Once there was a little girl who was always copying her older sister. Now this is what younger brothers and sisters ought to do—we all learn by imitation. This is how God made us. But God created us to learn by imitation in a spirit of admiration and gratitude, and not in a spirit of competition and one-upmanship. And as we imitate, we should be conscious of doing so.
But this little girl—two years younger than her sister—had no idea that she was imitating at all. Whatever her sister got, she had to have too, and she did not see that her sister created these crazy desires in her. All she saw was that her sister was an obstacle to her having what she clearly thought she had a right to.
This pattern had started when she was a toddler, and had insisted that she get the same bedtime as her older sister. And by this point, it had gotten so bad that her family dreaded special events—she even had to be given a small present on her sister’s birthday so that she would not sulk the rest of the day, and ruin it for everybody.
Her parents knew that the situation was completely out of hand, and Christmas was coming. They knew that whatever presents they got her would not be sufficient unless they were clearly the same as those of her sister. The older sister was a good sport, but the parents finally decided to get some help, and sought out some counsel from one of the elders in their church. He told them three things.
He said first that they needed to draw a line, and Christmas was as good a time as any. “Get her presents that you think she would like or need, according to your best estimate, if her sister had never been born. Because you do this, there will be a scene because she has a highly imitative and artistic temperament. That’s why the situation has deteriorated as far as all this.”
“So far, so good,” her father said. “We know how to get to a scene. We’re good at that. But what then?”
“This is really about relationships, and not about stuff at all. She is competing for your affection, for your love. She believes there is a limited amount of it, and that her sister was accumulating a bunch of that love before she was born. She thinks she has to catch up, and any resistance is a sign to her to redouble her efforts.”
“That makes sense,” her mother said.
“So in the scene you are going to have—and you must not budge for the sake of avoiding it—you need to talk about two things. The first is the gospel. Jesus went to the cross because of His envious brothers, just like Joseph, and He died on the cross in order to put all such envy to death. This is the good news, and it is as available for your daughter as anyone. She is a child of the covenant. But the sin has to be named and addressed.”
“And what’s the second thing we should talk about?”
“You should speak as parents who are going to embody that gospel to her. Shower her with affection and grace, and not because she demands it. The only way to make that clear is to give her far more than she would ever demand. And so the same for her sister.”