Prior to using this Quick Discussion Guide, you and your child may want to do any or all of the following activities on "It's My Life":

• Read the Birth Order article

• Take the "Celebrity Birth Order" quiz.

• Work together to come up with a submission for "You Said It!: Birth Order"

• Print out the IML Journal page "Birth Order and My Family". Complete them together or encourage your child to complete them on his/her own.

Discussion Questions:

• Are there certain personality traits common to your birth order that fit you best? Do you understand why you might have these traits?

• Do you feel there's a difference between the way you are treated in the family, and the way your older/younger sibling(s) are treated?

• What do you like about your birth order? What don't you like about it?

• Do you feel that sometimes you're treated "unfairly" because of where you happen be in the birth order of our family? What do you think "fair" means? Does "fair" mean that we treat all of our kids the same?

• Is there anything about the way you are treated in this family that you feel we should change? What can each of us do to change that?

Remember:
--Emphasize to your child that no birth order is better than another, and that birth order has nothing to do with how much you love each person in your family.

--You may want to talk a bit about your own birth order, and related experiences in your own family.

--You and your child might enjoy looking at various relatives (grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins) and seeing how their birth orders might have impacted their personalities and relationships.

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