Why do parents favor one kid over the other?
This concept that I am about to describe is considered “favoring” most kids. This concept that I am about to describe is considered a “lose-lose” by most parents. Let me explain.
Let’s take a family with 2 parents, a son and a daughter.
The son has some medical issues, so the parents baby him. He needs to be babied sometimes so he feels like someone wants him to not feel pain as much as he doesn’t want to feel pain. The daughter is super active. There are weekends where the parents spend 5 hours or more per day out running around doing activities for their daughter. Softball, surfing, art classes, shopping, you name it! And during the week there are practices to get to as well.
The daughter says the son is babied and the parents always take his side even though the parents spend most of their hours with their daughters’ activities. She sees the parents do things for him that they don’t do for her and so then she saying that they are favoring him. I think favoring is the wrong word. I think the parents might simply be meeting his needs. Sometimes the parents have to be the ones who say “suck it up and go to school” to him, and so they want to balance that with the “I’m really sorry you are in so much pain, do you want me to carry your backpack home?” If just looking at the latter of the two, the son is being “babied”. He would much rather be out of pain and not have to be babied, but he is in pain and that’s not his choice so the consolation prize is that his parents baby him.
By the same token, the parents might not be as available to him because they are driving everywhere for her, and 1/2 the time he has to be dragged along with them because he is too young to stay home alone. Going on a 30-minute car ride and watching her softball game for 3 hours and then another car ride home isn’t fun when you are sick. Neither parent wants to miss their daughters games, so he is stuck sitting outside feeling sick while the parents enjoy her game. Since he doesn’t feel good most of the time, he doesn’t tend to enroll in activities so she gets most of the choices with that one. If he wasn’t sick and didn’t get babied, he would probably want to do more activities and she would have less time doing what she wants.
If you ask her, she will tell you that her brother is favored because the parents hold his backpack on the way home from school and they allow him to skip chores sometimes when he isn’t feeling well.
If you ask him, he will tell you that his sister is favored because the parents are gone with her so much and he has to be dragged for hours at a time doing what she wants to do.
The point of this blog post is that, as parents, it is important to focus on the unique needs of each of your kids and try to meet those needs as best as possible. I used this extreme example of a kid with health issues to show that no matter how big or small, no matter how “controllable” or not controllable a kid’s needs are, that each kid has different needs. If you treat each kid exactly the same, then you won’t truly be meeting their needs.
One way to talk to your kids when they are telling you that you are favoring the other one is to
(1) Listen to them without interrupting them (this shows them respect and also demonstrates that you value their feelings).
(2) Remind them of all of the different ways that you love and value them (actually list things you like about them and why you think those things matter). Make sure you convey how much you love them. Most of the time when your child says that you favor their sibling, what they are really asking you is “do you value me”, and “what is my worth in our family”?
(3) Mention to them the things you do for them that you don’t do for the other kids (if there isn’t anything special you do for them, then I would recommend starting to do something that is special for them).
(4) Compromise. Ask your child “when you are sick do you want a chore pass”. Perhaps next time you pick her up at school ask her “do you want me to carry your backpack”.