BOR Essay Final Draft

Brian Rios

8/26/14

3^rd Period

                                                           My Birth Order Traits

In the research conducted about birth orders, they perfectly described me as which child I was right down to the word, and that was the middle child. The research said that middle children had traits of those that I wrote down when asked to describe ourselves and what we felt were our traits. For example, one trait mentioned that matched what I wrote down was misunderstood. I often feel as if I am misunderstood by my parents all the time and get in trouble when I try to help or do something right. So in other words; being misunderstood is a definite trait of a middle child and the research accurately describes me.

One out of the many traits the birth order research speculated that was common in middle children was prone to embarrassment. This particular trait is in fact true and I strongly agree with it. As an example, when I was asked to go up to the front of the class to present a six word story on vine that I had not even created in this English class, needless to say I was nervous and a bit embarrassed. Another time in Health class we had to tell the whole class about ourselves from what our favorite hobbies are, and even to how many siblings we had, but we had to present it to whole class. When I present something I feel very uncomfortable and would rather not stand up at all and just be shy about it. This goes into consideration for any form of public speaking, so whether it’s in front of a classroom or the whole school, this trait of is middle child perfectly describes me.

Another trait that was found in middle children was being secretive and I myself shamefully agree with this one because it is also true about the way I act. For example I don’t like to share everything with my family so I only keep the things that are convenient to me a secret and one time my dad gave me money, but told me to share it with my younger sister by splitting it in half. When my dad told me this I said I would but secretly I didn’t give her any money at all and she didn’t even know about it. There was also another time when I asked my mom for money, and I received five dollars but I also asked my dad for money and he didn’t know I had already asked my mom for money so I was being a little sneaky that time too. I agree with the trait of middle children being secretive because every now and then I’m a little sneaky when it comes to money and other things.

One of the traits that I strongly disagree with is the trait where they found middle children often more willing to “give in”. This is not the way I look at life at all; just waiting for the chance to “give in and stop trying” I try my hardest until I know it’s not possible to something at all. As an example, imagine someone playing a video game that is so hard it makes people “rage” and this means they’re screaming and cursing because it’s so hard. Those types of games I keep trying and keep trying to pass it, and this might sound like a cliché but I never stop trying whether it’s a game that’s very difficult or a real life situation when under stress or pressure. An example that’s more recent is when this school year started I had forgotten completely about Algebra and was taking the course Algebra II, so you can imagine I had a rough time catching up but I never gave up and I kept trying to remember my old skills of Algebra while trying to learn new ones at the same time. I strongly disagree with the trait found in middle children that they are often willing to “give in” because I am definitely not like the trait described.

           So in conclusion, except for a few traits that I found to disagree with the rest of the traits were correct and I found I could connect to them in many ways. My thoughts on this research that I had never heard of traits for a birth order and always thought children always acted the way they do because of the way they were raised by their parents and not their birth order, so before this I had not taken consideration the order they were born at all. My views have changed because I can now tell who’s the first born because it’s very obvious, so all the high achievers are mostly first born children or just really take up after their older sibling. I also related to the traits found in middle children and found that these were right, all but were wrong. I found the birth order traits to be interesting and now clears up many things about my siblings and myself.