How to Plan Your Family Using Birth Order
Birth order affects all aspects of your life. It starts with the very beginning of life Birth. In today’s society you can plan your births or adoptions and in so doing structure your family in a variety of ways.
The birth number and spacing between siblings will affect their personalities. Using Birth Order can let you know what the future holds before you add a birth to your family or adopt a child.
The First Born
The first child starts life as an Only child. As parents, the two of you can hover over this child and address his every need. He can become very adult like or very spoiled as he or she gets anything and everything they want.
We see them in the characters they played as the children in Willy Wonka and he Chocolate Factory. Charlie was adult like, the others spoiled. This child loses his exalted status with the addition of the next child; sometimes a very difficult transition.
Spacing the Second Sibling
Your next decision in adding to your family is to decide on the spacing of the Second sibling. If you wait less than 4 years you will be building a family of interacting children. Each successive sibling interacts with the others for a group of children each playing their own birth order role within the family.
The Interactive Family
With less than 4 years between births you get an interactive family. You have the bossy #1 telling the others what to do. The number 2 that doesn’t want to be told what to do.
The number 3 that stirs the pot but stays outside the sibling rivalry of the first two, and number 4, the baby that everyone ignores so has to be loud just to be noticed. Each child can help the younger one through the process of toilet training an d school. Everyone has their role to play in the family.
Spacing 4 or more years
You do have a second choice. Space your children four or more years apart. Because of this spacing, you add the Only birth order to these children. This happens because this child spends time at home alone with a parent while the older sibling is at school.
You might have decided to do this so you could focus your attention on each child and not be overwhelmed during those developmental years one through four.. that take so much hands on attention.
The Affect of a Double Birth Order
For those that space their children 4 or more years apart, they add the Only birth order to each of their birth numbers. This gives these children 10 times the power of a single birth order child.
You end up with individual families of one child each. They do not interact like the closely spaced family but each child does have a birth order that the Only birth order amplifies, magnifies, and intensifies his birth order characteristics.
Examples of these Double birth orders are
- 1/0 Sylvester Stallone, Oprah, Barack Obama Bill Clinton
- 2/0 David Letterman, Ellen DeGeneres, Britney Spears
- 3/0 Suzanne Somers, Alfred Hitchcock, Dr. Phil
- 4/0 Jodie Foster, Don Knotts, Billy Carter Mitt Romney