If you have siblings, you probably think that your parents liked one kid best — and you're probably right. Scientists say the family pecking order does affect children, but not always in the way you might think.
The vast majority of parents do have favorite child, according to research — about 80 percent. But that number sounds pretty darned high. So I decided to ask some kids in my neighborhood in Bethesda, Md., what they think happens in their families.
David Lewis, who's 10, is pretty sure there's a favorite in his family. He just isn't sure who it is. "It's either my older brother, who actually does things correctly, though he might mess up here or there, or me, because I'm awesome." His older sister gets to be the favorite sometimes, too.
"I think they love them equally," says Malcom Gendleman, 9. But his brother Eli, 11, says that even though he knows he really isn't being slighted, "sometimes I still feel like it."
What Eli said is important. It turns out that what matters most is not whether there is a favorite — it's whether the kid thinks there is.
"And that's the scary part," according to Alex Jensen, a psychologist with Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, who studies family relationships. "It's not just how you're treating them; it's how they perceive it."
[For more of this story, written by Nancy Shute, go to http://www.npr.org/blogs/healt...it-can-spell-trouble]
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