Rod Mitchell, the oldest child in his family, remembers being nine when his seven-year-old sister reached for a large Lego tower he’d spent all afternoon building.
When he grabbed it back, a piece flew off, and she started crying. Instead of asking what happened, their parents said: “You’re older. You should know better.”
“That’s the same sentence I now coach parents to replace,” said Mitchell, who is a registered psychologist and clinical director at Emotions Therapy Calgary. “I clearly remember anger at feeling unfairly treated, and underneath that a lesson formed in my mind: her tears were proof of something, and my account of what happened wasn’t.”
As a parent, it may seem like you’re teaching your kids responsibility or how to get along, but you could also be assigning them roles within the family without realising it.
When certain expectations repeatedly fall on the same child, they can shape how siblings see themselves, and each other, long after childhood, influencing sibling relationships for years to come. Here, family therapists break down what they want parents to know about these patt...
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