Praise Works On One Of Them So I Give It To That One

Nobody decided this.

You said something good to one of them once and their whole face changed. And you said something good to the other one and they shrugged, or said yeah, or carried on doing whatever they were doing with no visible response whatsoever.

And you are a human being, so you went where the response was. Not deliberately. Over about two years.

And now, if you were honest and counted, the arithmetic would be uncomfortable, and you have never counted because some part of you already knows what the answer is.

This is not favoritism. It is feedback, and feedback is a much harder thing to notice than favoritism, because it never feels like a choice.

And you would deny all of this if somebody put it to you directly, and you would be telling the truth as you understand it. Nobody in this house has a favorite. That is not what is happening. What is happening is smaller than that and harder to see, and it has been running for about two years.

Ye shall not respect persons in judgment

There is an instruction in Deuteronomy about even handedness that is aimed at something very ordinary.

Ye shall not respect persons in judgment; but ye shall hear the small as well as the great; ye shall not be afraid of the face of man. (Deuteronomy 1:17, King James Version)

Ye shall hear the small as well as the great. That is the working clause, and it is about attention rather than about verdicts.

And then: ye shall not be afraid of the face of man. Which is a strange thing to include until you notice what it is doing. It names the face as the thing that moves a person off course.

You have been steered by a face rather than by a decision, and no habit built that way has ever once announced itself as one. Deuteronomy 1:17 names the face as the thing to be resisted, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a parent see a two year drift without being condemned by it.

And notice that the instruction assumes the pull is real. It does not say faces do not affect people. It says do not be moved by them, which is an instruction to somebody who is being moved.

You were never weak for going where the response was, and nobody has ever once been immune to the difference between a lit up face and a shrug. The written word names the pull and then governs it, and the Spirit of God is the one who supplies what resisting it costs.

What the quiet one has learned

Here is the part that matters, and it is not about fairness in the abstract.

A child who receives less praise does not conclude that praise is scarce. They conclude something about themselves.

And the conclusion is usually not the obvious one. It is rarely my parent loves the other one more. It is much more often something like: I am not the kind of person things get said about.

That is a far more durable belief than jealousy, and it is much harder to see, because it produces no complaint at all. It produces exactly what you have been seeing, which is a shrug.

You have been reading a symptom as a temperament, and a shrug has never once been the same thing as not wanting to hear it. Deuteronomy 1:17 requires the small to be heard as well as the great, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a parent what a lack of reaction actually contains.

And there is a loop in it, which is the cruel part.

The less they respond, the less it gets said. The less it gets said, the more certain they become that they are not the kind of person it gets said about. And the more certain they become, the flatter the response.

Neither of you built that loop on purpose and both of you are in it.

You are able to break a loop from one end, and it has never once required the other person to move first. The written word puts the instruction on the one with the authority in the room, and the Spirit of God is the one who supplies the first move in a thing that has been running for years.

You were never going to be shown the result, and no child in that position has ever once been able to react in the way that would tell you it was working. Deuteronomy 1:17 governs the hearing rather than the outcome, and it is the Holy Spirit who keeps a parent going when nothing comes back.

Say it to the other one, and say it anyway

So here is the assignment, and the second half is the entire difficulty.

Tonight, say the same kind of specific thing to the one it does not land on.

Specific. The same standard as the one you would use for the other one. Not a consolation sentence, which they will hear immediately for what it is.

He always knows where things are in this house. He was the one who noticed the thing with the door. He never makes a fuss about it, and somebody in this house has noticed that he does not.

You have specific material about the quiet one already, and it has never once been the finding of the words that was the difficulty. Deuteronomy 1:17 requires the small to be heard as well as the great, and the Spirit of God is the one who brings the exact observation to mind at a table.

And then, when nothing happens, say another one the next night.

That is the whole exercise. The shrug is not a result. It is the condition, and it will stay the condition for a while, and the thing that changes it is repetition without reward.

Most parents stop after two or three because there is no return. That is exactly what feedback does to people, and knowing that in advance is most of what gets you past it.

Deuteronomy 1:17 requires the small to be heard as well as the great and names the face as the thing not to be moved by, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is at a table with somebody saying a good sentence into a shrug.

You are permitted to speak without a response, and an unreturned sentence has never once been an unheard one. The written word governs the hearing rather than the reception, and the Spirit of God is the one who carries what nobody in the room acknowledged.

You have a loop you can break from your own end tonight, and it has never once needed anybody else to go first. Deuteronomy 1:17 puts the duty on the one with the authority, and it is the Holy Spirit who supplies the fourth and fifth attempt when there has been nothing back from the first three.