Do you have a favorite child?

[Anonymous]

My parents played favorites. They really screwed up. Besides the impact it had on us non-favorites, they created somewhat of an entitled monster with their favorite. Now mom is all upset the favorite is alone, having constant conflict at work, suing people and expecting mommy to cater to her when she visits.

[Anonymous]

No favorites. I have 2. Love them both

[Anonymous]

My favorite child changes daily, sometime multiple times a day, haha!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Nope.

I love them equally, and I treat them equally.

However, I am always 'quarreling' with the one who is very similar to me ( we are both very stubborn). It worries me that she might at some point feel that my conversations with her sister are 'smoother'. She is very confident in my relationship with her now, but she is still very young.

Ironically, I am more concerned about my easy child than my difficult one. I fear that my easy child could easily get taken advantage of or be easily led astray. My difficult one would only do what she wants to do.

Do think about this. I always felt my parents favored my sibling. After I was an adult, my mother apologized, saying that they always worried about my sibling and felt that I was stronger and would be ok without as much support. This did impact my relationship with my parents as an adult and my relationship with others, as well. I’ve never felt that I deserved support from them or others, which made me very independent, but also led to a distant relationship with my parents.

[Anonymous]

Yes, my 2 kids are my favorite. I do not care much about the kids of other people. Not even my nieces and nephews.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have an only for other reasons (who is obviously my favorite) but my parents made a big show of "never playing favorites." And yet it was still quite obvious to everyone that they heavily favored my older sister first and foremost, and then doted on our youngest brother as the baby. Like even my sister and brother say this is the case. It was almost funny because they would frequently state, apropos of nothing, that they didn't have favorites and loved us all equally. Very much a "the lady doth protests too much" situation.

To answer a PP's question, I think the reason they favored my sister is that she discovered early on that she could garner attention in a largish family by being ultra-helpful and responsible, so she was, and they appreciated this and she became the golden child. However, this backfired on everyone later on. My sister has been feuding with my parents for going on 4 years now because it's like she woke up one day and was pissed about how "helpful" she'd been for the last 30+ years, and now resents them a lot. Being the favorite is not always that great. I am in some ways grateful that I was somewhat ignored as a kid because it taught me independence and enabled me to go my own way.

Wow. Interesting dynamics. Because I know what it feels like to not be favorite, I try very hard not to do it to my own kids. This makes it sound like one can’t win either way.

NP. This sounds similar to my husband's family. The parents always made a show of fair and equal treatment - same dollar amount of help with college tuition, etc. However, each of the siblings had their role to play.

One was the defective, difficult, mentally ill one who was the closest and also the most helpful to the parents. Things were "fine" when that one stayed enmeshed with the mom, but became the scapegoat when they tried to be more healthy and independent and rejected the parents.

The other was the most distant geographically, and received the most criticism, but I think was also the favored one, and their ongoing addiction issues and relationship issues kept the relationship with the parents exciting, dramatic, and useful.

My husband thinks he was the favorite one because he was the only one that didn't cause any trouble for the parents, but I don't think he realizes that because of that, he was pretty much neglected and ignored, because he was less needy.