Let's talk about the "golden child" syndrome

[Thesearepearls]

This thread has been prompted from the thread about narc mothers. Which was humbling to read.

I have two children. I truly believe that I love both children equally. In fact DD was our miracle child (after 3 miscarriages and 2 ectopic pregancies). I never believed that i would have a child nevermind two. I love being a parent and I hope that I have been the best parent that is possible given my own failings as a human being.

The thing is that DD had a few problems growing up (she is 20 now). She didnt work at school, despite being very clever, and there was a problem with money. She stole a vast amount of money. I don't want to say how much except it was thousands. She is now at a good university and has a lot of friends and a really nice boyfriend. She's back on the right track.

DS was diligent and hardworking and did his best at school and has done rather well. He's waiting for his exam results but he will go to a very good university.

I firmly believe that I have treated my children equally yet I hear the odd comment from DD that DS was the "golden child". I don't think he was, I think they are both golden children yet DD clearly feels there is some aspect of inequality. That in some way DS was treated better.

I have reviewed my actions carefully. Have i treated them unequally? Why would I have done that? More importantly how did this inequality manifest itself? DD has the larger bedroom which has an en-suite bathroom (this is a function of our house, only two of the bedrooms have en-suite bathrooms and DD being older sort of got the room with the bathroom). They have both been to the same schools. They have both been encouraged and supported I think or hope.

The difference between the two children who are equally bright and I firmly believe equally loved is that DS worked and DD didn't. So her results at school were fine kind of but DS's results were outstanding. We tried to help both children equally.

FWIW I think I am close to both children but possibly closer to DD who talks to me if she is upset about anything where DS will bottle things up.

I'm just feeling unsettled about this golden child thing. I don't want either of my children thinking they're not golden children. But DD certainly thinks about DS as though he's a golden child and she is not. Although she does love her brother and does celebrate his success.

I don't know what do you do when one child feels she's not the golden child?

Hmmm my younger DSis is the golden child in my family (my mum only) . I never mentioned it to my dh as it was ‘the norm’ but he brought it up with me, it is very noticeable.
Now we are adults it manifests itself it different ways, poor social behaviour from my dsis is ignored and later denied, stories are recounted from childhood which highlights how dsis was the funniest, cleverest, best such and such, most lovely hair colour; you get the idea. She just seemed to be more cherished. She went to a better school than me and got in uni. We were both intelligent but she was more so, but she was slightly lazy and didn’t study enough despite her intelligence. Career wise I think I’ve done better in the long run. My achievements are never acknowledged though.
I do not make these mistakes and comparisons between my kids as it still is very hurtful to feel second best 30 years later.
Interestingly enough I have come to realise, as an adult, that my gran had a favourite and it wasn’t my mum, so goodness knows why she managed to perpetuate the golden child favourite?

I think it’s always worth waiting for posters to give examples before taking up their perspective wholesale - but that’s with anything, not just golden child/scapegoat dynamics.

It’s the internet so we have to read everything with a critical brain, and not just assume everyone is an unreliable narrator, or a perfect one either.

I think it very much depends what golden child dynamic your dd is talking about. I’ve just referred to the golden child: scapegoat dynamic, which is the one a lot of posters have in mind. That’s a very harmful family dynamic of course, and no one comes out of that unscathed. As lots of posters are saying, I agree, you don’t seem to have some of the hallmarks of a parent who would be creating this cruel and manipulative set of family roles.

My mother wouldn’t react as you are to me suggesting my dear sister was the golden child. You are worried about your dd’s feelings, and searching your memories of the past genuinely concerned that she has a reason for thinking this that you can discover:

My mother would make it all about her and her feelings... oh and my failings of course, scratch the surface and there’s always a desire to ‘bring me down a peg or two’. Unless I’m filled with self loathing and self doubt I’m not in my proper place!

Anyway, I digress. First response would be to fake a physical blow to the chest or to her nerves / general frailty from the terribly cruelty of my words, and if that didn’t work, she’d launch into a ‘after all I’ve done for you’ tirade, with herself in a saintly rewritten past type of role which is completely divorced from any facts I recognise. This would end with a personal attack on me and all my faults including how ‘hard’ I’ve become.

Then if I got through those first lines of defence, we’d move on to the next level of avoidance, rewriting and manipulation. I wouldn’t bother to push it these days, but I would have done as a teenager or young adult when the injustices were rawer and I was still chasing my mothers love).

I loved my sister by the way. She had a hard childhood too, being smothered isn’t nice .

Sooo, I too think your dd may mean a different type of golden child situation.

Generally the youngest is favoured. This has been my experience and the experience of many people I know too.

My best friend is the youngest and without doubt is his Mother’s favourite. She has always babied him and literally thinks the sun shines out of his arse.

I am my DF’s only child but my DM had my brother when I was six and Christ... he has always been the favourite. Literally the minute he was brought home from the hospital, my home life changed and I realised I was at the bottom of the pile. He was a terrible child but things were always my fault because I was the eldest and should know better .

I’m not sure if parents do this purposely or subconsciously but it always seems to be the case. My DP doesn’t realise it but he is the favourite with his parents too...

There's a big difference between perfectly normal sibling rivalry and the horrifically damaging all goo/all bad child dynamic found in families where a parent has a personality disorder. There is a book called "Understanding the Borderline Mother" which explains it very well in an easy to read format. I am the all bad child and my sibling is the all good child. We are both equally damaged. I am not enough, I don't expect to be enough. My sibling has to be more than enough, has to always be better than enough, must always be striving for more to be enough. It's about so much more than whether someone's bedroom is bigger.

Op the fact that you can even question your own parenting rationally proves you've got no need to worry. My mother would be throwing a huge tantrum at the suggestion which would probably end up in another attention seeking attempt to kill herself. It's all "me, me, me", we're just pawns in whatever her self obsessed freak show is. As long as you're not delivering lines such as "you ruin everything" and "my life would be better without you in it" then your kids will be ok.

I don't think it comes from material things. In fact I don't even think it comes from how you have treated them. I think it comes from how she treated herself following the occasions when she felt she let you down. If she didn't feel fully forgiven or if she still holds that shame for things she felt were never as good as her brother then she will be projecting that onto herself. It'll be hard for her to see but it will be her that is holding up the golden child mirror rather than you.
Words from you won't matter...actions wont really matter either. I think it will need to come from her that she needs to realise her past has no bearing on her present in terms of your relationship.

I don't think you've addressed it anywhere but I agree with other posters. It's likely to be a description of his personality and behaviour, not a reflection of your parenting. I'd describe my brother as a "golden child" but do not believe my parents favoured one child over another.

I think its natural to want to be treated the same AND to feel a little bit special.

If she says it a lot it might be worth having a discussion with her which includes a discussion of how you feel about being told this. Acknowledge her feelings and make it clear that you are listening, but that cuts two ways.

I remember a line from a novel where an adult child says they think their mother was always "perfectly fair." The sibling says "that proves it - if you think she was being perfectly fair then she must have been favouring you outrageously. "

I think there is a lot of truth in that. Teenagers' default view is that they are hard done by and everyone else is spoiled or has it far easier. Your DD's opinion is probably normal. What does your DS think? If he says you were fair then your DD might be right . . .

TBH I would be tempted to say to your DD 'Well maybe I trusted DS more, because HE NEVER STOLE X THOUSAND QUID!!" but I know that's a shirty thing to say.

Shitty thing to say, but also shirty!

In a way, I am kind of grateful to my father for so often telling me, 'Your sister and brother were always so much easier than you', 'Why do you have to be such a shit, neither your brother or sister have ever been like this' and 'Well of course I treat them differently, you're just such a little shit sometimes, it's your fault', because it means I know I'm not imagining it.

My brother is the clear favourite and to be fair, he has always done the best he can with the role. Dad was a sexist and a misogynist so he definitely made it easier for Brother, but Brother realises this. He was the only person who could ever tell Dad to stick a sock in his hateful rhetoric. It was also Brother who got between me and Dad on one of the numerous occasions Dad attacked me, squared up to him and made it clear that if Dad wanted to get to me, he would need to get through Brother first.

My mother will swear blind that there have never been any favourites, and Dad, until he died, would scowl if you said he preferred Brother, then Sister, then me, but to be fair he would never deny it. He would just tell you what an utter little shit I've always been and it's not his fault.

I'm the youngest. Mum swears I was planned and wanted but tbh I do wonder. There are a fair few years between us. I also think that as the youngest, by a fair margin, my family have decided to cast me eternally in the role of self-obsessed, stroppy teenager. If I argue my case or defend myself, it just proves they're right. My sister married a wealthy man and became a semi-SAHM, basically working on an ad hoc basis for her husband's company. I got irritated that she kept giving me unsolicited career advice (even when she did work, she never worked in my field) and this was seen as me being difficult and unable to see the Real World.

I think PPs who talked about people being cast in roles in families are right. My poor brother has been cast as UN diplomat.

There's also their misremembering of things.

One thing dd1 and dd2 occasionally throw at me is that I still read ds, who is the youngest, a bed time story. he'll 11yo, and I stopped with both of them round about age 5/6yo.

"You never read to me when I was that age" they'll say. But, and I've told them this several times, they didn't want me reading to them. Dd1 was delighted to be able to read to herself when she discovered Rainbow Fairies. At first I sat in the room to help with any tricky words, but soon she was saying that she didn't need me.
Dd2 if I tried to read to her was usually trying to wrest the book off me by the end of the second page.

There's also often a "well mine doesn't really count" feeling.
I've said to dd1 before now that she had 3 years of just her and me, and she says that she doesn't remember it so it shouldn't count.
Or If I point out to dd2 that she has me far more than the others on her own because of her hospital appointments and charity days (which includes at least an annual stay in a hotel with just us etc!) then her feeling is that those don't count because she "needs" it rather than it being a bonus.

Ds, being the youngest, does get more of my time at any point but no more than the girls had at the same age, so they're not comparing like with like, but that's almost impossible to do when you're in that situation.

He also had about 6-7 years of being dragged round to sit on the side while his sisters did activities, which he absolutely hated. The girls only come with me to his activities if they choose to because they're old enough to stay at home.

I am one of six so largely felt ignored growing up. It suited me fine at the time but it's only now I realize the damage it did.

DPs were busy working long hours but after the birth of youngest DSis she was the favoured child being the baby of the family. She is also the most independent and confident out of us all.

Another Dsis (older) is DM's favourite too and I think the real golden child as she never set a foot wrong. She has also been through the most shit in adult life so DM has continued to have a soft spot for her. It's also no coincidence that both of them are most like DM physically and in mannerisms. I am more like my DF.

Once DM told my DMIL that she loves all six DC but the love she has for that child (older DSis) is different and stronger and she cannot explain it. I was sat with them at the time. Left me heartbroken but unsurprised as it confirmed my feelings. OP, I doubt you would ever do anything like this so I wouldn't worry.

It is not about possessions. It is about how you interact with them. I think parents often side with the younger child because of a subconscious need to balancing things. They see the older child as stronger and the younger child as weaker.

It's about emotions not facts. Kids who feel hard done by will not listen to reason but, likewise, parents refuse to consider they could have been anything but fair. You feel equal love for them and will interpret everything that happened in that light.

There is no point trying persuade the other side they are wrong or appoint and independent judge. It won't work.

You have different perspectives and all you can do is try to understand the other side.

I'm really glad OP started this thread. In any discussion like this, there are always parents swearing blind that they absolutely do not have a favourite, or if they did they definitely hid it and none of the kids would ever guess....

...but there are also always loads of adult children who are adamant that their parents did indeed have a favourite and it's always been obvious, even though the parents would never admit it.

So there is clearly something going on.

Ok so, I'm on Narc DMs thread mostly because of issues I have with my sister who fits the bill of NPD

She would tell you I'm the Golden Child, and she'd have a point, to a degree, but what she wouldn't say is that I was only the GC to one parent and the scapegoat of the other my father who is/was massively unstable

My fathers rejection of me, and my siblings following his example led to a completely unhealthy dynamic with my DM who was the only one to show me love.

Certainly my sister has more than made up for my being my mother's favourite as she's spent my whole life punishing me for it, and making sure all the blame for her own unhappiness is laid squarely at my door instead of at the door of two highly dysfunctional parents

I was the so-called golden child and I was the eldest by 4 years, so I don't agree with the "baby of the family" theory many pp have put forward here.

Also, I honestly think that what this comes down to is that children are born with their own inherent personalities and consequently have different ways of interacting and responding. We are certainly shaped by our experiences, but I firmly believe that how a parent relates to a child is dependent on the dynamics of the parent-child relationship - how the child's personality interacts with the each of the parents' personalities - and that this relationship is formed very early on.

I have very different relationships with each of my children. I can't treat them "the same" because they will each react differently in the same situation. One will do exactly as asked 99% of the time, naturally helps around the house, is interested in what I'm doing and wants to be involved, whereas the other (who has mild SN) has great difficulty listening, responding, following rules etc. and appears to have no intrinsic internal need or desire to help and be involved. So, we absolutely treat them differently and we are more demanding on him than our "golden child" because he needs to learn to function in both the family and the wider world. Maybe he will grow up to perceive that we were harder on him, but we'll be failing him as parents if we don't try to shape his behaviour and prepare him for life.

I too disagree with the idea it’s always the youngest child who’s favored. I was the youngest child and absolutely not cast in the role of a little one needing more help. Good Lord it makes me laugh at the very idea!

Both me and my sister were very clear what our roles were in our family. I think the difference in our dynamic was that she saw how much I was scapegoated and how much she was the favoured golden child, and she strives to make up for it. So I loved her a lot, in spite of all the manipulation and isolation tactics from my mother.

I know my sister was a very special person though, and not your typical golden child. In therapy as an adult I discovered that my darling sister is probably one of the reasons I’m not irrevocably fucked up (just middling screwed up :) )... she was my strong infant attachment, even though she was only two years older. Her and my mainly absent but loving father were apparently enough to let my brain develop any attachments at all in a deeply damaging family dynamic.

You know your family is seriously screwed up when you hide behind the golden child bloody glad you aren’t getting the motherly attention!

As the unfavoured child my childhood was one long game that was set up for me, where I was supposed to do the ‘mummy mummy mummy love me please’ dance, so I could be rejected in many glorious ways... but after a few years I became very disappointing to my mother, as the tongue lashing vileness outwayed everything and I just wanted to hide, or get angry.

I had the bigger bedroom by the way, with a sink in it too. And got ferried around to various lessons that were my allotted ‘things’. But those were not the whole story... red herrings really.

I think that there is a danger of it becoming an overused term and normal (ish) relationships do get termed Golden child/Scape goat.

My elder sibling was the golden child they could do anything and get away with it, even to the extent where I would get blamed for it.

Even when they did something that put them clearly in the wrong I ended up with the blame deflected on to me.

It got to the stage where I could be blamed just on the say so of my elder sibling.

Other phrases that stuck would be "its just how they are", "you shouldn't wind them up". "you shouldn't react to them winding you up" and a personal favourite "what have you done now". All to excuse the behaviour of my elder sibling.

I think it probably stems from her insecurity, plus maybe the perception that your DS has just had it easier growing up. I wouldn't worry about it as it's unlikely to be anything you've done, but maybe have it out with her and reassure her.

DS2 refers to DS1 as the golden boy, despite being treated equally and if anything DS2 got more than DS1.

DS1 had to really work for good school results (learning didn’t come easy) never got a detention, followed the rules. DS2 is far cleverer but hated school/college and messed around. His teachers were really frustrated with him as in their words he was an A* student and a promising sports person. He thinks we prefer DS1 as we never told him off or punished him whereas DS2 was always in trouble. We have had the community police round on a couple of occasions. He has a chip on his shoulder because we have supported DS1 at Uni and he thinks he should have been given the same amount of money every week to lounge about instead of getting a job. In fact I have paid for his car to be fixed I don’t know how many times and been out of pocket when he hasn’t always paid me back fully.

I always tell DS2 I love him and that I am proud of him but sometimes that just doesn’t seem to be enough.

Sounds like it could be a bit like my situation. I wouldn't say it to them, but when I'm feeling low, I convince myself that my parents can't possibly love me as much as my brother, because I've put them through so much and achieved so little, whereas he didn't put them through any of that anguish, and has a good life – a house, a wife, a great job, a zillion amazing qualifications, a baby on the way, etc. etc., whereas I have serious mental health problems, was a nightmare child and a nightmare teen, and until the last couple of years have done nothing at all with my life. My parents have never treated us in a way that would lead anyone to believe they love him more, but for me it can feel as though it's impossible that they could love someone like me as much as they love my brother, if you see what I mean? Could it be something like that?

My siblings and I always refer to one of our brothers as the golden child. He’s very charming and gets away with murder but I don’t honestly believe that my Mum loves him anymore than the rest of us. I’m the only girl and the youngest so for that reason my brothers sometimes say I’m the favourite as well, which again, I’m not. Then sometimes it would seem like another of my brothers is the favourite because he’s the most successful. Another is way more sensitive so gets less stick from my Mum as she does her best not to upset him. What I’m trying to say is that siblings will always compare themselves to one another and will often find flaws in themselves therefore assuming everyone else can see those flaws so their sibling must be the ‘golden child’. Just make sure she knows that you love them both for different reasons and if she’s anything like my siblings and me then she’s only winding you up when she says it!

Have you asked her?

OP, people who steal and lie can often be very manipulative. I’d see this tactic as a form of deflection and distraction.

I always believed my older DSis was the golden child, she always seemed to get more attention than me, when she had her children, my parents were always buying things for them, or having them to stay. As my DSis is 5 years older than me we didn't really have much of a relation ship. Now, we get on really well, and some years ago confided in me that when we were younger she always felt my parents favoured me over her. I was astounded, then we worked it out that our parents actually didn't favour either of us, but treated us differently as were are very different people, with different needs.

A lot of the time, this golden child thing is so subjective, you cannot see it for what it truly is.