Why measuring the cookies makes it worse

He keeps a list of everything his sister gets

“She got the bigger one. She always gets the bigger one.”

If you have more than one child and at least one of them is somewhere between six and eleven, you have heard a version of that sentence this week. About a cookie. The front seat. The last ten minutes of screen time. Who got tucked in first. This one is for the parent of a school-age kid who keeps score of everything, all the time.

Mateo was seven when his mother brought him to see me. She had found a page at the back of his spelling notebook, folded twice. Two columns. One said ME. One said LINA. Under Lina, his four-year-old sister, he had tallied every piece of candy, every extra bedtime story, every time she got carried to the car.

His column was shorter. It was always going to be shorter, because he was the one keeping it.

His mom slid the page across the table and said, “I’ve tried making everything equal. It’s made him worse.”

She was right, and it was the most useful thing she told me. The tally was never about the candy.

So we stop refereeing the math and start answering the question underneath it.

I say this as someone who once cut two slices of birthday cake with the edge of a spatula while my son watched like a customs officer. He found a problem anyway. The frosting, apparently.

When he says her piece is bigger, skip the measuring and try: “Sounds like you’re worried you didn’t get enough. Still hungry? Let’s sort you out.” You are answering his need, not auditing her plate. It will feel odd for a week. Kids adjust quickly once the referee stops showing up.

Children this age rarely name what is driving them, but they recognize it the second you do. Pick a calm moment, never mid-fight: “Sometimes it feels like Lina gets more of me. That’s a real feeling. There’s a part of me that is only yours.” Then stop talking. You do not have to fix it in the same breath.

Fifteen minutes, a few times a week, that belongs to him and has a name. Mateo Time. He picks what you do. His sister does not join. Write it on the fridge calendar so he can watch it coming, because a seven-year-old trusts what he can see. This is the thing the tally was trying to find.

Now a word about the grown-ups in the house, because the scoreboard has help.

In Mateo’s home one phrase kept surfacing: “She’s only little.” Dad said it when Lina grabbed his Lego. Mom said it when her bedtime ran long. Both were true, and together they taught Mateo that being older meant losing every tie.

If you were the oldest growing up, notice whether “you’re the big one, let it go” lands in your own chest before it leaves your mouth. Many of us hand down the rule we once resented. One small shift: agree with your partner to retire “she’s little” as a reason in front of him. Give the real reason, or none at all.

Months later, Mateo’s mother told me she had found the notebook again. The page was still there. He had stopped adding to it somewhere around March.

He never announced it. The fear simply ran out of things to count.

There is enough of you to go around. Keep showing him where his part is.