I Don't Love My Kids Equally....And That's The Point

Loving your kids “equally” sounds like the gold standard, but I think it’s the wrong target. I’m sharing an unpopular opinion from my own house: when you have multiple kids, you don’t love them in identical ways, because they aren’t identical people. The real job is fairness making sure each child feels seen, valued, and secure, without sending the message that someone else matters more.

I start with family news and a fresh newborn that brought up a classic parenting question: what happens to your heart when you add another child? From there I break down what individualized parenting looks like with three kids close in age, including one strong willed, highly articulate boy and a set of twins who need room to become themselves. I talk about why comparison can quietly wreck confidence, how I encourage siblings to stop measuring themselves against each other, and why “you’re only in competition with yourself” is a rule I repeat constantly.

We also zoom out to the generational shift around mental health. Many of us were raised by parents shaped by survival first priorities, and now we’re trying to raise emotionally healthy kids in a loud, demanding world. I’m honest about burnout, the days I want to “get lazy,” and why I still believe this work matters more than grades, sports, or perfect résumés. What I care about is raising strong individuals with a moral compass, real independence, and a deep belief in their own value.

If you’re navigating sibling dynamics, twin parenting, mental health, or just trying to be a better parent on tired legs, this one is for you. Subscribe to Steel Versus Podcast, share it with a parent friend, and leave a review if it helps what part of this hits closest to home?

Transcript

Welcome And Weekend Reset

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello everybody, this is Steel Versus Podcast. This podcast was created for women by women to elevate women's voices. I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. Am incredibly happy to report that I had a great weekend. I feel in good health, and I was able to do regular Jenny stuff this weekend. So regular Jenny thrives on cooking and thrives on really just kind of like taking care of my family and making sure that I have everything ready to go for the week. I know that sounds a little sick because it's like does regular Jenny not like to have fun? It is sick, and that is fun to me. I know it's appalling, but I do. I actually really, really enjoy cooking on the weekends, most specifically the meal prep part. So, like for example, today is Sunday as I record this, it's Sunday evening, and I made uh chicken stew today with the intention of we were gonna have that for dinner, but I also knew in the back of my mind that should nobody want that chicken stew for dinner today, it'll be great for leftovers for tomorrow. So, um, and I'm always like into having something ready to go that's quick for Mondays because Mondays are like the worst day of the week in general. Like, who likes Mondays? Nobody. So made this, I put some chicken stew ready to go in a crock pot this morning, and then kind of went about my day. Had a really, really nice long walk with my husband this morning, worked out today, worked out yesterday, both days. We went on these really nice long walks down by the beach by the bay. Um, and then just, you know, did family errands and like hung out at home and were together and we were present. Um, and it was just one of those weekends that it was just really nice to be with my family. Big family news also. We welcomed a new member to our family on Friday. My former co-host Melissa welcomed the second daughter um to the fold. And I am beyond thrilled. Cannot even express she is the most beautiful little peanut I've ever seen. Um, my only sadness is that they're down in Florida and I could not meet her right away. So I'm trying to figure that out. Um, but in any case, huge congratulations to my cousin on welcoming little baby girl to the world. Now, on that note, a discussion I was having with my cousin, right when she was getting ready to have the baby, was what it's like when you have multiple kids. So when you have a baby and you welcome this child into the world, it's a whole personality that you have to get to know, right? So you're getting to know this little tiny person. And along the way, as they grow, you come to like them. You love them, of course, but like you like them, you know them. Like, you know, you become, you know, you become attached to them because you know their personality. So her question really was like, how does it work in terms of like loving your children? Like, is it is it even? Do you just love everybody equally? And I've got an unpopular opinion here that I'm gonna go ahead and share with you. You do not love your children equally. I'm not saying you don't love your children. I'm just saying it's not equal. And I don't mean that you love one more than the other. I mean you love each child differently. Now, I've said this before to folks, and people always kind of are surprised to hear this because I think the typical person will say, I love you all the same, love you all equally across the board. That's not possible. And here's why, and here's my thinking on this: you're not gonna love each child across the board the same because they're different. They have different personalities, there's different characteristics. There's things that one child will do that drives you insane that the other ones don't do, and vice versa. And everyone has their little quirks and nuances. Each personality is different. So, how is it even feasibly possible to sit there and say, I'll love you all the same? Well, you won't love them all the same. Like, let's be realistic. I have three kids, all incredibly close in age. My son was born in 2016, my twins were born in seven in 2017, they are 13 months apart. So um, I've had to compete across all three for their entire lives, and vice versa, they've had to compete for my attention across all three their entire lives. Now, I and my husband have always been really, really particular about treating the kids fairly across the board. To me, that says I'm not gonna let a moment slip by where I'm gonna let any of them feel like they're not valued or that they're not seen or that somebody else is seen more than them. Now, when I was growing up, I don't think that this was the case. And I don't think that this was the case, not because our parents didn't love us or anything like that. I think it wasn't the case because of how our parents were raised, right? So hear me out here. Our parents, my parents were born in the 50s, right? So if they're born in the 1950s, that means that their parents were born in the early 1900s, in the 1920s, right? In that era, you had the Great Depression. You had people really suffering, people were struggling just to survive, right? So worrying about their children's mental health was not at the top of the list. It really wasn't. Not because they didn't care, but because it just was not at the top of the list. At the top of the list was, how am I gonna feed my family today? Am I making, you know, my 15 cents an hour and gonna be able to buy groceries or speak, you know, like it it was a whole different set of problems, right? So mental health was not a priority, right? So then those kids grow up, have kids, right? So those kids are us. So now they're of the mindset of, I'm just raising you, I'm trying to make sure you're okay. I want to make sure you survive, I want to make sure you have some core values. But again, mental health is not at the top of that list because to them, they're coming off of, well, my parents were just trying to survive, and mental health wasn't a priority for them. So to us, this is BS. This is nonsense. Suck it up, get it together. Then you have us, right? So we have the millennial generation. I'm an old millennial. Um, I am by no means a young millennial. Um, and as an old millennial, I have some old school thinking. I have got some old school in there, but I have some forward thinking as well. And that's where I bring to you the loving your children differently across the board because I am concerned about their mental health. I am concerned about every message that they get from me. And I want to make sure that the way I'm phrasing things and how I'm treating them and how my actions are is going to impact them as positively as possible. Now, I'm not deluded. I'm sure that there are things that I do that my kids are probably gonna grow up and go to therapy about, but I'm doing the best I can. Same as our parents. They did the best they can with the information that they had at hand, right? So, how do I go about loving my kids differently? Not evenly, not exactly the same, just differently. Well, I actually make it a point to honor their uniqueness and their personalities. And I call it out to them. I call to their attention the unique things that each of them has that I love about them. So, case in point, my little boy, he is a tough cookie. He is a tough personality. When he wants something, he wants it, that's it. You're not gonna really make him budge. He just knows what he wants. You better just get online. He wants to be heard, he wants to make sure that you hear his point of view. If you don't let him get his point of view across, forget about it. And I'm talking like legitimately to me and my husband, we need to step aside sometimes and let him get his piece off his butt his chest because that's just who he is, right? Excellent communication skills. He is only 10 years old and he already recognizes what he likes, what he wants, and what he doesn't want. And he verbalizes that. I don't like that so-and-so treated me this way. I'm gonna go talk to them. 10. There's 40-year-olds that don't know how to do this, right? I love this about him. I love that he's so articulate. Now he's not best academic. He doesn't love team sports, he's not into that, he doesn't like aggressive behavior, he doesn't like that kind of thing. He doesn't he doesn't like reading, but he is like a, you know, this butt-and-growing person that is highly articulate. He does love to be around his friends and he does love, you know, hanging out, riding his bike, you know, typical boy stuff. And I'm seeing a talent come out of him that I'm actually trying to push towards um for building an engineer, is is what comes to mind here, right? So there's a talent there. Now, does he drive me insane? Absolutely. Do I tell him he drives me insane? Absolutely. Tell him all the time, you're driving mommy insane. I love you so much, but you're driving me crazy. And he laughs and he knows it because he knows that's who he is, right? The twins. The biggest, most important thing to me with the twins was that they understood that they were not in competition to each other. They're not in competition with each other. I didn't expect them to be the same. I encourage them to lean into their own unique personalities. I don't even encourage them to dress the same. I might be one of the few twin parents that does not lean into dressing them the same. I did here and there when they were little, but for the majority, I really don't. And the reason for that was because I never wanted them to set here the message or to get the message, even if it was just an undertone of you guys are supposed to be the same. Because what's gonna happen is then they're going to try to measure against each other. And inevitably, one of them is gonna fall short to the other. They have different talents, there's different things about them that are unique to them that's going to, you know, really help them rise up. We don't know all these talents yet. They're only nine, but we know I know that it's there. And if I press them into a mold, they may never recognize their natural abilities and talents. And so I don't encourage them to dress the same. I encourage them to be their own people. When one of my daughters told me, well, mommy, I don't really like the same style as you and you and my sister. I like my own thing. I said, You got it to, you got it, sister. You tell me what you want, we'll figure it out. Sorry, mommy thought you like the same stuff, but it's great that you have your own your own look. And that's kind of how I handled it, that's exactly how I handled it. You know, I encouraged the individuality. I also made it a point to make sure that my twins were not in the same classrooms at school. This also just means more work for me, technically. However, the benefit was tremendous. Now, when they were in daycare, there was no choice, right? I had to have them in the same classes, I had to have them in the same school. There wasn't something I could do about that. But as soon as they started first grade, I believe it was, in kindergarten, I already knew I wanted to transition them into separate classrooms. Because when we moved, we moved when they were in kindergarten. So I kept them together purely because new school, new people, I wanted them to feel comfortable, right? And with my son, unfortunately, he didn't have a twin, so I couldn't do that for him. But for the twins, I wanted them to have that. So they were together in kindergarten. So the end of the year comes and having my little conference with the teacher, and I brought to her and said, I really want to make sure in first grade they're separated. Can you tell me how to do that? And she breathed this deep sigh of relief and was like, Oh, thank goodness, I was gonna recommend it to you, but a lot of parents push back on that. So I'm glad you came to me. And I'm like, and I said to her, I was like, I absolutely get it, but I don't want them to be trying to push each other or one trailing behind the other. And the teacher confirmed for me one twin would always finish work first or finish things first or do whatever first, and the other one was trailing behind. So the other twin who is excelling slowed her pace to match the twin that was falling behind. Well, I don't want that. I don't want that at all. I want the girls to understand you can lean into your excellence here. You don't have to wait for anybody, not even your sister. You need to do your thing. So here comes first grade, braided them out. Again, have a pain in the butt for me because I have to go to three different parent teacher nights, whatever. It's gonna benefit them in the wrong run, right? All the while, while this is all going on, and I'm having all these thoughts about like making sure that everyone feels individual love and attention. I'm also being mindful of the fact that they are all growing up at the same time, in the same age range, going through the same things at the same time. So there's things that I'll say to them, for example, because they're not all the same people. So I will frequently say to them when they get frustrated about school, my sister's smarter than me, or my brother's smarter than me, or so-and-so does better than me, I consistently remind them you are only in competition with yourself. The only person you have to be is yesterday's person. Today you can always do better than you did yesterday, and you can do it through X, Y, and Z. And then I just have those discussions with them. I make sure that they try, I, as much as I humanly possible, I try to make them understand you are unique and I love you for who you are, not for you being the same as so-and-so. This is incredibly important. In my opinion, this is one of the most important things that I'm teaching them because as they get older, eventually, when they're not in this state of me being able to mold them anymore, they're gonna go out there and stand on their own. And I want them to be able to stand on their own. I want them to see the value in themselves and to know A, I have value, and B, no one can take that away from me. Those two things are so critical for boys and for girls, especially in this day and age where we're raising our children. So it's again, it's like a constant, constant, daily thing that we go through in my house and it's exhausting. And there's days where I'm like, I understand why parents get lazy. I understand when parents are like, forget it. I don't care if you're on your tablet all night. Just please don't bother me. I just want to lay down. I get all those things. I will say I feel very blessed to have a husband who pushes harder than I do because he is a huge and motivating factor for me when I do start to feel lazy. I am not perfect by any means. And being a parent is incredibly hard. And I have my moments where I'm just tired, I'm spent, I'm burnt out from work, and I'm burnt out from being a mother and wife. And I just want to stop some days and be like, oh, I don't want to be bothered being a leader here, but you can never really stop being a parent, right? So it's just one of those things you have to keep going and keep working at every single day and making sure that you're showing up as your best self. Again, an incredible amount of work. But I do have hope that with all this work, my children will come out the other side as strong individuals. I don't care what they do for a living. I don't care. I really don't care if they go to college, even to be perfectly honest with you. That's a whole other thing. What I care about is that they're good people, strong individuals, and they have a strong sense of self. That's the most important thing here. Making sure that they have good moral compass, making sure that they know how to handle finances, making sure that they have a sense of who they are before they leave this house because this world is huge and it is quite easy to get lost and wrapped up and go down the wrong path. They're gonna make mistakes, and I have to make sure that I'm there and ready to go and will help from a distance or help close up, depending on you know what the need is. It's important to me that they're able to be independent. I don't want them to leave the house, get married, and still not feel like they can do things on their own. Yeah, the independence factor is huge too, like making sure that they know they can always come to me. And to be perfectly honest, I can't really say anything about how I will be when once they start to have their own kids because I have a feeling I might be a little bit much. But nevertheless, like, you know, I want to make sure that they feel like they can do things and that they got it on their own. And that, you know, I'll be the grandma who's always there to help. Having kids is definitely a wild ride. Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode. Um, clearly back on my feet and excited to be here. Um, thank you to all of the new listeners and new subscribers. Very interesting, the uh demographic region that I'm starting to see flourish for listeners, but I'm grateful, honestly, grateful for all of you. Um, the podcast started so tiny, and it started with about 40 listeners a month, and I'm pretty sure it was mostly my family. And now it's grown to about 600 listeners a month, which to me is astounding. And I know that in the grand scheme of, you know, flash in the pan social media, people have millions of followers and you know, thousands of followers. And I'm sitting here excited about 600 downloads because there were 600 moments in the month that people thought that the message that on this podcast was important and significant to them. That is the highest possible compliment I could have ever received. And it's to be honest with you, the reason why I continue to record. I'm here because you're here. And I'm here because I want to make a difference for somebody. And even if it's just a scratch of the surface difference, I don't care if I can make move the needle for someone, that means I'm fulfilling my purpose here on this earth. And that is the greatest gift I've ever I'm ever going to receive. So thank you all for being here with me. I just greatly appreciate all of you. And I will catch you on the next one. Take care.