A new study has revealed a piece of info that's about to be the subject of many a dinner table debate this week, and as the first born in my family, you best believe I'm celebrating.
A study of over 20,000 people showed that, on average, firstborn children achieved IQ scores 1.5 points higher than second-born children, who scored 1.5 points higher than third-born children etc etc etc. Sorryyyyy not sorry to those middle and youngest kiddos out there.
As the oldest of three,,. I can verify this to be 100% true (if either of my younger siblings are reading this, no you didn't) but of course, I'm no scientist.
Obviously, it's impossible to predict the results for every family out there, but research suggests that parents pay more attention to developing their firstborn child's thinking skills compared to any siblings born after them. Oooosh.
If you're screaming at the screen that it's because firstborn children tend to have certain personality traits that lend themselves to 'book smarts' and therefore a higher IQ, this same study concluded no noticeable personality traits differed between siblings, disproving any theories that birth order affects personality.
Before all of us eldest kids get too high and mighty, we should probably remember who gets lumped with organising all the group gifts/booking the restaurants/herding cats on family holidays. Smarts can only get us so far.
