I was thinking of a speech therapist that I worked within a school district and she told me she's a force kid. And by the way, I count birth orders by 4 1 2 3 4 & V kid has very similar characteristics to number one and so on down. The line is the 15th kid would be a third kid as we count them. If I'm counting accurately and the this particular fourth the child divorce born speech pathologist who was telling me I'll go over the weekend. She and her husband was the first born child were looking at an exhibit and stop playing your piano and she stood way back and looked at the whole piano cuz worth kids look first at totalities at Unity Sand they're interested in the total outcomes in holistic approach. Where's the first thing her husband did was to go up to the piano and play with an individual keys and look at the gears and how they fit together. She and the other hand.You looked at the whole gradually centered in on the various parts as they related to one another and eventually got to the gears he took off from the gear looking and got to an appreciation of the whole. So then that since they did almost exactly opposite. He was a piece by piece man, which is a good first kid the trait. She was a holistic one, which is a good for skin trade. Maybe it's probably better for me at this point to describe. What each of the kids do very briefly. So you get a sense of how I use the information for his kids come into the family and they represent the family to the world. And so in that sense first kids are always looking for some kind of awareness or approval from the world. And since the very first thing that is necessary in any system is to be productive. Then the first Kidz highest goal is to achieve results. And so they're always interested in approval for results that makes them important to a pay attention to social values and social virtues makes it important for them always to be approved of makes it most important for them to feel they're always right on and sometimes forced kids always have to be right. I'm not just right on It also is crucial in the first kid doesn't really care where he's going as long as he's going somewhere and that's the distinction between the first kid in the fourth as I've mentioned second can kids come into the family has always been another child, by the way. Another thing about the way in which I Compras order is that birth order is in the eyes of the parents not in the eyes of the siblings. So there may be a child who has died an infant or there may be a stillborn and those are still counted because almost every family that I've ever talked to us. He's a stillborn infant as a child who has been their own and who has lived so very often birth order is counted from the all the pregnancies that have been full term or they have in fact I survived even for a short time. So a second child coming into the family is already had to a predecessor. And all the things about competition seem to be so but that's not the crucial area. Cuz that's more how the parents of you the relationship between first and second kid, but the second kid comes into a place that he doesn't have a sense of how he needs to represent the families of the world fact, he needs to know more how the family operates so second kids pick up the internal functioning and the structure of a family they need to know more about what's going on inside. So the way I described second kids most simply is they look for the internal form and structure and they look for the underneath stuff. So if you want to know how your unconscious is doing you look at your second kid, they pick up the underlying feelings and behavior is most often in our families and our current to Western culture feelings are the ones that are under the table. So very often second kids act out the underneath feelings as if they're Totally unaware and they are they don't know they're acting out what they're picking up in turn on and each of the first two kids seem to be more related to individual members of the family. For example, first kids are more Visa V. The father second kids see more Visa V the mother and in relation to that mean sometimes they copy them. Sometimes they do the opposite. Sometimes they opposed their function. Sometimes they look as if they're disturbing their function are a variety of ways of looking. So again manifestation depends on the family expectations, but the basic process of how you see the world is what the birth order function is about their kids come along and since those first two individual positions of already been filled there another child, they're not just the first kid or the second kid trying to find out their place in the family the third kid tries to find out something about what any other child does in that particular family. And so they connect The missing part so far in that is the dyad. Their children's end are the best describers of the nature of the marriage relationship since the most important diet in the family is the parents and how their marriage goes there kids describe that in the most effective way. So if you want understand something about marriages and families, you look at the third kid fourth kids come along and they and their organizational function take care of the family Unity. So they did with the family as a whole. They're more interested in picking up all the aspects of the family that would disturb the unity so forth kids pick up family pain, they take on responsibility even Way Beyond that which would be expected so that they often get overwhelmed and helpless and we called forth kids off in the garbage collectors cuz they pick up all the family paying that seems to be there to disrupt the family as a whole. So those are some very brief descriptions of how we think each particular perceptual system is and they have their affair. symptoms of what they learn and how they learn what happens in a family of only two children do do the two first two children pickup aspects that the non-existent third and fourth child Mike. We don't believe so since when children come into a family they force the family to re-evaluate their function. And so if you don't have any other kids an only child as a first kid, there just aren't any kids afterwards. They don't pick up 2nd 3rd or 4th can functions cuz there is theoretically no longer in need for that function and parents feel that function by the rules and expectations of the family. Just not through the birth order roll itself. You foresee a future in which parents will find a little easier to guide and raise their children because we'll understand the importance of how our families are structured. That's the purpose of creating the theory and I want to emphasize that it is a theory. It's a way of looking away a slicing a human being just like all of our psychological theories are it doesn't mean it's the truth by itself. I hope that in using that way of looking we understand how kids don't function and some very critical situations and that it may be related more to their birth orders and it may be to their special learning disabilities. I've seen slbp kids labeled as having learning disabilities because teachers weren't aware that some of their ways of learning that the we're natural to them and they're as birth order sequence. We're getting in the way of the teacher of functioning. For example, my own fourth child came into a class and the teacher said she learned beautifully and understood but she was a poor test taker and they didn't understand how could she could take test so poorly when she did well in her other academic Pursuits, and so I asked the teacher if If she had a test that I could say in the teacher gave it to me and I looked at it and it was filled with short answers and multiple choice and true and false and feelings. And I said, oh I see what my daughter is the fourth kid in this is a first kid test and she doesn't know how to take for a skin test. Are you a Frisk it and the teacher said, yes, she was and then I explained that the fourth kid learns and outcomes that if they know the purpose in the direction of what they're learning and what it looks like when they finish they'll be able to get there. But as they have only piece by piece material and short answers, they will never know what it looks like when they finish so that my daughter come in a cool song but you can't give you the third line of the song if you want the third line, you'll have to pick it out if she tells you the whole song cuz she learns and totalities so we had to train her to learn in the first kid world and gradually by his grace. She's picking up more and more of that information, but it was a real problem for her in early grades and then lots of words kids have that problem their kids for example, never need outlines because They know enough information to do the outline. They already can do the paper that they need to do. So usually do the outlines after they finish the paper but teachers demand outline so that they discriminate against their kids for kids always need outlines. So that kind of Distinction. Dr. Jerome Bach family psychiatrist in medical director at the BOK Institute in Minneapolis. He also teaches Psychiatry and law at the University of Minnesota. I'm Stephanie Johnson.