Just a few weeks ago, my 16 year old son told me about one of his classmate who was very unhappy lately. She felt that her parents love her elder brother and sister more. They pay more attention to them than to her, and she being the youngest, felt neglected.
Me and my two sons were in the same room during this conversation. My 13 year old son asked me, who do I love more. Before I could say anything, my 16 year old snap at him jokingly and said, "Me obviously! I am the eldest, remember? So don't be jealous." I looked at my 13 year old and said, "Yes, it is obvious, right? He was born 3 years before you. I have no choice but to love him 3 years more than you." And we all end up laughing.
But seriously, there are parents out there who favor one child over the other. Some shows it to the world and some didn't even realize it is happening. At times when parents have more than 1 child to look after plus a demanding job in the office etc, it is quite difficult to divide oneself into so many, at the same time pay equal attention to everyone.
Wonder if those parents who do favor one child over the other, was it something that the child did or something happened, like my friend in my previous post, that makes parents pay more attention to that particular child.
Most Chinese parents on the other hand do show that they favor sons over daughters. They think having daughters are a waste of time and money. Once they get married, they become part of the spouse family, no longer their family member. Hmmm , really?
Indirectly all these will lead to sibling rivalry and that is unhealthy. They will start to grow apart. Then what's the point of getting married and stating a family if all it's members will grow apart in the future.
Guess we as parents should evaluate our parenting skills from time to time and the best person to do that for us is our children. Listen when they argue, watch out for sign, they will indirectly let us know how we fare.
Thanks for reading and hope you love them all equally, be it your children, your parents, your siblings, your pets or even your plants.
July 30, 2010
6 comments:
You're right. Small differences such as these can lead to Sibling rivalry. That can easily crumble relationships which could be an entirely sad thing to happen.
I wonder why the Chinese parents think that way. They should realize that a daughter is part of their family too.
I know it's something very similar in India where parents often give more preference to sons than daughters for precisely the same reason. With changing times, the attitude is seeing a shift but the differences still remain.
Hope you guys won't do that to your kids, in the future
Hi Aries!
I love this post! So true! Chinese seems to favor the sons more than daughters, and eldest sons more than the next few sons...
Btw, thanks for dropping by my blog earlier. We do have some CD and DVD of children's songs and games but he doesn't seem interested in kiddy songs... Thanks for your suggestion!
I too has seen the favourism of son over daughter in a lot of chinese families, though I might not be in a position to say this, cause my father actually like my sister more than three other sons, including me, weird, huh? Anyway, thanks for liking my blog, hope we keep on sharing our stories.
I try to show my kids equal love. They are almost 6 years apart so the sibling rivalry is not that big in my house.
I do baby my younger one more due to spending lots of time and money on my older one who's diabetic.That is my way to even out the score and the older one understands that.
We have lots of East Indian families around our town and the sons can't do no wrong. Most of the young boys grow up thinking that they can do or have anything they want.
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