Why Oldest Kids Often Feel Jealous Of Younger Siblings (And What I Do About It As A Mom)
I was wiping popsicle juice off the kitchen table last Saturday when my 14-year-old daughter Lila slammed her bedroom door so hard the magnet holding the kids’ art fell off the fridge. Ten minutes earlier, I’d split a bag of gummy bears between the two younger kids, and when Lila asked for a handful, I’d joked that she was too old for candy that sticks to your teeth. I didn’t think anything of it until I heard her mutter through the door, “Of course everything’s for them now.”
I’d been brushing this kind of irritation off for months as just 14-year-old mood. She’s our first kid, we started calling her our “house senior” a while back when we were planning ahead for high school, and the name stuck. She was supposed to be the mature one, the one who could handle disappointments while we fussed over the 5-year-old and 8-year-old who still need help tying shoes and remembering their lunchboxes. It took a parent-teacher conference to make me stop brushing it off. Her English teacher pulled me aside after our meeting and mentioned a recent journal assignment, where Lila wrote, “My parents think I don’t care anymore when they do everything for the little kids. I do care. I hate that I care, but I do.”
A week after that conference, I lived exactly what she’d written. Our 5-year-old fell off his bike outside the grocery store and split his lip, and I had to rush him to the emergency room to get stitches. Lila had her first cross country meet that afternoon, and I’d promised I’d be there to cheer her on. My husband was stuck at work out of town, so I texted Lila a dozen apologies, and she texted back “it’s fine” immediately. When we got home three hours later, I found her crumpled participation ribbon tossed on the kitchen counter. I assumed she didn’t care about a stupid participation ribbon, until a few days later I was cleaning her room and found it taped to the inside of her closet door. That’s when it hit me: she didn’t care about the ribbon. She cared that I wasn’t there to see her get it.
I started paying closer attention, and I realized how often we unintentionally shrink Lila’s space in this family just because she’s older. We need her to be the easy one, the one who doesn’t need anything, because the little kids take so much time and energy. We automatically ask her to give up her seat in the car, give up her snack, give up a Saturday to babysit, because she’s the big kid. We cut back on the hugs, the silly one-on-one trips, the photos, because we assume she doesn’t want that stuff anymore. We don’t mean to make her feel like her needs don’t count, but that’s exactly what happens. Jealousy and resentment don’t just go away when you grow up—they just look different than they do when a 5-year-old hits their sibling over a toy.
I started trying small, specific changes instead of just having a big talk about how much we love her, which would have felt awkward and forced anyway. The first thing I added was a 10-minute no-agenda check-in every night after the little kids go to bed. I bring her a snack that’s just hers—no splitting, no little hands grabbing for it. It’s usually the sour watermelon candy I tell her is bad for her teeth, but I buy it anyway. I don’t bring up grades, or chores, or cross country practice. I just sit on the edge of her bed while she scrolls TikTok, and let her bring up whatever she wants. If she doesn’t feel like talking, we just sit in silence. It took two weeks for her to get used to it, but now she’s the one who yells down the hall if I’m 5 minutes late.
The second thing I changed was that I stopped automatically telling her to share with the younger kids. If my 8-year-old wants to borrow Lila’s favorite hoodie or her colored pencils, I don’t say “just let her use it, it’s just a hoodie.” I say “that’s Lila’s. You have to go ask her, and if she says no, that’s that.” The first time I did that, Lila looked shocked—we’d always made her share before, no matter how much she cared about the thing. Now she knows her boundaries are my boundaries too, not something she has to fight for every time.
Last month, I took her out for a silly, no-purpose trip just us. We went to the dollar store and bought stupid candy and a pack of glow-in-the-dark temporary tattoos, then went and sat in the parking lot of her favorite coffee shop and ate everything. No rushing back to the kids, no talk of responsibilities, just us. On the drive home, she said it was the first time in a year we’d done something that wasn’t all about the little kids.
It’s not fixed. She still slams her door once a week, usually when I forget and make her give up something for the family. Last week she got mad because I forgot to save her a slice of birthday cake at my nephew’s party, and all that was left was the tiny crumbly corner. I went to the grocery store and bought her a whole separate cupcake with sprinkles, just for her, and she rolled her eyes but ate it on her bed without sharing. I know I’ll mess up again. I have three kids, the little ones need a lot, and it’s easy to default to asking the oldest to step back. But now I know that being older doesn’t mean she doesn’t need to be first, sometimes. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t get to have something that’s just hers. We’re still figuring it out, day by day.
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