Birth Order

I've read the books, the articles, the psychology. Where you fall in line with your siblings tells a lot about who you are as a person. I subscribe to that - a little bit. But as with any rule, there are exceptions.

I married an "oldest" child, who firmly believes in the idea that the "youngest child" (looks at self, yep, I'm one of those) is always spoiled and gets away with things the oldest never could. I beg to differ. As the youngest child, it was assumed I would follow my older siblings and commit the same or similar transgressions, hence, intervention methods were taken. It took me a long time to figure out how come I was blamed for certain things I never did! Why my parents assumed I would act a certain way.

Don't get me wrong, some of the psychology is spot-on and I'm not here to tell you none of those birth-order traits apply to me. I am here to tell you some of those birth order traits apply to all children, no matter where they fall in the natural order.

So what's the point today? Bryan Benson.

For those of you following my Epitaph series, you might have read my concerns that Bryan was annoying me too much to get his own darn book. I'd committed to writing 7 Epitaph books, but when it came to that final sibling, I had a hard time relating to him, until I considered his birth order.

Bryan is NOT a youngest child. He's technically a middle child, but as I was writing Epitaph 6 (which is with the editor as we speak! YAY!), I figured I should give Bryan a chance to show me he was worthy of his own story, and you know what? He did. He has two older brothers who give him grief and a younger sister with "special talents." Is it any wonder this guy has issues? In each of his siblings' books, he's framed from their perspective. Of course they love their family, but they also don't consider his feelings all the time. He's their brother, after all. In Bryan's case, birth order does matter, and in order to write his story, I had to take him away from the bosom of family to give him a chance to grow and thrive and show the world there's more to him than being Amy's older brother and Thad and Garth's little brother. The more he showed up in Epitaph 6, the more I knew he deserved his chance in Epitaph 7.

Where do you fall in the birth order? How has it shaped the person you've become?