As a parent, is it acceptable to favor one child over another, or should you always hate them equally?
I have two daughters, and if I am being honest, the one I like most (or least) changes with the time of the day. My favorite child is usually the one who has gone the longest without talking to me, since most conversations in my house end up with me yelling at a kid for saying or doing something stupid.
Both of my girls are in college now, so I don’t see them quite as often as I used to. This is probably good for my blood pressure, but I have to admit that I do miss them at times. About a week ago, we were all together at home; the girls had come to visit for the weekend. I gave EM1 a hug and told her that I loved her and missed her while she was away. EM2 immediately interrupted and told me, “Hey, that’s exactly what you just said to me.”
I explained that I loved them and missed them both equally.
EM2 glared at me and said, “If everybody is special, then nobody is.”
Then she asked me if she and her sister fell out of a boat and there was only one life preserver, who would get it? I told her that I would be keeping the life preserver for myself, because if both of them were in the water at the same time it was highly likely that I was the one that pushed them overboard.
I don’t understand this competition they seem to have regarding which one of them is my favorite. They have spent their entire lives making it very clear to me that my opinion on everything else means absolutely nothing to them. So, why this one area? And it has been going on for a very long time.
When EM1 was five years old and her sister was two, she asked me, “Daddy, am I your favorite?”
I told her, “Sweetheart, you weren’t my favorite for the three years you were an only child. Why would that change, now?”
Actually, I didn’t say that to her. I wasn’t about to waste such an awesome putdown on a child too young to fully understand it. I saved that harsh reality for years later when she was a teenager. It was much more satisfying that way.
More recently, EM2 walked up to me while I was fixing myself some lunch in the kitchen. She helped herself to a bite of my sandwich without asking, then took a sip of my soda. Still chewing, she said with a straight face, “I know I’m your favorite. You don’t have to say anything. I’m cuter, and she never listens to you.”
“You never listen to me, either,” I replied.
While looking at a text on her phone, EM2 said, “What?” Then she walked away, still holding my soda.
It is extremely hard to decide which child you like more when you aren’t completely certain you like either one of them at all. And I know they don’t like me either. On a recent camping trip, we were warned by the camp hosts that there had been bears in the area. EM1 had even seen one of them while she was driving up to our camp site. She told us all about the black bear that had run out in front of her car only about a mile away from where we were currently located.
That night, both girls proceeded to rummage through the snacks we had purchased for the weekend and leave an assortment of cookies and pepperoni sticks on the ground around the space where I was sleeping. I don’t consider that type of behavior careless. I would argue that it is attempted murder. The fact I survived until morning instead of being ingested by a hungry bear was sheer luck.
So, which child should be my favorite? The one that left the least amount of food next to my head while attempting to lure a bear into our camp? I don’t think so.
Maybe I should tell them that my favorite will be the one that moves out of the house first. Or, my favorite is the one that gets a job and starts paying her own bills. The problem with that is the high likelihood that neither one of those things will ever happen. Both girls seem very determined to stick around until the money and food run out.
Perhaps I should just add an addendum to my will that says, “My favorite child is the one that didn’t end up killing me.” So, the next time one of them askes me which one is my favorite, I can tell them that I wrote the answer down, and they will get to read it after I die.
This way, we can all have something to look forward to.
They will have their answer, and I will be somewhere peaceful and quiet where I won’t have to listen to them argue about whose fault it was.