Playing Favorites

Back in the 1960s, The Smothers Brothers were famous for Tommy’s “Mom always liked you best” lines. It’s something you hear a lot from people who have siblings: that one parent or another favored one sibling over the rest. As parents, I think most of us live in fear of “playing favorites” and do our very best not to allow it to happen (or at least not to show it.)


It’s hard, though. Your children, like everyone else you meet, will have some things in common with you, and other interests that you will never understand no matter how hard you try. I always dreamed of reading some of the books of my childhood with my girls, but so far my oldest flaked out after three of the “Little House” books, while my older son seems interested. I don’t know which, if any of them, will be interested in going to theatre productions with me. It’s quite possible I’m going to have to learn the rules of football, or hockey (yes, I am Canadian, I just don’t like hockey all that much, OKAY?) or badminton, for that matter.

And when it comes right down to it, it’s perhaps easier to spend time with someone who shares some of your interests. It doesn’t mean that you can’t or won’t love people who have no interest in cross-stitching or water polo, but it’s certainly simpler when you have things in common. You may love all of your children equally, but the relationship may simply be easier with one over others.

It’s not just parents, though, who sometimes show favoritism.

One of my sons (who shall remain nameless, at least in theory) has never been the easiest child. He slept in one hour increments as a baby, and only started sleeping through the night on a regular basis within the last six months or so, and he just turned four. Although undiagnosed, I believe that he has some sensory integration issues - he's a sensory seeker - and so he is constantly touching EVERYTHING. You can say to him, "Please don't touch that" and he'll say okay, and within seconds he's touching it again. It is truly, to my way of thinking, a compulsion, but it can be extremely aggravating when you're not accustomed to it (and even sometimes when you are). He has unlimited energy and finds it very hard to sit still, like many other boys, but to an extreme sometimes.
However, he can be the sweetest, kindest boy you could ever meet. He's also extremely smart. Yet some people just don't see that about him. Unfortunately, one of those people happens to be one of his grandparents. "Pat" (purposely going gender-ambiguous here) loves "Winston," I don't doubt that, but when it comes right down to it, Pat is awfully hard on Winston. It's great that Pat doesn't just want to be that permissive grandparent who lets the grandkids away with everything, but somehow it just gets taken to an extreme with Winston.

I've heard it from a lot of parents: the grandparent who either favors one grandchild, or seems to disfavor one in favor of all of the others. Robyn, a mom of five, tells me that her mother-in-law favors her two daughters because she always wanted a daughter and never got one. This seems to be a fairly common situation, or conversely favoring the same gender as their own children (ie if Grandma had all boys, she favors the male grandchildren because she “understands them better.”)

Another reader, Julie, says that as a child, she and her siblings would spend weekends visiting their grandparents in another town. “Our arrival was always treated with great fanfare,” she says, “which for obvious reasons didn’t go over well with the grandchildren who lived nearby.”

“Nathalie” has a different issue with grandparent favoritism: she lives near her husband’s parents, but her older daughter is not their biological grandchild, and is treated much differently because of it. They have gone overboard on birthdays, etc. for their biological granddaughter while all but ignoring Nathalie’s other daughter, and also have a habit of buying presents for “Cindy” just because, but not for “Ellen.” One of the biggest examples occurred when “Luke”’s parents wanted to take the family to an amusement park. Luke’s mother chose a date when Nathalie’s oldest daughter would be away with her biological father. Nathalie asked if they could wait to go until Ellen returned. Grandma told her that she had already bought the tickets for that date and they were non-refundable. It wasn’t until they arrived at the park, without Ellen, that Nathalie knew she had been lied to. “We got to the park and we got on line for the ticket counter. So I said ‘I thought you already bought the tickets’ and she said, ‘No, I didn't.’ So she flat out lied to me.”

We decided that although it’s not easy, we have to stand up to Pat about Winston. As he gets older he’s going to notice the difference, and we don’t want there to be that kind of tension in their relationship. It seems to have improved, too, to Pat’s credit. It’s never easy to hear that you’re treating someone unfairly, but most reasonable people will take the advice for what it’s worth, and at least attempt to make a change in their behavior.

Have you had experience with favoritism? What did you do about it, if anything?

Actual Art Work from a Four-Year-Old

Okay, so it's REALLY cheesy to use your blog to post your kids' artwork, but in this case, I just had to.

Last Sunday our home church visited another congregation, so the two Sunday Schools were merged. I'm not sure who was looking after the area that my two middle kids were in, but they did a Thanksgiving art project (for my American readers who may not know, Canadian Thanksgiving is this weekend coming up.) It was a turkey with "feathers" pointing up on which the teacher had written the things that the child said they were thankful for.

This is my five-year-old's turkey:

Isn't that nice? She's thankful for cats & dogs, family & friends, her brothers & sister, and church.

Now here's the four-year-old's. Read it VERY carefully!



In his defense, I'm pretty sure that the teacher misheard the one on the far left. Honest!

Is the World Really All THAT Dangerous?

I think I mentioned a long time ago that I’m not one to jump on product recalls. We are, in fact, still using a drop-side crib in our house, and I have no intention of replacing it. 3 older children have survived through it, as has our youngest for the past 12 months or so that he’s been using it. When he’s done with it, off to the dump it will go, but it will make me sad, because despite being a little bit beat-up in the looks department it’s perfectly fine, and I’m sure that some young mom could make use of it. I’ll throw it out more out of fear of other people’s judgements on me (or legal issues, if the Canadian government goes through with banning them completely) than out of fear of its safety.

If it’s contaminated food, okay, I’ll pull it out of my fridge – probably. The Motrin recall last year? I grudgingly stopped using it, despite finding it an overreaction as well. But if we had any of the toys or baby products listed in the new Fisher Price recall, do you think I’d stop using them? Hell no!

This recall is the result of approximately two dozen injuries in the past TEN years. The recalled highchairs, for example, are a danger allegedly because there were 14 kids in the US who fell against pegs on the back legs, causing “lacerations” (AKA scrapes or cuts), of which SEVEN needed stitches, and one damaged a tooth.

Now I’m sure that the parents whose children needed stitches or had a tooth injury were upset, but there are a couple of points to be made here:

1. Was it really the fault of the highchair that the child fell against it? Children fall. A LOT. Especially at the age when they’re using highchairs. A short list of things my children have fallen on or against and caused themselves injuries? Coffee tables, bed posts, floors, tv stands, dressers, jello… okay, maybe not jello, but you get what I mean. Kids hurt themselves. I honestly believe it’s a part of teaching them how to function in the world. You have to learn that if you jump from the top of the couch to the seat, you may fall off and crack your chin on the coffee table when you bounce off said seat. (Child #2) So, should all of those things on my list be banned? Maybe we should just get rid of all furniture and sit on pillows? It works in some cultures, why not here?
2. In ten years, there were FOURTEEN injuries from this particular item, only eight of which could even conceivably be considered “severe.” So, less than one child per year was “severely” injured by the product. By contrast, between 1997 and 2007 there were over 4.1 MILLION injuries in children between the ages of 5 and 19 while playing basketball. That’s over 375,000 per year, in case you didn’t want to do the math. (http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/reprint/peds.2009-2497v1) If you’ve watched the new TLC show “Sister Wives,” you’ll know that wife #3 helpfully pointed out that several hundred people per year are killed worldwide by TOASTERS (she refused to use a toaster because of this, then proceeded to set bread on fire in the oven, I might add).

The thing is, these recalls are much more about risk mitigation than they are about public safety. You get one parent whose child was injured “by” one of these items starting a campaign against it and if the company doesn’t respond “appropriately” they risk class-action lawsuits or getting the reputation of not caring about kids. Social media, as much as I love it, only adds fuel to the fire since we know how quickly word of mouth can travel now. The recent Pat Burns death “misinformation” on Twitter shows that.

The media has to take some responsibility for all of this overreaction. We all know how the news loves a good headline. “Dora Trike Causes Genital Bleeding” is going to get sell a whole lot more papers, or get a bunch more “clicks” than “Toddler Sorta Hurt By Falling on Trike.” If you’re riding a bike of any kind, and fall against the top tube, it’s going to hurt. If this Dora/Barbie trike has something extra added to it (an “ignition”) then yep, if the kid falls against it, it’s going to hurt. Lesson learned, right kid?

I don’t mean to sound callous, I honestly don’t. I’m not immune to children’s pain, and I certainly feel for parents who have lost a child due to a REAL danger from a toy or piece of baby equipment. I just know that so much of what children learn is by trial and error, and a few scrapes, bumps and bruises are just part of growing up.

The other problem with all of these unnecessary recalls is that it feeds into this fear that so many parents live with. We are constantly told of the dangers “out there” and feel that our homes should be risk-free. I sometimes wonder if some children live in homes where everything is covered in bubble wrap. Then again, what if the bubble wrap came loose and somehow magnetically attached itself to the child’s face, suffocating it?

I get really tired of hearing how things have “changed”: how more strangers are lurking behind every bush, just waiting to steal your child. Overall, the world isn’t more dangerous, the media just wants us to believe it is. That way you’ll read their articles. Doesn’t that make you feel safer?

An article in today’s National Post talks more about this. I encourage you to take a look.