Tony White

There was a recent newspaper article written by Michael Grose (Sunday Times, 29.3.09) that raised a good point on siblings and the parenting of children. It spoke about what happens when you have two children who are quite different in their natural abilities and talents. That is when one child has considerable natural talent in say school work, sport, socially or otherwise and the other sibling has either just average or below average talent. This creates a quite difficult domestic situation for all concerned.


Natural talent. Some kids get it and some kids don't.




It is bad enough when the more talented child is the older sibling but the potential damage is magnified even more so when it is the younger sibling who is the more talented one. I am seeing this right at the moment in that I know people in my personal life who have this scenario and I also have some clients where in one instance the younger sibling is much more naturally talented in the three areas of school work, sport and socially. Then there are two other children who are twins where one is also more naturally talented and as a result they seem to breeze through life whilst the same age sibling struggles much more.

A very difficult situation for the parents indeed. They will tend to not want the older less talented child to feel bad, so parents can easily down play the successes of the younger more talented child. However that is not fair to that child because they deserve all the praise and encouragement for their success so that they can go on and achieve their fullest potential in life.

Such praise of course highlights to the other sibling that they are not getting the same success in life. If they are the older child then that is made even worse if the younger one actually ‘beats’ the older one in what ever area that maybe. This makes it very easy for the less talented sibling to just give up and stop trying at all. “If I don’t try and succeed then my younger sibling can never be shown to beat me”.



I know in the case of the twins, their parents have them at the same school but different class rooms so as to avoid the inevitable comparisons that will be made. This is indeed one of the suggestions made in the newspaper article - avoid making comparisons. Whilst good advice, the children will of course inevitably make their own comparisons them selves and so will their peers and others at school like their teachers and so forth. This can be made much worse of course if the younger more talented one uses such comparisons as a way to get at or antagonise their older sibling in the inevitable sibling rivalry that occurs.

The worse case scenario is if the less talented child not only gives up but makes the decision “If I can’t be good at being good then I will be good at being bad”. This is not an uncommon scenario in the histories of drug abusers and those in the prison population. Those situations where the drug user is seen as the black sheep of the family can include this decision. I have also seen similar situations of what Richard Erskine referred to as the ‘Negative narcissist’. Narcissism is usually defined in terms of the person strives to achieve greatness or fantasies of achieving great success. Thus they are noticed and get lots of attention from everyone. The high profile criminal achieves the same. They can get massive attention for being as bad as they can and a large amount of time, effort and money is spent dealing with them. Such as in the penal and legal systems.


If I can't be good at being good I will be the best at being bad. Look how it makes me the center of attention and its all about me. Negative narcissism.




So the less talented child can just give up trying (“thus I cannot be beaten”) or may decide to be recognised by being bad. I know of one family situation where the older less talented sibling moved geographically away from the family and took up a completely different life style and career. To my mind this was at least partly due to the fact that his younger much more talented brother left him with only that option, (in his mind).

A child’s sense of worth will inevitably be eroded if, at least in their own mind, they are not winning as much as they are meant to (in comparison to their sibling), all through childhood. If one is living in close quarters with the more talented sibling it will be in the child’s face all the time in the most formative years of their life. Unfortunately there is very little else the parents can do except to avoid comparisons, give the less talented one lots of love and strokes and so forth.

The newspaper article also states one other thing that parents can do. It says that whilst recognising results the parents can also focus on the effort put in. Thus one can give the less talented child lots of praise for the effort they put in. One needs to be careful with this as it can easily give quite a different message to the child.

There is an old saying which says: What you stroke is what you get

Consider this diagram.



It shows that there are two parts to any task weather that be completing an assignment, running a race or building a model aeroplane. Firstly one must put in the effort to complete the task. Once done the task is complete and the person has reached their goal.

The question at hand for the child is what does the parent give the most attention for? Is it for the effort they put in to complete the task or is it for basking in the success of completing the task. At times one hears parents say, “Son it does not matter if you win or lose as long as you try your hardest”.

What does this say to the child? It says that the first part of the task - effort to get to the goal - is important and gets lots of attention and reaching the actual goal is of less or little importance. What you stroke is what you get.

The child is getting all the strokes or attention for trying to get to the goal and not for achieving the goal. When this person grows up they get what is called a Try Hard driver. They put all their effort into achieving a gaol and when they actually achieve it, it is sort of an anti climax. It has little psychological meaning because its not what the parents gave all the attention for.


Its all about getting attention.



So the person spends their life putting in lots of effort and struggle to get to their gaols and once they get there they loose interest or it has little importance to them. So the quit or move another another goal and then set about doing exactly the same again. So life in essence ends up being one struggle after another with little appreciation or basking in the good feelings of achieving the gaol.

And my point is? One needs to be careful taking the advice of the newspaper journalist. Focusing on giving the less talented child encouragement and attention for trying hard and less focus for the achievement. It could in fact end up with the ‘less’ achieving child actually achieving even ‘lesser’ but trying awfully hard whilst doing that.

There is just one other point that merits mentioning. And it should be noted that I am mentioning it at the end of this article. The article in the newspaper was about the problems for the less talented sibling. One rarely, if ever reads articles about the problems for the more talented sibling. In the professional literature this would be the same as well.


Competition




One could assume that most parents will think, “The talented one has the talent so he will survive or get through OK anyway with less parental encouragement”. Or parents could even think, “Its not really fair so the talented one can achieve a little bit less for the sake of the less talented one”.

Is it not the birth right of every child to be afforded the maximum parental encouragement and assistance such that they can achieve their full potential? It seems safe to say that some if not most talented siblings will be damaged by the domestic situation of having a less talented sibling. The parents will not as openly and enthusiastically encourage and support the talented sibling in its pursuits when such family dynamics apply.

Indeed a similar situation applies when there is one child in the family who has significant intellectual and physical disabilities. One reads numerous articles on how to help the disabled child but it is very rare to read articles on the damage that can be caused to the other non-disabled siblings in such a family.

Graffiti

I am writing a part for a book and need to include a piece about the Parent ego state. A section of which I have enclosed below. As you can see it is about how the Parent ego state is a collection of tapes. I was wanting to include some examples. Is there anyone out there who can give me some of their own experiences or even back channel them to me.

What attitudes or behaviors or things you say and do that are similar to what your parents did when you were a child. You may find your self parenting in the same way you were parented, or if you had a critical father you tend to be critical yourself. You may be critical of others your you may express that criticism to yourself. What behaviors, values, thoughts and feelings have you imitated or copied from your parents? They may possibly be included in what I am writing.



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The Parent ego state is where we have modelled on parent type figures in our life. So it is where we have our values and morals about life. When we have our own children we sometimes find that we are doing and saying things to our own children that were said to us. These are all in our Parent ego state.

The Parent ego state can be seen as a collection of tapes one has in their head that one has copied or learned from parent type figures in his life. This could be mother and father or an older sibling or some other person like a grandparent or an uncle who has had an impact on the young child as he was growing up.



This can be drawn as in diagram 2. This shows how the Parent ego state is a collection of audio and video tapes that are slotted into the person’s head. These are copied by the young child and in this case ther are four major ones. This process is inevitable due to the imitative instinct. Each of us will insticntually copy others around us and in childhood that will particularly include parent figures as they are of extra importance to us. As a result as one grows up and becomes a parent themself one can find self saying things to the children that are the same as was said to them.


Diagram 2
This copying process continues through out ones entire life so the Parent ego state is constantly being updated. However usually the strongest and loudest tapes come from early childhood and it is therefore these ones that mainly influence the individuals behaviour. Often they are quite critical tapes and one ends up with a large ‘internal critic’ that sits in the back of their head and judges what they do each day. They can be changed in adulthood with the inclusion of new noncritical tapes that will counter the highly critical ones from years ago.

Graffiti