Our mother was very concerned about Lisa’s safety growing up. So she should have been. Her eldest daughter had skipped two grades and ended up in high school at the age of twelve. Virginia, being the smallest of everyone in her school let alone grade, suffered terrible bullying at that time so I’m told. Our mother was afraid Lisa would suffer the same fate. Which of course she did, her tiny-ness making her a perennial target for bullies. I was small too, so I had my share too, but I don’t claim to have gotten half the harassment that Lisa did, nor do I envy it.

By all appearances though, Lisa was a very cute kid growing up. Adults found her adorable. Misreading her age because of her size, they imagined her precocious.

There’s something irresistible about a kid who looks and sounds so young, but says and does things that we’d normally attribute to someone much older.

Many of the kids cast in movies are often older than the characters they play. Acting is a professional skill, like any other. I mean, if we had to choose a kid to do a professional’s job, let’s say direct traffic, we’d probably choose a thirteen year old over an eight year old. The same holds true for acting. An older kid will be able to hit lines and take direction better, making for a better scene in the end. If they look younger, all the better.

For example, in the movie ‘Love Actually,’ the character Sam, an elementary school kid, has a crush on a classmate. Sam, who’s supposedly around ten years old, is played by Thomas Brodie-Sangster who, at the time, was actually thirteen years old.

But being precocious and cute with an audience of adults doesn’t always translate into the same with peers. Often, kids who’ve become accustomed to being in favor in the adult world can become entitled, controlling and condescending.

Case in point, Gary Coleman. Back in the late 1970’s there was a popular TV show called Diff’rent Strokes in which there was a bright and cocky young character who captured the attention of the world.

The character, Arnold, was played by the actor Gary Coleman. Arnold was this adorable cheeky child of around maybe 6 years old. In real life though, Coleman was 10. The show was a huge success at the time, with Coleman’s performance as the precocious Arnold being a huge contributing factor. Coleman was brilliant at making the most of his youthful qualities. Audiences, particularly adults, loved him.

Behind the scenes though, the actor was apparently very difficult to work with. His parents having convinced him he was the “star” of the show and that he deserved more than the rest of the ensemble, he became selfish, condescending and manipulative. Some of his cast mates wouldn’t speak with him off-set. Todd Bridges in particular was often “punished,” by being written out of scenes and sometimes even out of entire episodes as a result of Coleman’s influence with producers.

When Coleman grew up, he apparently developed a terrible temper and even tried to run his own father over with his car. “Gary Coleman’s rage,” as a Los Angeles Times article bluntly put it, “is the direct result of being pampered, badgered, and […] being a cute freak for hire.” Coleman and his wife were arrested several times for disorderly conduct and, in January 2010, he was jailed overnight for domestic violence.

Looking younger than your age can offer a lot of advantages, though. For some, like Coleman, it was easier to be cast in roles since their maturity would make for better performances. For others, like Lisa, it made it hard for adults to imagine she could ever be anything but innocent, giving her license to get away with more than most.

Lisa once accused me of being jealous of her vulnerability, and she was on to something there, but she missed the target somewhat. I wasn’t jealous of it, I was threatened by it. I know, sounds ridiculous, but allow me to elaborate.

Children don’t have a lot of self-discipline, and when under stress they can often over-react or make mistakes in judgment. This was equally the case with me, and Lisa would often take the opportunity to see how far she could push me before I cracked. It’s a common theme in a “good kid vs bad kid” sibling dynamic. You can read a little background on that here.

During conflict, the “good kid” will often set up the “bad kid,” while the “bad kid” is usually the only one to get punished. This never happens while adults are watching, by the way. The “good kid” is banking on adult selective perception and confirmation bias to be in her favor, and is often rewarded. As time goes on, the confirmation bias is compounded until it becomes impossible for adults to imagine Lisa being anything but virtuous.

So the more Lisa did this, the more the adults around us would be given “proof” of her “vulnerability,” and thus felt obliged to come to her defense. And when they did, Lisa seemed to relish watching me suffer their wrath. If she were lucky enough to be there (and she learned quickly to tell on me often, thereby making sure she was), she’d lurk in the background with this look of glee on her face. That schadenfreude in her eyes often reminded me of Virginia. She seemed to take pleasure in my pain.

And yet, although one kid gets the reputation of always doing bad things, the other one, who is perceived as always good, can get away with anything. Lisa learned young how to hide her misbehavior. It wasn’t that I was always bad, it was more that I was always getting caught (often because she told on me). Lisa, meanwhile, had the benefit of being younger and learned how to hide her

misdemeanors well. Further, as time passed, and as adults grew more convinced of her “innocence,” the more futile it became for me to say “she started it,” or “she’s lying,” regardless if it was true.

Kids are bound to do “bad” things, it’s part of growing up. I don’t believe kids are born inherently good or bad, and behavior is often a result of conditioning and not a character flaw. It’s natural for kids to experiment and try things they believe are forbidden, and it’s equally natural for them to lie. In fact, one study concluded that lying early on in life might in fact be a sign of advanced intelligence. You can read more on that here. But when we’re kids, we’re taught these things are not bad behavior so much as a sign that we’re a bad person, and we become ashamed of ourselves. That’s quite natural too, although not very healthy.

Kids will always experiment, and they will continue to lie, but they do their best not to get caught of course. Getting caught is a traumatic event for a kid, and one effect of trauma is that it cements the memory of that event. It follows then that if a kid gets caught often, the shame registers repeatedly in their psyche, and it compounds. If it happens often enough, the kid will likely come to actually believe the lie and eventually embrace the identity altogether, since, by all appearance, they can’t escape it.

Likewise, though, another kid, equally as curious and just as likely to experiment and lie as any other, but who rarely, if ever, gets caught, won’t experience that trauma. In that case, they likely won’t come to believe they’re innately bad, but remain either neutral or somewhat err on the side of seeing themselves as good. If this happens often enough and alongside another who experiences getting caught often, it’s easy for that kid to think they’re better than the other one. That’s called a zero-sum bias, which is one whereby a situation is incorrectly perceived to be like a zero-sum game (i.e., one person gains at the expense of another). I believe it serves Lisa to believe that as long as I’m the “bad” one, it ensures that she’s the good one. Which is why she doesn’t like it when I bring up experiences that don’t support her version of history.

Kids are notoriously black and white thinkers. For them, everything is binary, it’s either all good or all bad, and no greyscale exists. Nor do they know the meaning of slander and the suffering that it can cause. Telling on your “bad” sibling is what “good” kids are supposed to do, right? And parents who encourage this thereby become accomplices to that slander.

Unfortunately, like Coleman, through years of being told how sinless and wonderful she was by our surrogate mother Virginia, and being backed up by adults behaving as if she was defenseless and faultlessly adorable, I’m afraid Lisa came to selectively overlook the inconsistencies in her own behavior. In other words, it serves her confirmation bias (i.e.: the tendency to search for, interpret, focus on and remember information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions at the expense of other evidence that disproves it).

Which brings me to cognitive dissonance (the mental discomfort that results from holding two conflicting beliefs, values, or attitudes). The key word in that definition is “conflicting.” To a healthy adult, two things can be true at the same time, despite looking like they might contradict each other. If it’s Lisa’s belief that I can only be bad, otherwise it threatens her identity as entirely good, it makes her uncomfortable to even consider the idea. Which is why she is so aggressive about keeping me silent I think. I’ve never been able to even bring up the subject with her, before she shuts me down. You know what she’s like when she doesn’t want to hear something. It’s a bit childish, but nevertheless frustrating for the rest of us.

I’ve spent so much of my life trying to understand each of us in the family, to make sense of things that happened, along with the attitudes and prejudices that linger to this day. With Lisa. I feel that she lives in a very small world, which makes me sad for her.

I once asked our mother why she gave Lisa so much more affection and comfort than she did me. At first of course she denied she ever did. I had Virginia, of all people, back me up on that though. “Yes you did,” she said. I remember it clear as day. I think it was as shocking to me as it was to our mother to hear her say that.

Anyway, our mother would later confess to me that she was afraid Lisa was in danger, that she felt powerless, and that all she could do was try to reassure her that she was loved. She told me she felt that I could take care of myself, that I didn’t need support like Lisa did, which is why she didn’t worry about me. Since then, she’s also said she regrets not having seen what was happening to me so she could support me too.

I tried so hard the first few years after I arrived back in Ottawa to open a conversation with her and V about our past. But when it became clear that Lisa’s communication style is more like a radio than a telephone, I had to give up. She’s something of a broadcaster, listening isn’t her forte. Our mother once admonished her “Lisa, stop! You’re not listening. You’re like a conservative, you won’t even let someone else talk.” Our mother doesn’t have outbursts usually, so it was surprising. But also nice to have her finally show me some support.