Knowing I Wasn’t My Mom’s Favorite Kid Still Haunts Me

We all have favorites. Personally, I am a fan of milk chocolate, but dark chocolate? Not so much. I mean, I will eat it and enjoy it, because it is chocolate after all. But even as I devour the last speck of chocolatey goodness, a little part of my heart leans towards milk chocolate. Apparently the same is true of parents and their kids, as I discovered after reading a recent article on having a favorite child. And while I understand that it may be completely natural to be drawn more to one child than another, I still think you should do everything you possibly can to nip that in the bud. Because if you don’t, you’re kids will know, and it will hurt.

I speak from experience on this point. I am one of three children, with a brother and sister whom I get along with very well. However, it was apparent to me from a young age that I was definitely not my mother’s favorite. In fact, while my brother and sister may have traded places in my mother’s book at times, I was that most disheartening of things. I was my mother’s least favorite. I am not saying that she did not love me she absolutely did. But there is a huge difference between love and like, and there were many times throughout my childhood when it was clear that she did not like me as much as she liked my brother and sister.

Now, before people start shouting that their situation is different, and that they would never let their children know who their favorite is, let me explain that it was nothing that my mother consciously did. She did not lock me in a broom closet Harry Potter-style while my siblings basked in the sunshine. She never used the ”why can’t you be more like your sister/brother” refrain and sighed her disappointment in me. There was nothing so blatant. Still, my siblings and I could all tell. Kids are more observant than you may think.

There was the way she always rationalized their behavior. It’s not that my brother and sister could do no wrong in my mother’s eyes. No, they certainly did. But when they did act out or say something nasty, she always justified it with a complex reason. It could be that my sister was not happy about her looks so she compensated by being overly critical of others, or that my brother was once cut from the baseball team and so felt he needed to prove himself. No matter how deeply I was hurt by their words or actions, it felt like to my mother, whatever angst had caused my brother or sister’s actions was more important than how I felt about it.

By comparison, she often ascribed petty and malicious motives to my actions when nothing could have been further from the truth. I can remember more than one time when I was accused of trying get my brother and sister in trouble. To this day, I honestly have no idea how she got that idea. There was no animosity between my siblings and I; we got along remarkably well. But it was as if there was something about me that just rubbed her the wrong way.

This constant need to protect my siblings translated into how our successes and failures were viewed. To my mother, it seemed like I lived a charmed life. The teachers were nicer to me than they were to my siblings, the bullies were not as mean, and even my bosses were not as demanding. You would think that at some point I should have noticed that I was apparently walking around with a giant horse-shoe crammed up my rear. In her mind, I just never had it as hard as my siblings did.

I have heard many people say that parents sometimes love the ones that need them the most. I guess I can see that. If you have one child sailing through life and one who struggles every step of the way, it may be only natural to give the one that is struggling a little extra love and encouragement. But I think we all owe it to our children to take a step back and think about how our own feelings about our children change how we perceive them. When my brother and I failed at something, was it really because he had a horrible teacher, but that I was just lazy? When my mother cheered harder for my sister when we each won something, was it because my sister needed the confidence boost more than I did? Or was it because, for whatever reason, she identified with them more, and felt their failures and triumphs all the more keenly?

Maybe I somehow was lucky, and I just did not have to overcome as much as my brother and sister did growing up. Or maybe my mother saw herself in them and understood them better, so the smiles and the sympathy came just a little easier. Whatever the case, knowing that I was not my mother’s favorite has left its own scars. It may be perfectly natural to have favorites, but it is just as natural for a child to wonder what they did to make their parents like them just a little bit less than their sibling.