10 Things Lots Of Adult Siblings Remember 100% Differently About The Exact Same Childhood
ESB Professional / ShutterstockOne of the best things about having a sibling is knowing there is at least one person in your life who understands where you literally come from. Your sibling (usually) shares the same mother and father, the same home environment, the same rules, and many of the same core memories, so they should know better than absolutely anyone what makes you tick and why you are the way you are.
Hopefully, when you're all grown up, you can offer each other a deep sense of support based on all of that mutual background, but sometimes, when brothers and sisters get to talking, they find out that they actually remember several things about what was basically the exact same childhood in completely different ways. Technically, no one is likely wrong in those situations, because everyone experiences life from their own unique perception that affects how they remember things. That fact may not stop siblings from squabbling occasionally, but hopefully, understanding how common it is to disagree about certain things can at least keep things from damaging your relationship.
Siblings often remember these things entirely differently about their childhoods once they're all grown up
1. Which child was the favorite
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When you grow up in a big family, it’s easy to feel like your parents have a habit of putting one sibling on a pedestal. It’s like they're the golden child who can’t do anything wrong, while the other always gets the short end of the stick.
Most parents would swear they don’t actually have a favorite child, but favoritism can still creep in unconsciously. Psychologists even use the term parental differential treatment to describe the emotional impact it has on each child and their relationship with one another.
It’s easy to subjectively feel like you’re the odd one out and can never measure up to your perfect sibling, while they might feel the exact same way about you. If the two of you can remember that your parents' actions were about your parents and not actually about the two of you, you can potentially open the door to release some of your resentments and find empathy for each other.
2. How much pressure you each were under
Another thing that’s often brought up in arguments between siblings is how much their parents pressured them, especially regarding academic performance. Many parents put pressure on their kids, hoping it will encourage them to do what they need to do in order to be as successful as possible, but this can easily become so toxic that it backfires. And when it comes to siblings, if one feels the other got off scot-free while they were pressured relentlessly, there could be a good deal of resentment that's built up over time.
Many siblings remember being held to different standards than their brothers or sisters when they were kids. This is more noticeable when parents really did have different expectations for different children based on their talents. Even if they were well-intentioned, that can leave a mark that doesn’t heal easily.
3. Who had to do the most chores
Chores are a pretty inevitable part of growing up. Even when children don’t like helping out, it still teaches them about responsibility and independence. It’s pretty hard to understand that when you’re 9-years-old and have to take out the garbage, though.
Because kids just generally don’t like chores, their perception of them can become skewed. It would be easy for them to think their load is unfair, especially when they compare it to what their siblings have to do. This makes memories about who had to do more or worse chores pretty unreliable.
4. How happy they were
Research has shown that people who have more positive memories of their childhoods are usually physically and mentally healthier. But what counts as a positive experience for one child might be something their sibling remembers as decidedly not as fun. Even something as seemingly universally enjoyable as a trip to Disney might have been the best time of one child's life while their sibling is forever haunted by a ride that gave them nightmares.
Even if much of your time was spent together doing the same things as your brother or sister, your individual personalities, moods, preferences, and sensitivities are going to lead you both to count up the number of positive vs. negative experiences in your lives differently. It’s important to remember that there are a lot of factors that impact someone’s feelings about their childhood that have nothing to do with their family.
5. How much their parents argued
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It's pretty rare that children absolutely never see their parents argue, and if that were the case, it wouldn’t really prepare them to face the real world either. But witnessing frequent, intense fighting between parents can harm a child's mental health in the long term.
Adults understand things very differently from the way kids do. What children do or don't experience as their parents fighting may actually feel far less, or far more, intense than the way their parents experience those same encounters. The same is true when it comes to different siblings. Some may not even pay attention when their parents argue, while others linger around the corner and listen to every word. It's especially easy for siblings of widely different ages to have contrasting recollections of those moments because their ability to grasp the situation won't likely be the same.
6. Who could get away with breaking the rules
It’s pretty common for siblings to disagree about who got in trouble the least, even when they didn’t follow the rules. Most people don't feel like they were the fortunate ones who were treated a bit more gently. Or sometimes, people know they were, and they actually think it's funny.
While a lot of parents would insist they didn’t let one child get away with more than another, a 2008 study showed that parents do treat their older children more strictly than their younger ones. This is one sibling argument that seems like it could actually be legit in some cases, particularly when there’s a big age difference.
7. The kind of discipline they received
Similarly, it wouldn’t be surprising for one sibling to look back and remember receiving harsh discipline, while another feels like their parents were pretty lenient. Because every child is different, there really isn’t a universal formula that can be used for discipline.
Varying the types of consequences you apply can be a good idea for parents, especially when they have children of widely ages, but it can be hard to see that when you’re the kid on the receiving end.
8. What the house was like
We tend to think of our memories as facts, so it doesn’t make sense when siblings who grew up together remember their house being different sizes or even kept in different conditions.
Not everything you remember is true, though. Our brains can actually develop false memories when a certain aspect of a memory feels stronger than another or when we don’t remember every detail perfectly. In other words, the house never grew or shrank. The siblings just don’t have the same image of it in their minds.
9. How much money the family had
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The amount of money a family has is factual, but the way different members of the family think about that money is completely subjective. What seems like a lot to one sibling might not be much to another based on the kinds of things they had and wanted. This is different for everyone, even when people grew up together.
Kids usually develop their own ideas about spending money between the ages of five and ten, and they don’t necessarily follow their parents’ lead or adopt their parents' habits. They are also likely to have different preferences when it comes to hobbies and fashion. If one kid loves thrift store clothes and their favorite hobby is sketching, they may have grown up feeling their family had plenty of money, while their sibling who wanted horses and name-brand jeans may have grown up thinking their family was super poor because they couldn't have those things.
10. How supportive their parents were
Just like kids may feel different amounts of pressure from the same set of parents, they might feel like they received different degrees of support as well. The way parents show up for their kids continues to affect them throughout the rest of their lives, but they might not have interpreted that support in the way they intended.
Just because one form of support worked for an older sibling doesn’t mean that it’s the best for a younger one. Everyone has different needs and accepts love in different ways. Parents also can’t be perfect, no matter how hard they try to be, so support might have felt inconsistent during different time periods, even when that was never their intention.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
