Birth order and intelligence

Piffle.  There are many more factors that determine who we are and how "intelligent" we are compared to our siblings.    This is at best junk science.   My n = 1 experience.     I"m a middle child of three.    There is only 4 years difference between the eldest and youngest.  My older brother, who is a nuclear engineer with an international reputation has a tested  IQ of 125.    My younger brother is an electrical engineer and works for NASA.  His  IQ is 134.    My  IQ is 154.  

That being said I will firmly state that raw IQ is not the end all to beat all that some people would wish to think. 

P.S.   My brothers and I are all put to shame if you compare us to the electrical engineer's daughter.    Her tested IQ is 167.

Last time I took an IQ test, I got 169. All it proved is that I was good at taking that test. Or that my older sister is a genius, Not that she'd argue with that... (you'd have to know her...)

In MY opinion, I might agree based in MY family.  (even though my siblings may argue).  But my career path seems to support my side of the argument.  I'm in a highly technical field and they are not.

We never took an IQ test, but I have argued that they may be socially biased.  I'm not sure how they exactly work, but in many tests like that, once I take them a few times, I understand HOW to solve some of the questions since I have seen them before.  So does experience make you smarter?  or WISER.  So does it test your true intelligence or perhaps wisdom/experience.

Maybe when you first see the questions it tests intelligence.  After that it tests memory retention/experience.

Definitely true in my family.

Agree, the 12 year old reads about a book a weekend and the 2 1/2 month old can't even read a picture book! :sigh:

But seriously, my brother (oldest) does probably have a higher IQ than I. Although I would argue that doesn't make him "smarter".

I dunno... I'm trying to send the link to my older sibs, but can't figure out how to.  I'll let you know what they say, though.

I can see some truth to the premise based on the way they describe parent engagement with kids.

I would say genetically, we are born with what we're born with in the smarts category and that's indifferent of birth order.  Then parenting kicks in and I know in our case we were very engaged with our first child teaching him every little thing we could, reading every book, trying every stupid phonics gimmick we could find because he was of course going to be the smartest child in the world and was also going to be an NFL quarterback (oh, and play in the NBA).  How couldn't everyone else see this... lol

Then the second one rolls around and there's still some of that, but it's nowhere near the same level of engagement as we had with our first.

Then the third one comes around and we're like.  WTF were we thinking, we didn't learn our lesson after two... Boys, go take care of your sister, Mom and Dad are trying to sleep.... 

OK, maybe I'm exaggerating a little bit, but I can definitely see it in action in our family from the parents side.  Now how did it effect our kids, the oldest was a straight A student throughout and always did good in school.
The second is the same, but has way more brain power than the first.  So whatever we lacked in teaching him, he overcame in sheer genetic brain power.  The kids a freak of nature when it comes to math and science and I still can't beat him at chess (and I used to play competitively).  So, our second is definitely smarter than the first, and the first is the first to point it out.
The third, our daughter did struggle in school with reading at an early age.  We had to do some after school materials and even enrolled her in various reading classes to get her up to speed.  She's now a straight A student in High School, but I can see where our early slacking put her in a tougher spot earlier on, but we managed to recover.

Now, with my two boys, it's a different story. Both are smart, but the younger one is just a bit more intelligent. And of course being boys, it's an argument. When the younger one took his SAT's and scored 10 points higher than his brother all hell broke loose.

I know I'm smarter than my sister and it has nothing to do with being born first.

I am fourth of five, so I'm not too .... um.... I don't think....um....uh, what?