. She went from being an only child, everything, she had her own little room, her mom had her own house, to being number three, and sharing a room with two older sisters. Things did not go well and it was just a matter of time. I think it was within six months, they got divorced. Where was the power that got divorced? This only child. They’re treated like little adults. The only child said, “I had enough of this. Sure, I got a new Daddy, but I don’t like being demoted.” She didn’t know she was demoted, but she was a very cooperative patient and after they married and she was number three, she became very sullen, she became… it was, her personality changed completely. After the divorce, she was back to where she was before. So that’s what can happen in blended families. This should be exciting to you because it is!

[00:16:38] Bob: Now let’s talk about your girls. The two oldest girls, and their number ones, they should, that’s one of the things, 10 reasons to know about birth order. The first one is, find your best friend. Your best friend will have your same birth order. Why? Because they see things exactly as you do. So if you think about your best friends, they usually are the same birth order. And now your two girls are the same birth order. They just happen to have the same sisters as moms, but they probably get along just great. But I don’t think that influences the other kids in the family.

[00:17:14] Bob: Now you talked about the parent’s role. With birth order, and I’ll get back to some of the origins of it, with birth order, it’s the interrelationship between the kids that give you the personality characteristics, not the interrelationship with the parents. Only the only child gets the interaction with the parents. The kids, when you have four kids, you don’t have much time. These kids are interacting with each other all the time and deciding, who is going to take which role, whatever, in the family. When this happens, I tell parents, don’t be, don’t feel responsible for your child’s behavior. It’s not you. It’s them. And they’re different. Don’t try to make number three like a number one, because you’re going to be disappointed. They are who they are.

[00:18:11] Gina: I do find that there’s a little bit of a one to one competition with our oldest daughters. Where you may not see it, but so Roxanne’s oldest will want to play in a certain way and lead the play, but my oldest also wants to lead the play, and so it leads to some frustration because my oldest will be like, “Lily won’t let us play the way that I want to play.” But Lily is like, “I’m leading our play and this is the way.” So there’s a little bit of like head butting that happens with the two of them.

[00:18:40] Roxanne: They’re like, “You’re not playing right.”

[00:18:42] Gina: Because they both want to be the leader, and they’re like, they’re struggling with that, with each other, but they are like little besties cause they’re about two years apart from each other. So they are like always, they always want to play together, but they’ll have these little moments where they’re almost fighting like sisters, but they’re both ones fighting with each other, because they both want to be in charge.

[00:19:03] Bob: Yes, you, got that exactly right. You are, you’re getting the whole concept. And that’s, when I deal with businesses, when they’re trying to hire people for certain jobs, because certain jobs fit certain birth orders, I tell them, “You have to be careful when you put together a team. Because if you put together a team should be like a family. Everybody has their spot. One, two, three, four.” If you put the team together, and you put too many people in with the same birth order, they’re doing exactly what’s happening to your two girls. Each of the girls wants to be number one and they want to be in charge. So they’re butting heads. It’s so natural!

[00:19:43] Gina: So what jobs would you recommend generally for each birth? Obviously people do whatever you want, but I’m curious because I want to see how they match us. What is the one typically do versus a two, three and four?

[00:19:56] Bob: The one is like the border collie. They want to be in charge, see the whole picture. They might be your front desk person, your person that wants to keep track of everything that’s going on. And number two is going to be in a job where they don’t necessarily want to interact with a lot of people, but they want their own space. And they want to be like an accountant, for instance, they want to be their own little space and they do their thing and just don’t bother them, okay? But, it depends on the position in the company.

[00:20:35] Bob: I’ll give you an example of one story. It was a company I was dealing with and I was talking with the secretary and she says, “Let me tell you a story.” She says, “We were down in Miami on a trip with my boss and we were waiting for our plane and he had a Dr. Pepper. And I’d never had a Dr. Pepper and I said to him, ‘Could I have a taste of your Dr. Pepper?’ And he said, ‘No, I don’t share. I’m an only child.’ I was shocked. He’s my boss!” But there’s an example of birth order. I was working it out, I said, “That’s because he’s an only child and you’re not. You’re a sharer, but he’s not.” We have to look at all these characteristics, and it’s really interesting.

[00:21:29] Roxanne: That’s so cool.

[00:21:30] Bob: You, one of you said you need to ask a question about adoption, and that’s an easy one to answer. What happens when a family adopts a child? It’s just the number. It’s where they fit in the family in birth order. If they adopt a child and it demotes somebody because of the age, that demotion is going to not going to get along well with his adoption. But if you adopt and they’re all very young, doesn’t make any difference if they’re natural children or adopted children. They just fit into the role 1, 2, 3, 4.

[00:22:10] Gina: So what are some motivators for the different, and obviously each number has so many different variables within it, what are like the main motivators for one through four. Is it like number one really thrives being put into like leadership roles? Number two, like giving opportunities to make decisions? Like, how can we help our children thrive based on their birth order?

[00:22:35] Roxanne: And like, how do I make it so they listen when I asked them to do something.

[00:22:40] Bob: Number one, that could be the easiest one because they want to follow what the parents tell them to do. Number two, you want to explain everything to number two. If you say, “We’re going to go out to dinner tonight. Where do you want to go?” Don’t say, “Where do you want to go?” especially if they say, “I don’t want to go anywhere.” You say, “Where would you like to go? McDonald’s or Wendy’s?” So you give them a choice. With number three, we call them laughing on the outside, crying on the inside. They’re not going to show that they’re being hurt by somebody because they’re so fragile they know they’ll keep getting hurt. So with them, they have a very low threshold of pain. So you have to be very gentle with them. With number four, number four is just loosey goosey. They’re just, they’re every place at one time and they appear not to be very responsible because their older siblings take care of them and follow up behind them and find their appointment card that they’ve left on the sidewalk as they left the office. But as adults, they know who they are and sometimes they can rise to the occasion and do very well because remember they’re taught by their older siblings. So they can be ahead in school, because their older siblings taught them to read and before they got into school. And life’s very different for the number four.

[00:24:19] Gina: So what are some things that we should be careful of based on birth order? So you said number three is maybe a little bit more sensitive, like we need to be a little bit more mindful maybe when interacting with them that we don’t hurt them or make them really sad. What are some things to be mindful of with each birth order?

[00:24:38] Bob: Let’s say you’re taking them to a doctor’s visit. Okay, number one, you’re going to say, “You’re going to get your immunization today, you’re going to get your shots,” and she’s hesitant, and you say, “It’ll be fine,” and she’s like, “Okay.” Number two, “I’m not going.” Okay. Okay, so you know that’s coming with number two. And so you have to explain everything to them. With number three, you know that they’re going to be worrying about this for a long time before it happens because they’ve heard from the older siblings that shot is really going to hurt. And you really have to counsel them and help them along.

[00:25:25] Bob: Each child, you have to approach differently because they approach life differently. So again, I say, don’t treat all your children alike because they’re not, and they don’t want to be alike. So enjoy the differences between them, because they’re all going to do different stuff. Some people say, “What is the basis for birth order?”

[00:25:48] Bob: The basis for birth order, it started with a guy by the name of Alfred Adler. And he was a contemporary of Freud’s. In fact, they were in the same psychoanalytical society. And Freud felt that the children’s personalities was based on the parents, and it was all related to the parents. And Adler said, “I don’t think so. I think it’s related to their interaction with their siblings. Well, they didn’t get along at all, and of course, Adler was the second born in his family, and Freud was the first born in his father’s second family. So they weren’t going to get along anyway. So they split, and that’s where the idea of birth order came from. He was the father of birth order theory. And, he came to the states, I think he died in the 30s. But that’s where it all started. You have to understand their influences. other people have other ideas, but this one sure works.

[00:27:42] Roxanne: How does it work then when, so like you said, like four year difference. Is this usually just because the oldest is then going to school at that time so then they’re just not home as often?

[00:27:54] Bob: Yes, that’s exactly right. I use, I say four years, but really you have to say four school years. Because you want that kid out of the house for those four years when the other one is home, not going to school. And so he’s being nurtured like an only child. And of course, with a four year difference, the difference between an 8 year old and a 12 year old, with their friends, they don’t even communicate. They’re just too many years apart. So yes, that’s what happens.

[00:28:25] Gina: Especially if birth order is not necessarily the interaction between the parent and the child, but rather the interaction between the children.

[00:28:32] Roxanne: Yeah.

[00:28:32] Gina: I could see why if there’s a big gap, they may not interact quite as much. Cause, so the difference between me and like our youngest brother is five years, there’s not as much interaction between he and I versus Roxanne and him where they’re only two years apart. So when I graduated and went to college, like he was just entering into high school. So therefore, we weren’t like hanging out all the time like Roxanne and I were necessarily. So I could totally see why that four or five year gap would impact someone’s birth order if that is coming from the relationship.

[00:29:07] Gina: So what are some ways that we can help nurture this relationship between the children? Because my oldest really likes to take charge, sometimes a little aggressively, and we have to rein her back to be like, “Okay, I see that you’re in charge. Thank you for being helpful, but let’s not yell at your brother. Let’s talk with a calmer voice.” How can we help the dynamic? Is it focusing on the oldest and letting them then lead the crew? What would you recommend with fostering the relationship with the children?

[00:29:41] Bob: You let them be themselves. And like you said, sometimes the oldest who wants to give the orders, especially when the parent leaves the house and says, “Now you keep track of your younger siblings while we’re gone!” now you’ve just said, “You are the queen of the house. You have total power over everybody, okay?” Sometimes if your first born really takes this role, you might have to say, “I think you better listen to your younger sister and, just, cool it, don’t be too aggressive.”

[00:30:18] Bob: I use the example, when your first child is born, look at the family album. It’s got all the pictures. And now when the second’s born, look in the family album, fewer pictures. The third child has even fewer pictures and the fourth child’s lucky to have one at all! We do a thing in our office every so often, we put our baby pictures out on the desk for the patients to guess who is who. And one of my staff said, “Dr. Bob, they’re going to know who you are right away.” And I said, “How can that be? We’re all baby pictures. We’re all six months old.” She says, “No, yours is going to be the only one in black and white!” So she was right about that.

[00:31:04] Bob: But, anyway, it’s interesting. You look in the family album. You look at Thanksgiving dinner, when you have Thanksgiving dinner, everybody comes back and everybody is in the same role that they were when they were kids. If you were the number four, you’re still going to be, you might be an investment banker in Wall Street, but you’re going to be sitting at the little kids table because you’re back to be a number four like you were when you were growing up, so nothing changes. Go to a high school reunion, go back to a high school reunion. Now, I don’t think you’ve been away that long from your high school, but when you go back, everybody’s the same. They didn’t change. And the same thing is true with birth order, who you are, your number one is still going to be number one at their 25th high school reunion. And they’re going to be acting like number one. It doesn’t change.

[00:31:57] Gina: So let’s talk about, so number two is a little bit more stubborn. You need to really, you need to give them decisions, give them opportunities to take charge. Number three is a little bit more sensitive, a little bit more…. they’re really good with interpersonal skills, I think is what I’m understanding. And the number four is just really relaxed, like along for the ride kind of thing. So that’s pretty exciting.

[00:32:20] Gina: How can we interact better with each other? So I’m the oldest. I’m a one. Roxanne is the number two. We’re only two years apart. How could we improve our relationship? Cause obviously the way that I think about the world is different than the way Roxanne thinks about the world. And I’m expecting her to be like me and she’s expecting me to be like her. So how could we improve our interactions? Be our therapist.

[00:32:48] Bob: You just did it. And if you notice in our interview here, you have been doing all the talking. Roxanne has been fairly silent and taking her role as number two. Okay? but each of you have a role to play. So you don’t want to turn a number one into a number two, and you don’t want to turn a number two into a number one. What you want to do is take those characteristics that they have and use them to the best of their ability to fill in the gaps that you don’t have.

[00:33:21] Bob: Some of the things that, that number one has that number two doesn’t have, and that’s why when I say in business, if you put together a team, you want all the different birth orders so you’re acting like a family. And each person gives something to the team that somebody else doesn’t give. So what you want to do is celebrate the differences. You don’t want to turn, you don’t want to turn Roxanne into you, okay? You want to let her be her thing and she’s contributing to your endeavor in her special way that you don’t, and you do your thing that she doesn’t. She doesn’t want to tell people what to do, you do! Okay? But she’s looking at it very differently, so she’s going to relate to people in a different way than you will, so together, you cover the spectrum, which is great.

[00:34:14] Bob: And that’s, what’s true about families. You don’t want to put two kids in the same place. For instance, twins. That question could come up, I’ll bring it up. What happens with twins?

[00:34:26] Gina: I didn’t even think about that. So what happens with twins?

[00:34:30] Roxanne: Yeah, or any multiples really.

[00:34:32] Bob: In my book, at the end of the book, I have a section called, questions and answers that I’ve had at many presentations. And all these questions that come up, I have them in the book to answer. With twins, they will take their spot, the oldest and the youngest- even if actually it was different, it’s whatever they were told. They act out that position. So if the first born is a twin, then there’d be a number one and a number two. The problem comes when, let’s say, the first birth is number one. Then a couple years go by and they have the twins. The twins take a lot of energy from the family. It’s a birth, but they were two kids. So of these two kids, one of the twins is going to become a two, and one of the kids is going to become a three. But number one sees these twins as THE twins. And feels like you’ve taken away all my power. When I was here by myself, I was an only child to start with- and that’s what happened with you, you started as an only child until Roxanne was born, then you became a one. Okay? Too bad. But what’s happened with the twins, that’s even a stronger pull away from number one.

[00:35:59] Bob: It almost works like if number two was disabled in some way. Well, number one gets dethroned by number two, because number two needs all this medical care or whatever, and number one can’t say anything negative, because that would just be bad. So they harbor a resentment against this number two, that they could never voice because that would be wrong. So this is dynamics of birth order that happens in families. So when you get twins born, anywhere along the line, they disrupt the order in the family because they take so much attention and so many resources. So it’s an interesting, and of course triplets do the same thing, they each will take a role.

[00:36:48] Gina: Three babies! One baby at a time is a lot. I couldn’t imagine, oh my goodness.

[00:36:52] Roxanne: Two, bless them, everybody that has two or three at once.

[00:36:54] Gina: I need a moment to like process that. Three babies at one time, oh my goodness.

[00:37:00] Bob: I guess in your case, when you’re dealing with mothers that are pregnant, you need to give them advice about the other children in the family when this next baby is coming.

[00:37:13] Gina: How would you prepare a child for a new sibling? We have, I have four, Roxanne has three.

[00:37:20] Roxanne: Yeah, and we’ve both, been pretty intentional on how we introduce siblings, like new babies. Like when they’re born, like we have like different ideas, like you get them presents and like they can buy the baby a present and different things.

[00:37:34] Gina: But I feel like it’s been different each time, too, where like, what really worked well for my oldest was different than what worked well for my next and for my three. But my oldest, there’s a three year age gap, so I just thought maybe it was because of the gap. Like I was like, “Oh, it’s cause she was a little bit older.” So how could somebody prepare their child for a new sibling based on their birth order?

[00:38:01] Bob: You can look at the characteristics. Number one wants to be in charge. So the new baby, you let number one know that they’re going to be responsible for helping with this new baby.

[00:38:15] Roxanne: Oh, yeah.

[00:38:17] Bob: Because number 1 wants to be in charge and so, oh, this is another opportunity for you to tell people what to do.

[00:38:25] Roxanne: Yeah.

[00:38:26] Gina: My oldest has definitely thrived with each new sibling with being the person that’s the helper.

[00:38:31] Roxanne: Yeah. Helping throw away the diapers.

[00:38:33] Gina: She’s like, “I want to be the helper, I’m going to manage these other kids for you, like I’m like I got the diapers. I’m gonna help change the diaper. Okay.”

[00:38:40] Roxanne: Oh, yeah, or pick out the outfits.

[00:38:43] Gina: Yeah, okay.

[00:38:44] Roxanne: Picking out and like being in charge of different things.

[00:38:48] Bob: Yeah I think your personal experiences with your family, and as you said, of course every family is gonna be a little bit different, if number two has not dethroned number one and is number two, you have to let number two know that this baby coming into the world is not going to be influencing his or her life telling her what to do.

[00:39:13] Gina: Oh, okay. I got it. I got it now.

[00:39:17] Bob: Yeah. So number two is still independent. And number three, they’re so sensitive, they’re curious about what’s going on, and, they don’t want to be in charge of anything, but, what is this new baby that came in? Of course, the new baby, of number three would be a number four, okay? So they might feel like the older sibling, a little bit. And they’re a little bit like the number one to the number four, not the same, they just see it differently. They’re curious.

[00:39:52] Gina: Yeah, so with my second, I’ll let you obviously input what it was like for Colin.

[00:39:57] Gina: So when my second was, or my third was born, my second was not as interested in doing all of the things. Like he was not like, “I’m going to do the diapers or take care of the baby,” but he still wanted to get attention and to be a priority as well, which I could understand with, they still want their independence, but they don’t want this baby to dictate their day either. Like they, they want to do their thing. And then when my fourth was born, Sophie is my third, she is very nurturing. She wants to like help with the baby, but she really is wanting to help with the baby so she could snuggle with me and she definitely has more like emotional outbursts like than my other children have had. And so I just like joke with my husband. I’m like, “She’s the third child that she needs to be loud to get attention. Like she’s competing with these two loud kids.”

[00:40:53] Roxanne: Yeah.

[00:40:54] Gina: And so she’s definitely got more like really strong emotions that she’s expressing, but still wants to be very nurturing with the fourth. So my kids are matching along.

[00:41:05] Gina: How was it with you with Colin?

[00:41:07] Roxanne: Lily, definitely, so like her oldest was three when the second was born. So I assumed that it was going to be different because my child was two when our second was born, but she was still very much the same where she wanted to help and she like wanted to have tasks. So like she would help get the toy that he wanted, or she would help throw away the diaper, she just wanted to have like control and be in charge of stuff, or even, “Oh, I don’t want to help, I want to go on the walk with dad, I’m going to walk our dogs with Daddy,” and so she just really wanted to still be in control, but help still. With my second, he, he was like a whole other kid, which makes sense. Like the first one, she was definitely a different personality than he was. But when our third was born, he was definitely still very much intrigued by our daughter, like he still wanted to be with her and hang out with her, but I think it was to like be with me still, but like definitely needed more control of things. Like he didn’t want us to tell them what to do. He wanted to do his own thing still. Like he wanted to be with me and he was intrigued by the baby, but he definitely needed more to have control of yes or no. So that’s like still like he almost was similar to my daughter, where he wanted like tasks, but like he wanted to be able to be like, I don’t wanna do that though.

[00:42:34] Gina: I feel like Eoghan, our, so both our seconds are boys, I feel like Eoghan was better at the free play. Like I could give him an independent toy or something to play with and he was much more into that when my third was born. But it hasn’t been the same when my youngest, when my number four was born, with Sophie, she wanted to do independent play like with me.

[00:42:57] Roxanne: Yeah.

[00:42:58] Gina: Like he was good with just I can give him like a sensory bin and he would play with it just by himself. But Sophie would play with it like right next to me. Like, she wanted to play with the toy, with me, not by herself, but he wanted to do a little bit more independent.

[00:43:14] Roxanne: Yeah. He definitely, though, expressed more emotions when we would tell him to do things after she was born. Where if we’re like, “Okay, let’s put on our shoes and go for a walk.” He’d be like, “No.”

[00:43:26] Gina: “You will not tell me. No. Don’t tell me how to live my life.”

[00:43:29] Roxanne: “I’m not. I’m not doing that, no.”

[00:43:31] Roxanne: “We’re gonna eat dinner now.”

[00:43:33] Roxanne: “No.”

[00:43:34] Bob: I’ll tell you something else that’s intriguing, two things. One, as a parent you are going to relate better to the child that has your birth order.

[00:43:47] Roxanne: And this was my next question, was like how does my birth order as a parent, like how does this affect how I parent my children? Because obviously Gina’s the oldest and she’s definitely a little bit closer, I feel like to her oldest. Like obviously you’re close to all your children, but like you and Adeline are like definitely…

[00:44:06] Gina: We’re on the same wavelength.

[00:44:08] Roxanne: Whereas, my I mean my son is definitely the harder one, like he’s harder for me, but…

[00:44:13] Gina: Do you think it’s because you were both middle children?

[00:44:19] Roxanne: But even my oldest- I, we, my husband and I are both middle children too, which also super intriguing- but we are, we have a harder time like, not disciplining, but like working with our oldest daughter, not like relating to her, but like when she needs like help with controlling her emotions, it’s harder for us to deal with her than it is our son, which he’s this, he’s our middle child as well. Like we’re both second children. So I’m like, “Oh, that’s… I wonder if that’s why.”

[00:44:50] Bob: I have wonderful answers for you.

[00:44:53] Gina: Oh good, tell us!

[00:44:54] Roxanne: Oh, I’m intrigued. Please tell me!

[00:44:56] Bob: First of all, what can happen is if your children have higher birth orders than the parents, then they want to be in charge.

[00:45:08] Bob: In your case, Roxanne, you have a daughter that’s a number one, but you’re a number two. She supersedes you and she wants to be in charge. And that’s why you’re having this problem.

[00:45:21] Roxanne: Yeah! Yes, she does!

[00:45:24] Bob: She’s a number one and she has a number one. So that’s, I have a, an assistant in my office who’s, who happens to be a number four. And she has two girls, a one and a two. They’re in charge. I’ll give you a story, and she told me this story. She said her best friend is the same birth daughter, number four. And they, one day they wanted to go out to lunch, and they couldn’t decide where they wanted to go to lunch. So they said, “Let’s get our kids out of school,”- they both had number one girls- “let’s get our kids out of school, they’ll know where we want to go to lunch!” They took their kids out of school, the two number one girls, with the number four parents, and they decided where they were going to go to lunch. Once you understand birth order, deal with it, don’t try to fight it. So in your case, you’re number one, is superior to you and your husband in birth order, and they want to be in charge. And that’s why you have that, that issue.

[00:46:26] Bob: But let me take it a step further, there’s two kinds of love at first sight. Let’s get to the love issue before we get to the children. One kind of love at first sight is when you meet someone with the same birth order and Roxanne, you married a guy that has your same birth order.

[00:46:46] Roxanne: Yeah.

[00:46:46] Bob: You’re both twos. Now, my question to you is, did he have an older sister?

[00:46:52] Roxanne: He had an older brother.

[00:46:54] Bob: Older brother. Okay. So one type of love at first sight is when you meet someone with your same birth order. The problem with that is you can only have one image in the mirror at a time. So one of you has to step out of the picture, so you have to take different roles within the family to make this thing work because you’re too much alike and you see things the same way and you think the same way. But, like one person could be in charge of world affairs and the other person could be in charge of local affairs or something.

[00:47:25] Bob: The other kind of love at first sight is if you meet someone with the gender and the position of someone in your family. Like in, for you two, you had a younger brother, a number three. So if you met a man that had two older sisters, it would be a perfect match, because you understand that number three male position in your family, and then you would understand him perfectly. And if he had a number two sister, a number one sister, you have to match what’s in your family. You don’t necessarily have to like the kid in your family, you just have to understand that position. I use the example of, okay, you have a girl, a number one girl with a number two brother, and then you have a number one boy with a number two girl. Those two could match up because they represent a perfect match in their family. You say, I had an older brother, I had a younger sister. And so you match the gender with the position. And when I’ve done my talks, I asked the question, “Is anybody here that’s married that is matched the gender and the position of the other sibling, of their spouse and their family? Did any of you ever get divorced?” And I’ve never had a hand go up, never. And I’ve talked to thousands of people. And I said, “Oh my gosh.” Nothing is absolute. Now, where it would fall apart is if that number one had been dethroned by number two. Then they’re really not a number one anymore, they’re really a number two. And that can happen. I see the look on your faces like, “I never thought of that!”

[00:49:31] Gina: Yeah, my husband’s family is funky because he’s the fourth child for his dad, but the second for his mom, but he didn’t grow up with his siblings, but he also has step siblings, so he’s one of six, but he only really grew up with his sister, and he’s the second for her. So I’m trying to figure out in my head, what number?

[00:49:50] Roxanne: But he had an older sister.

[00:49:51] Gina: He had two older sisters.

[00:49:54] Bob: So what is he, in the family? I always say, in the family that you grew up with in age 16, by age 16, what number was he after the parents got divorced and then remarried or whatever. He was growing up with all these siblings. What number was he when he was growing up with all these other siblings?

[00:50:11] Gina: So I don’t know if he really was like growing up with them though. I think they all lived in separate households, but he would have been, I think, number six of the siblings. But… yeah, but probably number two because he only really lived with his oldest sister.

[00:50:30] Bob: Yeah, a six is also a two.

[00:50:33] Gina: Oh yeah. That’s true.

[00:50:34] Roxanne: Yeah. So either way, he’s two.

[00:50:36] Bob: You had a number two sister, obviously very close to you.

[00:50:41] Roxanne: That makes sense.

[00:50:42] Bob: Number two.

[00:50:42] Roxanne: He’s me.

[00:50:44] Gina: I married my sister.

[00:50:48] Roxanne: This is intriguing cause Mom.

[00:50:51] Gina: Oh, so, our dad is number four. His oldest is a girl, and then there’s three boys, and so he’s the fourth child. Our mom is number five, and she has an older sister, three brothers, and then her. So she’s like the number one.

[00:51:08] Roxanne: But then they had, what, two more after her?

[00:51:11] Gina: Yeah, and then there’s two younger siblings from her.

[00:51:13] Roxanne: So she’s really number one!

[00:51:15] Gina: Yes. She’s like a one.

[00:51:17] Roxanne: Which totally fits her.

[00:51:18] Gina: Yeah. Which is why her and I vibe so much.

[00:51:22] Bob: This one’s easy because the younger ones, they don’t make a difference. But your mother was a five. So she’s like a number one. Your dad was a four and he had a number one sister.

[00:51:33] Roxanne: Oh, so mom, that’s perfect match. They have not divorced.

[00:51:39] Gina: They’re still married.

[00:51:40] Bob: There you go.

[00:51:41] Roxanne: That’s crazy. Oh man. I’m gonna like literally ask everyone now.

[00:51:48] Gina: I know.

[00:51:48] Bob: Since you’re getting this so well, I’ll throw another idea out there to you.

[00:51:53] Bob: What happens to an only child? How can they match up right? Because they don’t have any other siblings. What they do is they take on the birth orders of their parents, and the dominant parent is their dominant birth order. But let’s say their parents, one was a one and one was a two, so that only child, they come in all different flavors, so that only child has a flavor of a one and a two. Or let’s say it’s a one and a three, they may end up marrying a three because they understand that position. That was, maybe their dad was a three and their mom was a one.

[00:52:35] Roxanne: So intriguing.

[00:52:36] Bob: They are different, and it depends on the birth orders of their parents.

[00:52:40] Gina: Oh, man.

[00:52:41] Bob: I found this every time. They say, “What’s my perfect match?” And I say, “Tell me the birth orders of your parents.” And then one says, “One’s a one, and one’s a three.” I said, “You either married a number one or you married a number three.” He said, “That’s right! I did.”

[00:52:55] Gina: Oh, man. That’s wild.

[00:52:57] Roxanne: So it’s either the same birth order or the birth order of your siblings.

[00:53:02] Bob: Birth order of your siblings is the other type of love at first sight. The one that matches. The other type of love is first sight is when you see someone with your same birth order. It’s just, there’s two types.

[00:53:14] Roxanne: Intriguing. This is so intriguing.

[00:53:18] Bob: This birth order thing is running throughout your life. It’s behind the scenes. It’s like a radio wave or TV wave. It’s on, and you don’t realize that you’ve tuned into it, but you really haven’t. Once you start to understand birth order, you tune into it and all of a sudden, everything’s making sense. Because it’s running, it’s determining how you’re reacting to people and how you’re making decisions. And if you understand it, it takes all the stress out of your life.

[00:53:46] Gina: That is, this is all really interesting.

[00:53:48] Roxanne: I guess, I’m interested as well, so my children go to a Montessori school. And in Montessori, like they group three age groups together. So there’s the oldest, the middle and the youngest in every classroom. And as you go through the classrooms, you are in every position. So you learn what it’s like to be the youngest in the classroom, the middle child, for lack of a better word, in the classroom, and then the oldest. And my daughter is now, she’s done her two lower years, and now she is the oldest, and she is just thriving. Is this because potentially age order as well, like, why Montessori does this is that you experience all of these different birth orders in, obviously, a controlled setting, but, maybe your actual birth order is where you would probably thrive the most.

[00:54:38] Bob: I didn’t know that about the Montessori schools. That’s very interesting. I don’t know why they’re doing that, but I don’t think it would be very productive. Because everybody is who they are. You’re not going to change them. And what happens is, if you put the number one in the situation that they are the now the youngest, they are not going to like that situation because you’ve demoted them.

[00:55:07] Roxanne: Yeah.

[00:55:07] Bob: They’re not going to do very well in that situation. But like you said, when she was in the position where she was the oldest, she was doing very well.

[00:55:14] Roxanne: She loves it.

[00:55:15] Gina: Montessori School needs to talk to me. I need to give them some advice.

[00:55:22] Roxanne: It’s like, Montessori philosophy is, I mean, this is a whole nother thing, it’s a really interesting philosophy where the, you get to experience all of those different age orders that almost makes maybe people like empathize with all of the different things. But that’s a whole tangent.

[00:55:38] Gina: But I would be curious if the teachers look at the birth order versus the order in the classroom and how well certain children thrive in specific years.

[00:55:49] Roxanne: I’m going to ask my friend who’s a teacher this, but, this is so interesting, yeah.

[00:55:54] Bob: So now you can, understand what’s going on if that’s what they’re trying to do. What I also find is, and you have a number three brother, and sometimes in families, the boy is supposed to be the one in charge, because you know, if it’s a male dominated family.

[00:56:12] Roxanne: Yeah, he doesn’t want to be though.

[00:56:13] Bob: But what happens is that if you try to make a number three act like a number one, it’s just an act. And the act is, “Oh, I have to tell people what to do. I have to be in charge.” And sometimes they can overdo it, but it’s just an act. That’s not who they are. They’re just pretending to be like a number one. They’re supposed to act like a number one, but they’re not a number one at all. They’re really the sensitive number three. So it’s just an act for them to take these other roles.

[00:56:44] Bob: And the same thing happens in families when there are deaths of siblings. You have to move up in birth order to fill those gaps. And you’re still who you really are, but you have to act in that other, job. Let’s say that number one is deceased, number two has to move up and do the job of number one, but they’re really a number two.

[00:57:13] Bob: There’s a dynamics that goes on. Like I said, there’s seven or eight characteristics, things you have to look at to find your real birth order. Death of siblings, step siblings, who you grew up with. All these things, illnesses in the family.

[00:57:29] Gina: Thank you so much for coming on the podcast to share your expertise on the birth order. It was definitely a really interesting conversation for us. Where can our listeners learn more from you?

[00:57:40] Bob: They can go to, I have several websites, but the one they should go to is, this is easy, mybirthorder.com.

[00:57:48] Roxanne: Oh, easy.

[00:57:49] Bob: And on that, you’ll see all kinds of things, but you’ll see, you’ll see the book, I’ll hold it up here. This is a hard cover and it’s in color and it has that section on all the questions that, that I’ve been asked or many of them that I’ve been asked. You can also get this thing on Amazon, but it’s a soft cover, it was our first edition, it’s soft cover, it’s not in color, doesn’t have the question section.

[00:58:14] Bob: But the other thing you can get on our website is a narrated version, which is on a USB, just plug this in. And it’s got everything that’s in the hardcover book, you know, if you don’t want to carry a book around. But I suggest the book, because it’s great for the coffee table, especially for Thanksgiving dinner, when everybody will be talking about their birth order because the book is there and they’ll be looking themselves up in the book. We also have t shirts and all kinds of stuff on the site.

[00:58:46] Gina: Yeah, “I am number one” will be my t shirt.

[00:58:49] Bob: Your t shirt says, I’m number one, put me in charge.

[00:58:54] Roxanne: Which, yeah.

[00:58:55] Bob: Your t shirt says, “I’m number two. Don’t tell me what to do.”

[00:58:59] Gina: Oh, man. It looks like I know what your Christmas gift is.

[00:59:03] Gina: Thank you so much, Dr. Bob, for coming on to the podcast. We truly appreciate your time and your expertise.

[00:59:09] Roxanne: Yeah, this was so exciting.

[00:59:10] Bob: Thank you so much.

[01:00:05] Gina: Thank you so much for listening to this episode all about birth order. Hopefully you’ve gathered some tools to help you interact with your children, your own siblings, in addition to, I think my favorite part is how to prepare your kids for a new sibling because each child responds to it in a slightly different way, which is what we’ve noticed with our own children that we didn’t recognize until this past hour, so we have been enlightened in this episode.

[01:00:38] Gina: If you enjoy this episode, be sure to like, and subscribe to our channel so you get notified whenever we release new episodes. You can listen to our episodes on Spotify, Apple podcasts. You can watch us and look at our beautiful faces on YouTube. So yeah, check us out every Wednesday we release new episodes and on Fridays, birth stories.