Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 46 | Why Birth Order Really Matters

Transcript

Ep. 46 | Why Birth Order Really Matters · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:06
  Hey guys, welcome to the 5-Minute Fatherhood Podcast. I'm your co-host, Jeff Beth Key, along with my friend and mentor, Jeremy Pryor. Join us Monday through Friday as we chat about quick tips, skills, and ways to help equip you on your journey as a father to build your multi-generational family team on mission. Stay tuned. Hey guys, I'm Jeremy. I'm Jeff.
• 0:30
  And today we want to talk to you guys about working with birth order or against it. So this relates especially to those of you guys who have larger families. The more kids you have, the more their order in terms of birth is going to affect the way that their personalities develop. And, you know, because our culture is so obsessed with individualism and not with team when it comes to family, a lot of times the knee-jerk reaction is that you want to obliterate any kind of nuances that might be happening in the family.
• 1:00
  due to birth order. You might feel guilty that the oldest might have to work a little bit more than the youngest. You might be playing the fair game and not the team game. And so one of the things to think about and just maybe challenge you guys about that if you want your family to function like a team,
• 1:17
  then I actually think it's wise to work with birth order. And I think there's something God-given and God-designed about it. There certainly is taking that way too far. You have to be very sensitive to what's going on in your family with the hearts of each of your kids. But it's really important that the oldest is just going to have a different experience than your youngest, than your middlest generation.
• 1:36
  what we call Sydney. She's right in the sandwich in between. She's number three of five. Those are very different experiences. It doesn't necessarily do any good to sort of paper over the difference. And just like in any good team where there's different roles and that everyone doesn't have to be the quarterback or the wide receiver or whatever, these different roles are celebrated because they all function in their uniqueness. That's something that I think you can
• 1:59
  really embrace in terms of birth order. And there are dangers, and I think you need to be careful of when doing that. But in general, I think it's something to be worked with instead of against. What do you think, Jeff?
• 2:11
  Yeah. And again, this one goes back to a lot of my history with team sports. There's a fascinating book. I'm trying to remember the name. I probably won't remember it. But it was a book by a journalist, I think. And he kind of traced some of the historic teams in history, whether that's the Golden State Warriors, the Bulls, or football teams, baseball teams, just kind of the last 50 years, like some of the most iconic, the Boston Red Sox during the era where they broke the curse. And he looked at, he makes the argument that the captain of the team is actually kind of, that got them there, why they won, and it was more important in some sense than the coach.
• 2:41
  Really fascinating premise. And I actually, I mean, like you look at the Golden State Warriors, right? Like Steph Curry, especially these last couple of years, they easily would have crumbled with a lot of the pressures they were going through if people are familiar with the team news and stuff like that. Had he not been, he had a level of humility that allowed some of these really big personalities to come in and stay up. And if he would have been the captain that actually said, hey, I'm the best, but I need this spotlight, whatever. Even if Steve Kerr, the coach was really good, that would have just, it would have crumbled it.
• 3:10
  So really fascinating to, yeah, like you said, actually stay within that. And why I mentioned that is the reason I think that's really fascinating to me is because we believe in the same thing. And I even tell Kinsley that, our oldest, like probably five times a day, I look at her and straighten the eyes and I say, you are the captain of the team. I'm asking things of you that I'm not asking of Canon. You need to set an example. You're helping us set the culture. And now it's like a fun joke where I'm like, who are you? And she'll say, I'm the captain and kind of jump up and smile. Or if it's a really bad moment, then she's like, I'm a captain. This sucks.
• 3:40
  you know so it goes both ways but but no we want to call that out in her and then same with canon he's the youngest right now but that's going to be more fluid in the sense of our next kid coming and so you want to yeah work with the birth order and then another thing I'll add me playing team sports my whole life
• 3:55
  I remember specifically teams where the captain for sure was not the best player on the team, but he led with integrity and culture and honor. And so what I mean by that is like I played on some teams when I was a freshman or a sophomore in college where the senior captain was not that good skill-wise.
• 4:11
  But he was an incredible captain that led the team. So I think, too, don't get confused with thinking that they have to be the captain or the order or whatever has to be some huge prolific X, Y, and Z and do this and that. It's more about culture shaping and culture making. And the captains that are really good skilled but actually are terrible leaders, that's really detrimental. And so those are just a couple of things that I've kind of noticed in my own sports history and how we're calling that out in our kids. And I'm interested. We only have two kids right now. But I'm interested. So we kind of have the captain and then the freshman. Yeah.
• 4:40
  But I am interested to see as we grow that family and expand that family, how we'll continually... Well, it also gives you a mission and a job and a passion to seek that out in your kid. Because if everything's fair, then you just like, oh, it's fair. They're just all the same. But if you actually say, hold on, these actually like, I need to find my quarterback. I need to find the wide receiver. I need to find the kicker. Then you start really thinking and praying and getting creative. And it just kind of almost is like really life-giving and calls out all these different things in your kids.
• 5:05
  Yeah. Yeah. So this is something a lot of you may have not even thought about. Is it okay for me to really call up that oldest child? Because they are going to set tone for your family. If your oldest child wants to overthrow your leadership or create a different culture in your home, you're going to be fighting uphill your entire family life.
• 5:24
  You need to win their heart early and really work with them in a different way because they have enormous influence over the family. And that's something that, you know, ancient cultures all know this, by the way. You go to China, there's actually in their culture, the oldest has as much authority as the parents. And that's very common in ancient cultures that think about large families. Historically, obviously China's got small families now, but historically they had the reason why there's a, I don't know, over a billion people in China is because they had
• 5:50
  many kids and they became experts at raising large families before the one child policy and and there's lots of other cultures where this is true so just in terms of like disclaimers it is really critical to be careful of the envy that can you create a Cain and Abel situation that's always a danger in the home and that you have to watch what is happening in the hearts of the younger kids and how the older child is leaning leading or you know if there's any resentment or envy going on that can always happen in a home that you need to
• 6:19
  Sibling rivalry is a real danger in any family team. But the best way to overcome that is to help each child play their position well and to go after a mission that really matters for the family. Totally.
• 6:33
  Hey guys, we know it's really challenging to try to build your family team when all the tools you've grown up with or seen essentially are aimed at only helping develop family members as a collection of individuals. That's why we launched familyteams.com, where you can find all the tools we've developed with tons of resources at different price points, free courses, videos, writings, etc. that help you build up and transform you and your family into a multi-generational team on mission. Check out all the resources we have over at familyteams.com.