🔗Shownotes Links:
- Dr Robert Hurst WEBSITE
- Dr Robert Hurst BOOK: Life’s Fingerprint
YouTube Timestamps (Concise & Key Points):
00:00 – Welcome & Intro to Dr. Robert Hurst
03:20 – What is Birth Order? A Holistic Look
08:44 – Sibling Spacing and Double Birth Order Explained
14:24 – Using Birth Order in Orthodontic Practise
21:01 – Family Dynamics: Ancestral vs. Modern Families
28:44 – Traits of First, Second, Third, and Fourth Children
32:20 – Birth Order and Romantic Compatibility
36:28 – The Power of Only Children
39:24 – Where to Learn More: Life’s Fingerprint
40:58 – Biggest Health Challenge Today: Managing Stress
42:00 – Closing Thoughts
How Birth Order Shapes Your Health, Stress & Relationships – Dr. Robert Hurst
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:00:01] Hi, Dr. Ron here, and I want to invite you to join our Unstress Health Community. Now, like this podcast, it’s independent of industry and focuses on taking a holistic approach to human health and to the health of the planet. The two are inseparable. There are so many resources available with membership, including regular live Q&As on specific topics with special guests, including many with our amazing Unstress Health Advisory Panel. Now we’ve done hundreds of podcasts all worth listening to, with some amazing experts on a wide range of topics. Many are world leaders, but with membership, we have our Unstressed Lab podcast series, where we take the best of several guests and carefully curate specific topics for episodes, which are jam-packed full of valuable insights. So join the Unstress Health community. If you are watching this on our YouTube channel click on the link below or just visit unstresshealth.com to see what’s on offer and join now. I look forward to connecting with you. Hello and welcome to Unstress Health. My name is Dr. Ron Ehrlich. Now, when we are in conversation with people, just casually, socially, we often want to get to know them and part of the, one of the first questions apart from what do you do, is something about their family too. Have you got any brothers or sisters? Where do you sit in the family? What’s the age difference between your brothers and sisters?
Well, birth order. Both order turns out to have a lot more significance than just a social interaction. Although those social interactions give us a clue that we instinctively feel there’s a kind of relevance there to it and fascination by the dynamics of it. Well, my guest today has explored that personally and professionally for 50 years. Dr. Robert Hurst, a Harvard graduate who served on the dental schools of both Tufts University and Louisiana State University. He’s run a private orthodontics practise, yes, he’s an orthodontist, for over 50 years in Covington, Louisiana. And it was during his practise that he decided to study the birth orders of his patients and their behaviour patterns. Now he’s written a book called Life’s Fingerprint, Your Birth Order. And now Dr. Bob Robert has had the opportunity to see functioning children in the real world on a day to day basis over the last 50 years adjusting to life and its challenges and he’s seen the expression. This is where it gets really interesting. He’s seen the expression of birth orders firsthand and has learned that your birth order impacts every part of your life. Now, the information is said allows you to better evaluate your own behaviour. And the behaviour of others by understanding those various nuances of birth order. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Dr. Robert Hurst. Welcome to the show, Dr. Bob.
Dr Robert Hurst [00:03:20] Thank you, Dr. Ron.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:03:23] Bob, you know, we were just talking before we came on about the fact that we’ve been in dentistry for quite a few years, several decades, and, and I’ve been a holistic biological dentist for almost all of my 45 years in practise. But birth order as it relates to dentistry is a whole new area. I mean, obviously, everybody When you meet somebody, are you brother or sister? Which are your oldest, youngest? Birth order is part of our conversation. But tell us from your perspective, what is birth order?
Dr Robert Hurst [00:04:00] Well, the simplest explanation is your order of birth in your family, but that’s way too simple. Because, you know, as you say, you’re a holistic dentist, I might say I might be a holistic orthodontist because I have to look at the patient and the family, and that’s the whole picture. And just because you were the first born or the second born or the third born, that really doesn’t cut it. Because there are extenuating circumstances that change your relationship to your brothers and sisters in the family. But the simplistic way to look at birth order is, well, let me back up a second and say, it really started with Alfred Adler, who was a contemporary of Freud. In fact, they were in the same psychoanalytical society. And Freud felt that your personality was developed from your relationship with your parents. Adler said, you know, I think your relationship with your parents isn’t as important as your relationship with your siblings. And that’s what I think develops your personality. Well, of course, they didn’t get along. They had two different views. And believe it or not, Freud was the oldest in his father’s second family and Adler was the second child in his family. So they weren’t about to get along anyway. So they split and they separated and Adler went on with his with his ideas, and of course, Freud went on with his. But what I said was, the simplest way is to look at your relationship with your siblings. And there are a few things that happen that will change what your real birth order is. For instance, the spacing between the children. If it’s just individual spacing, a one has one characteristics and a two, well, first of all, the one starts life as an only child. So he doesn’t become or she doesn’t become a firstborn until the second born is born. And that’s when sibling rivalry shows up. Because the secondborn wants the firstborn’s position, and the first born wants to protect his position. So he wants to the throne. And so these first two birth orders can be very antagonistic to each other. And that is good in a way, but too much is not good. Because if number one just crushes number two, number two doesn’t have a place. And every child wants their special place in the family. And if number two dethrones number one, he’s just lost and he can just drop out. So it’s best that there’s some competition, but not too much. So that’s the first characteristic we have to look at. What is the spacing between the children? Now the next thing would be, what if there’s stepbrothers and sisters in the It just depends on their age and their relationship to the family structure. So you can bring a stepbrother or sister into that family if they’re living together, and that changes everybody’s birth order based on their ages. And then you wanna see where the children are living. Sometimes a child ends up living with the grandparents and they’re not in that family structure, so that changes it. And of course, what if there’s handicapped siblings? That changes the relationship of the children. In other words, if number two is a handicapped child, number one doesn’t get the attention that they thought they should be getting, but they can’t say anything, so they have this deep resentment because they’re caught and they can see anything about that handicapped second child. So, there’s also the death of a sibling. If you have a death of sibling, and this is all before you’re 16 years old, then everybody moves up a position. Now that does happen later in life too, that even though, let’s say that you’re a third born and your second born dies, you’re still a thirdborn with your qualities, but you have to take over the job of the second born. You have to move up. So you pretend to do the secondborn’s job, but you’re really a third-born. All these things interact in finding what we call your real birth order. This is about seven characteristics that we look at. Adopted children, twins. Twins do have a birth order, so it’s not so simple to just say, oh, you’re a one or you’re two. We have to look at these other characteristics to pin you down, so to speak.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:08:44] So I mean, this spacing that occurs, I mean the combinations that are now available or that we are confronted with, particularly in our modern world, are sort of almost infinite. Well, they’re not infinite, but there are many different combinations of not just spacing, but combinations of families and the difference between a one year old difference and a four-year-old difference between even just two siblings is profound. And it kind of assumes Adler, I’m assuming this is Adler’s kind of thing about rivalry being a key aspect to position within the family. And that, that’s, is that, I mean, that’s an interesting point to make rivalry is a key issue.
Dr Robert Hurst [00:09:35] Yes, and you can you can ask questions like usually the first born is excellent in school and the second born is going to be your athlete. In other words, they don’t take the same job and and you can ask the question if you say, well, was your older brother good in school? They say, oh no, no, he was the athlete. Well, then you know immediately that number two dethrone number one.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:10:00] And number two becomes a student. You’ve just stopped me in my breath there because I am the youngest of two and I would have always said my brother was a much better athlete than me.
Dr Robert Hurst [00:10:11] Well, you may have dethroned him.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:10:15] Oh gee, I hope he’s not listening to this podcast. This is going to open up a whole can of worms.
Dr Robert Hurst [00:10:20] What was interesting was that, you know, as an orthodontist, I realised early in my career that cooperation from teenagers determined my success in orthodonic treatment because I needed their cooperation. And I found treating many children from the same family that they were all different and they didn’t want to be the same. So I realised I needed to find a way in the first few minutes of meeting them to find out what I was up against in their treatment. So that’s why I got interested in birth order.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:10:50] Yeah, okay.
Dr Robert Hurst [00:10:51] And so I looked at the characteristics of the number one, the number two, the number three, and the number four, of course, of the only child, too. And it worked about a third of the time. It just wasn’t working. And I was ready to throw out the whole concept. And then I said, you know, I’m gonna do a little research on these families. And I went through, oh, about a thousand patients. And I looked the brothers and sisters, and I looked a the spacing. And I came to the realisation that two-thirds of my patients… Were separated by their brothers and sisters by at least four years. We came up with the concept of the double birth order. So you see, if a one and a two are separated by four years, they don’t really communicate with each other because their friends are four years difference in age. So the one becomes a super one or a one only and the two becomes a Super Two or a two only. So all of a sudden I realised that was the Rosetta Stone of understanding everybody.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:11:55] Interesting.
Dr Robert Hurst [00:11:57] All these patients, when I found two thirds of them had double birth orders, then everything fit. Everything fell into place. Now there’s another type of double birth order too. It’s when there’s two groups of children in the family.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:12:10] For instance, Robert, just let me stop you double birth order. Just define that term for us, double.
Dr Robert Hurst [00:12:16] It’s when there are four or more years between siblings or groups of siblings, I’ll give you an example of another type of double birth order. It’s, when there’s two groups of, of children in the family, let’s say the first two children are a couple of years apart, then there’s a four year gap and then there’re two more children. Well, that third child becomes the oldest in the second family. So they have a one and a three birth order. And I’ll tell you someone that you know, have, has that, or had that was Princess Di. She had two older sisters. Then there was a big gap and then she was born and then her brother was born after her. So she was a three, one, and her brother was a four, two. So when people have double birth orders, they show two types of characteristics, not at the same time. So you get, you know, twice for your money, you. Okay. So once you understand the double birth order on these two types, everybody, everybody can be diagnosed. You know, you can, you can find the unhidden. If you can just tap in to this birth order, it’s going on behind the scenes. It’s in everything you do. It’s your auto mechanic. It’s you’re patient. It’s your wife, it’s your children, and if you understand this, you take away stress. I mean, if you under stress is a killer. If you understand birth order, I eliminated all the stress in my practise. I have no stress. I know how these children are gonna respond. I know that the fourth child who’s the true baby in the family is gonna drop his appointment card on the way out of the office. And then. Another sibling will pick it up and take care of it for him. So I don’t expect the same behaviour from all my patients, which is really takes the stress out.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:14:24] Okay yeah well you’re dealing you are in orthodontics predominantly I assume dealing with children and children under the age of what what would be your percentage of your practise that is WELL!
Dr Robert Hurst [00:14:38] Well, they’re basically teenagers, the seventh and eighth grade, which is a terrible age to deal with, you know, 11 to 13 boys and girls. But we see a lot of adults, too, and you don’t change your birth order. As an adult is your same behaviours are the same as that as a child. For instance, the number three child, they have to understand 17 different relationships when they’re born between their older siblings and their parents. There’s about 17. These number threes are great with groups of people. By the way, those are the great dental assistants because they like, the chaos in the office doesn’t bother them. They understand everything intuitively. I recall one of my patients, he was about a six foot five, 230 pound man. He was a number three and he was scared to death. And I told him, look, we’re gonna use very, very light forces and it’s not gonna be that uncomfortable. He says, oh boy, that makes me feel so much better because I thought that this was gonna be very, very painful and I’ve heard about this. And some people think just cause I’m a big guy, I don’t feel pain, but I feel pain a lot. And that is exactly true. It doesn’t make any difference. It’s your birth order that tells you who you’re really dealing with.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:15:59] So this is interesting to draw this line at four years, because I think I’m always interested in ancestral relationships, what we can learn from our ancestors. And I think birth, the distance between siblings would always have been, because of practicality, at least three or four years. You wouldn’t have had two kids under two in the tribe of hunter and gatherers, I don’t think. Because you wouldn’t have been able to deal with it. You would have had, you’d been breastfeeding for a long time. I think I’m right in saying in ancestral cultures, a bigger age difference is not unusual.
Dr Robert Hurst [00:16:45] Observation. What do you think? Yes, it’s true. And when you it’s with birth order. Person in the line has a specific strategy to get what they need. So it goes one, two, three, four, and then it starts over again at five. Five is just like a number one, it’s like primary and secondary colours. It’s the same, but it’s less intense. So a five is like a one, a six like a two, a seven is like three. So when you have these, you know, nine children in a family, By the time the fifth one comes around, he can use the same strategies as number one, but he’s a little more mellow, so to speak. But you do get gaps sometimes and you end up with double birth orders, even in families from years ago. I’ll give you an example. Like Alfred Hitchcock, everyone remembers him. He was a three only birth order. When you add the only to a birth order, you magnify, intensify all those characteristics. So a three is very intuitive and they’re very sensitive and they feel things. But when you add only to it, they become manipulative.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:18:12] Hang on, you got me with the three, he’s the third in line in his family, but only meaning that’s where it stopped at three.
Dr Robert Hurst [00:18:21] No, it’s because there was a gap between number two and number three of at least four years.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:18:27] Ah, okay.
Dr Robert Hurst [00:18:28] So this child that’s raised like an only child, because the other two children aren’t even in the house, they’re at school. So he gets all these only qualities, which is the only qualities say, I can do it, I’m an adult, I’m strong, you know, it adds power. So, you three to the power of 10. So, Alfred Hitchcock was very manipulative of all his people. And he manipulated us with it.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:18:56] Movies. He did, he did. So we’ve got the critical age of four years where you then get the add-on only monocon, you know, so you could be a two only if you were more than four years older than your first sibling. But what happens the opposite way when we get one year separating the two children or less than two years I know I’ve got I’ve got grandchildren that are two years apart and another twins are on their way. So, you know, and they’re all gonna be four under four. Wow, what does that present?
Dr Robert Hurst [00:19:37] There’s two types of families. There’s one where it’s less than four years between the siblings. And so it’s a real family of kids. One, they wanna be in charge and make all the rules. Number two doesn’t wanna be told what to do. They’re thought to be stubborn, but they’re not stubborn. They just don’t wanna told what do by number one. And then there’s number three who watches the antics between number one and number two and they kind of instigate things. And then number four is a true baby in the family. And that’s a family and everybody gets along and they toilet train each other and whatever. But when you separate them by four or more years, you get individual families and they don’t communicate with each other. And some parents say, well, we wanna separate our children so we have the resources to give them orthodontic treatment. And that what I found out, that two thirds of my patients were all separated. And those are the ones that were getting the orthodontic treatment. So close together that the families didn’t have any resources to, you know, pay for treatment. So it was just a matter of, it was odd that it happened, but because it happened I was able to find that Rosetta Stone to unmask everybody. Which was great.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:21:01] Hi, Dr. Ron here, and I want to invite you to join our Unstress Health community. Now, like this podcast, it’s independent of industry and focuses on taking a holistic approach to human health and to the health of the planet. The two are inseparable. There are so many resources available with membership, including regular live Q and A’s on specific topics with special guests, including many with our amazing Unstress Health advisory panel. Now we’ve done hundreds of podcasts all worth listening to, with some amazing experts on a wide range of topics. Many are world leaders, but with membership we have our Unstress Lab podcast series where we take the best of several guests and carefully curate specific topics for episodes which are jam-packed full of valuable insights. So join the unstressed health community. If you’re watching this on our YouTube channel click on the link below or just visit unstresshealth.com to see what’s on offer and join now. I look forward to connecting with you. So okay, you’ve got this, you started intrigued by birth order and it worked in a third of cases until you uncovered this Rosetta Stone of the four year difference, which kind of made sense because the other two thirds that it didn’t work for suddenly did. How do you use birth order in your orthodontic practise? I mean, you got the information about birth order and the spacing between them. And I’m guessing, I mean, you are making all, well, hang on, let’s take a step back. What’s the evidence for these different characteristics that you’re making assumptions for? Well, if you want to…
Dr Robert Hurst [00:22:56] Say, where’s the evidence? Well, I’ll give you a few. Start with your photo album of the family. The first born will have all the pictures. The second born, the second will have less. The third born, fewer. And the fourth born is lucky to have a picture at all. Every so many years we do a thing at the office where we put our baby pictures up on the counter and we have the patients try to identify who’s who. Of course, one of my staff said, you know, Dr. Hearst, there’s going to be easy to find I said, what do you mean? We’re all baby pictures out here. She said, no, you’re going to the only one in black and white. Okay. But anyway, you look at the family photo album, that’s the first one you can see. Then go back to your high school reunion, 25 year of high school union. Everybody’s the same. There’s no difference. They haven’t changed. They’re the same people. How about your Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner? When all the family gets together, everybody takes the same role they had as when they were kids in the family. Okay, if you were the baby, you’re going to be at the little kids table. You know, the kings of England really started this whole thing because the first born was going to get the kingdom and the second born had to find his own way, you know, but sometimes the secondborn did away with the firstborn and took over the castle. So you know these things have been around for a long time. You know, it even is true in nature. In nature, the cuckoo, now you have cuckoos down in Australia, don’t you? Yes, the Cuckoo is kind of a parasitic bird. It deposits its egg in another bird’s nest. Now, the bird that it deposited in is much smaller than the Cuckoo. And for some reason, once that happens, the Cuckoo’s… Hatches first and when the other birds hatch or they don’t hatch the cuckoo pushes the eggs out of the nest and so the cuckoo becomes the only child because he needs to get all the food from this smaller parent so so birth order is in nature really is in Nature and what are we but we’re part of nature too.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:25:22] Sure, sure, sure. So how are you using this in the orthodontic practise? I mean, you’ve got the Rosetta Stone now, you’ve removed stress from your practise because you know, go and tell us what you know from this. Okay, here’s how it works.
Dr Robert Hurst [00:25:37] If I have an only child that comes in, I treat that only child like an adult. I don’t treat them like a child because everything I say will go right back to the parent or anything the assistant says to me or I say to her, they’ll say to the parents and the parent will believe them 100% that it’s exactly true. Whatever they say, they believe them because they consult with their child. They’re on the same level. If I have a number one patient… That patient will usually be very cooperative and follow the rules, because the parents say, do what the doctor says. If I have a number two patient, I’m gonna explain everything I’m going to do before I do it, because he doesn’t want to be told what to do, he doesn’ want a. Something that is unknown to him that’s gonna happen to him. He wants to know what’s gonna, what’s going to happen. And then if it’s a number three child, we’re gonna be very, very gentle. And with number three, we call them ‘laughing on the outside, crying on the inside’. They’re not gonna tell you that they’re hurting because they know that from an older sibling, if they tell the older sibling that, they’ll just hit them on the shoulder even harder. So, so they tend to, you know, mask that. So with the number three, you have to be, you know, very, they’re very gentle, quiet, intuitive kids. And of course the number four, they’re just all over the place because they’re the baby and everybody takes care of them and they have a great time, but they’re totally unreliable.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:27:18] From an orthodontic perspective.
Dr Robert Hurst [00:27:22] But now you add that only, the double birth order to these things and you get the first child that is extremely strong and you know, it’s like an only but it’s the first born and they’re beyond just, they’re going to ask you some questions, they are going to be like an adult. The two… That’s an immovable object, a two only, is an immoveable object. If they don’t want to do something, they will not do it. They also have an extremely high pain threshold. I’ve seen these little girls that are two onlys, they’ll break the sturdiest orthodontic appliance. And not because they did it on purpose, they just have no pain threshold, it’s amazing. And the three only, well, that’s kind of your drama queen and you know. They want to be the the actress in the office and they want all the attention and you better give them the attention Because that’s what they want You know, you just, it’s just fascinating once you get into this and everybody falls into kind of a pigeonhole. And like you said before, you can look at your ancestors that you never knew. If we know their birth order, we can describe what they were like.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:28:44] How do you, you know, you’ve mentioned this, I’m intrigued because I’m using birth order in family planning.
Dr Robert Hurst [00:28:54] Yes. Tell me about that. Well, again, if you want a cohesive family, you make them all within three years of each other. But if you individual families, spread them out four or more years apart, but know that those double birth orders are going to be very, very strong children. They may be stronger than you. You know, that happens sometimes. Parents that might be threes and fours. Their first children, one and two, are stronger than the parents. And they kind of tell the parents what to do. That can happen. Now, you said that you’re the number two in the family.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:29:40] I am the number two.
Dr Robert Hurst [00:29:41] And you have an older brother, just a few years older? Two and a half years older than me. Okay, and we think perhaps you dethrone…
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:29:50] Are you? Well, I can’t wait for him to hear this, but do go on. Do go on This is music to my ears, Robert. I almost, you know, couldn’t have asked for a better guest, but do go on. I’ve dethroned, dethrone my older brother. He’ll be so pleased to hear this. Now it all makes sense. Now I understand.
Dr Robert Hurst [00:30:16] But this this really works you know I know that as a dentist you probably have many dentists that are that are subscribers to your podcast and if you look in your office you can see the birth there’s certain birth orders that fit certain positions and I found that true when I would talk to orthodontic offices and things the only child or the firstborn would be your best person at the front desk. They want to run the show. You know, the first born is like the border collie. You know they want to make all the sheep, you know, stay together and all that stuff. They want keep tabs on everything. Go tell everybody what to do. Your accountant and maybe your lab person could be your number two. They don’t want to be told what to do, they have their own little world and don’t mess with it, you know. They’ll do their thing and they’ll get it done for you. And your number threes and number fours. Are great assistants in the office. They like having the patients coming through and they like all the activity that’s going on. And as, you know, every birth order can do any job, but I found that over time, they end up in these positions. If they’ve been working in your office for 20 years, they will end up in the position that fits their birth order. So it’s nice if you’re hiring people to hire the right birth order for the right position at the beginning. So you don’t have to waste your time.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:31:40] You’re also offering this as an assistance to finding love in your life. I mean, now my wife, for example, is the oldest sibling, two and a half years older than her sister, who interestingly was unwell as a child and did take a lot of attention from my wife. But how would I, or could I have used that? I mean I might’ve really… Had an insight earlier on than, you know, I did. Although I got on very well with it straight away. If she’s listening to this, I just have to put that little caveat in as well.
Dr Robert Hurst [00:32:20] Well, there’s two types of love at first sight. One is to find somebody with your exact same birth order. If you do, you see the same things the same way. I mean, it’s like, oh, my goodness, I found a duplicate of myself. There’s a problem, though. You can only have one image in the mirror at a time. Somebody has to step out of the way in the relationship and you have to divide things up. For instance, you might be in charge of world affairs and she might be charge of cooking dinner, okay? But you don’t want to be doing the same things because you do get on each other’s nerves because you’re trying to be in the same place at the same time. That’s one type. The other type of love at first sight is the kind that I found never. And hard to say never, get divorced. If you match the gender and the position of the opposite sibling in your family, for instance, if you had an older sister, And you ended up marrying someone that was the number one sister that had a number two brother, then you matched. But in your case, your older sibling was a boy. So you match, but the genders are off. Okay. And she matches, but to genders her off because she had a younger sibling. That’s you, but you’re not a girl. You’re a boy So you came very, you came as close as you could come because when you have all of the same gender in a family, you can’t possibly match perfectly, but you did match the position. So you understand what a number one is like. You don’t have to like your number one brother, but you understand what number ones are doing. And she understands what a Number Two is up to. So she understands you, you understand her, but the genders are off a little bit.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:34:31] I’m wondering here, just thinking out aloud and personalising it all because her being two and a half years older than her sister and her sister being unwell very early on in her life, possibly I’m using the terminology here, usurping her position as number one. Would that be a fair thing? So she may have assumed a number two position, albeit reluctantly, but she accepted it. And so here we were, both me, a real number two, and she, a usurped number one, masquerading as accepting as a number two. We may well have been a perfect match.
Dr Robert Hurst [00:35:15] Boy, you are a quick study, but I’m going to take it a step further. Okay. You dethroned your brother. So you became a number one. Yeah. It’s number two characteristics and she became a number one acting like a number two with number one characteristics.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:35:36] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dr Robert Hurst [00:35:37] Don’t you see how birth order works?
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:35:40] Yeah, quick study. Well, well, you know, Robert, I, Bob, I mean, just hearing you keep saying that I usurp my brother’s number one position, we could just repeat that on a loop on this podcast and I’d be happy. I’d Be happy with that. But, OK, yes, you got it. Yeah, yeah, interesting. But if we were if we will four years apart as siblings. Then we would be only almost like only child only children. And that’s another one, isn’t it? I mean, only children are stereotypically, you mentioned you’ve got to treat them like an adult. But stereotypical only children are very independent, very self-centred as they have to be growing up. Every birth order.
Dr Robert Hurst [00:36:28] Has two sides to it and the only child is not an exception. They’re either in life, they either want many, many children in their family or they want none. They want many children because they grew up and they felt so alone and they want to give their parents all these grandchildren or they don’t want any children. So there’s two sides to everybody which is kind of interesting. So, um… When you
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:36:59] getting it now now you know it is interesting this subject because when you are standing around you meet somebody you know one of the first questions are you come from a big family yeah do you have any brothers or sisters oh yeah what what it where do you fit in you know that is almost stereotypically the beginning of so many human conversations so is that how we become I mean how we become birth order detectives? Because, you know, like more than just asking those questions, it’s what we do with the answers, isn’t it?
Dr Robert Hurst [00:37:33] It’s good. I have a lot of questions with companies that use this with their HR department to try to find the right birth orders for the right jobs within it. And I say, well, you know, we have rules here that we can’t violate the Federal Employment Act and ask certain questions. And I said, this is very easy to do. This is how we do it. You say, just like you said, And you say, well, did you come from, you know, brothers and sisters? And everybody says, oh, yes, I have an older brother. And you say, well, were you just a few years apart? Oh, no, no no no, there was eight years between us. Now you got your answer and you didn’t violate any rules. Now you know you’re dealing with a two only or an only two, because it’s eight years and more only than two. And that’s how you get around it. It’s kind of interesting.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:38:23] Yeah, because in America…
Dr Robert Hurst [00:38:25] Yeah, go and go to the middle of story about an only child. I was doing some consulting work for a barge company and the secretary was telling me the story that she was down in Miami. I think it was waiting for a flight with her with her boss. And they were sitting at a cafe and and he had ordered a Dr. Pepper. And she had never had a Dr Pepper. So she said to him, could I have a sip of your Dr. Pepper? And he says. I’m an only child and I don’t share.” She said, I couldn’t believe it. I said, believe it, he’s an only-child.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:39:03] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So listen, how this is, it is a fascinating topic. And it’s one that clearly, you know, we intuitively are interested in. So it would be great to get a little more information about this. How would we find out more on this? How we get more information on this subject, Dr. Bob?
Dr Robert Hurst [00:39:24] Well, you could go to our website, MyBirthOrder.com. And there’s some blogs on there and there’s some information, but we also have a little store in there where we have my book, Life’s Fingerprint, How Birth Order Affects Your Path Through Life. But we also it, since you’re a long way away, we have it on a USB card like this, has all the pictures and things on it, so. It would probably travel through the mail better, and you can plug it into your computer, and it has all the pictures and everything that are in the book. Actually, there’s two versions to the book, the one that we have on the site, you can only get on the side, which is hardcover, and it’s in full colour, and I’ve got a section in the back that has questions that have been asked at meetings and things, whereas the other one, I think it’s on Amazon, it’s paperback, and it is black and white, and it doesn’t have that section.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:40:23] But that’s another place to get it all. Now listen, before we finish, I’m going to ask you one other question and I want you to take a step back from your role as an orthodontist and your obvious interest in birth order, although perhaps this is the answer to this question. Because we’re all individuals on a health journey in this modern world and taking a step-back from your roll as an Orthodontists, What do you think the biggest challenge is for us? As individuals on that journey to better health or to stay healthy.
Dr Robert Hurst [00:40:58] I think the way to better health is to eliminate stress in your life. Stress is the killer. It increases your blood pressure. It does all kinds of bad things to the body. And if you understood birth order, because birth order makes you understand all the people in your live. And once you understand that, you don’t treat everyone the same, just like you treat all your patients the same. And your expectations are different, especially for your children and in life, and that will eliminate your stress. So I do everything to eliminate stress in my life.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:41:41] And that’s what I would say. Well, that’s a great message for us to finish on, particularly on a podcast called Unstress Health. So Dr. Bob, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your knowledge and wisdom with us.
Dr Robert Hurst [00:41:55] A pleasure and it really has been.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:42:00] Well, I was fascinated by this. I mean, I’ve been a holistic health practitioner focused on oral health, a holistic or biological dentist for over 40 years, and have explored many avenues of dentistry, of airway, of nutritional, environmental, science, medicine, lifestyle medicine, et cetera, et cetera. But I’ve never, formally anyway, thought about birth order as clues to our behaviour. Although, as I said in the introduction, I guess instinctively, we’re fascinated by birth order and we’re fascinated by the differences. And I thought it was so interesting that Dr Bob drew the distinction between the difference in ages of three years and greater than four years. Less than three years, he would say, between siblings gives a somewhat more cohesive. Family dynamic, whereas greater than four years, and not surprisingly, there are more individual traits that express themselves. But when there’s less than three years difference, then well, he says the only child he would treat more as an adult, but if you are one of three or four, two, three or four children of the oldest, he’s found to be very cooperative. The second oldest you need to explain everything to, This is in a clinical setting. The third, you have to be very gentle because they might be laughing on the outside, but often they’re crying on the inside and a fourth child is all over the place and terribly unreliable. That is from an orthodontic compliance perspective, but we could reflect on that in lots of different ways. And of course, when you think about birth order and family combinations. Do you have an older brother or sister? Do you one or two or three or four siblings? What’s the age difference between you? Of course, the combinations are incredible. I mean, I think you mentioned 17 different combinations, but when you factor in age differences, well, actually, if you draw the. The distinction between less than three years and greater than four years. I guess 17 combinations of siblings could would be possible, I guess. But look, it’s so interesting. It’s such an interesting insight and give some formality to what we all explore socially. The book is Life’s Fingerprints, Your Birth Order. We’ll have links to Dr. Rob’s, Dr. Bob’s site. I hope this finds you well until next time. This is Dr. Ron Ehrlich. Be well. Feeling stressed, overwhelmed? It’s time to unstress your life. Join the Unstress Health community and transform stress into strength. Build mental fitness. From self-sabotage to self-mastery. And together, let’s not just survive, but thrive. Expert-led courses, curated podcasts, like-minded community and support and much more. Visit unstresshealth.com today. This podcast provides general information and discussion about medicine, health and related subjects. The content is not intended and should not be construed as medical advice or as a substitute for care by a qualified medical practitioner. If you or any other person has a medical concern, he or she should consult with an appropriately qualified medical practitioners. Guests who speak in this podcast express their own opinions, experiences and conclusion.
