Every year, hundreds of thousands of high school graduates and more apply to colleges – according to the Common Application report, over 1.18M distinct first-year applicants had applied to 853 returning members in 2022, in total volume of around 6.6M applications. However, not all of these applications bring the desired result – the average college acceptance rate in the United States is 68%, with more than half of all U.S. colleges and universities reporting rates of 67% or higher.

For some youngsters, a refusal received from a dream school becomes a reason for persistent self-improvement, while others become discouraged, and for some it turns out to be a complete collapse of all hopes and expectations. Especially if your parents told you from childhood how brilliant you are… Especially if, at the same time, they clearly neglected their other kids. In fact, this is exactly how it happened in the story from the user u/FunSelf5, which we will tell you today.

The author of the post has a younger sister whom their parents used to treat overly gently – way more than their other kids

Image credits: Element5 Digital (not the actual photo)

The parents weren’t narcissistic or abusive, the author claims, they just overprotected their youngest kid

Image credits: FunSelf5

Image credits:  Karolina Grabowska (not the actual photo)

Image credits: FunSelf5

However, the girl grew up really spoiled and made her siblings’ lives as hard as possible

Image credits:  Emily Ranquist (not the actual photo)

Image credits: FunSelf5

It all ended with 11 rejections from the teen’s dream colleges, including Yale and Harvard, as she literally ditched her studies the entire last semester

The Original Poster (OP) says that their little sister has always been the parents’ favorite, who allowed her to do literally anything and always overprotected her. No, the OP’s parents were never narcissists or abusive, they just always treated their youngest child more gently than the rest of their children. They always praised the girl, often overpraising her – and tried to protect her to the maximum from any possible consequences in her life.

As a result, as the author of the post admits, the sister began to consciously use and abuse this advantage, deceiving and avoiding responsibility and making the life of her siblings as hard as possible. Moreover, according to the OP, sometimes it came to petty theft, when their sister used to steal any cash she could find from all of her relatives, while her parents, on the contrary, always defended her. Even when her older sister once caught her on camera doing it, the OP recalls.

However, everything in this life comes to an end sooner or later, and a cruel but fair life puts everyone in their place. In the OP’s sister’s case, this happened by the time she graduated from high school. All the older siblings had already got their degrees by that time, and meanwhile, the parents were only silent about the younger sister’s academics. Moreover, they tried not to fund the education of their older children, citing the fact that they got scholarships they didn’t need and the money they saved would be better spent on the younger sister.

And so, as it turned out, despite the fact that the youngest sister seemed to sincerely consider herself a star student, in reality, she ditched almost the whole last semester. Nevertheless, the girl seriously dreamed of Yale or Harvard – and was incredibly shocked when out of the twelve colleges where she applied, eleven refused her flatly. Moreover, “the school she got accepted to accepts literally anyone with a pulse that can pay,” the author of the post sarcastically notes. And, importantly, both the original poster and their siblings are now feeling nothing but glee – after all, their little sister finally actually faced consequences for the first time in her life.

Image credits: Dominika Roseclay (not the actual photo)

“Of course, we don’t know the reasons why the parents overprotected and cherished their youngest child so much – and perhaps her siblings don’t know this either, unless they ever talk frankly with their parents,” says Irina Matveeva, a psychologist and certified NLP specialist, whom Bored Panda asked for a comment on this story. “It is quite possible that they actually had some reason – for example, a difficult pregnancy or something else, and as a result they started treating the girl much more gently than their other kids. But by doing so, they actually did her a huge disservice.”

“In fact, the youngest sister grew up all her life in ‘greenhouse conditions’, in a distorted reality, not fully aware of the consequences of her actions and believing that her parents could always do for her what she could not. And when something bad happened, this would inevitably come as a shock to her. By the way, based on my experience I could say that in such situations, children often blame their parents for their own failures later. Therefore, I am afraid that many members of this family have a long way of therapy if they want to cope with the consequences,” Irina summarizes.

Other psychologists just agree with this – parents playing favorites usually does not bring anything good to the family, especially in the long run. “It’s different for every family,” Michele Levin, family therapist and co-owner of Blueprint Mental Health, states in her interview to Healthline. “Some siblings will notice it and feel bad or guilty for the other and it will help them bond, while others will hold resentments or competitiveness.” Thus, this behavior from parents only contributes to the separation of the family over time, which we in fact observe in the story told by the original poster.

Most of the commenters on the original post also claim that the OP’s parents made their youngest sister delusional, especially since she dreamed of Yale while ditching school. And nothing good will come of it for the parents themselves, according to people in the comments. “She will milk your parents for the rest of their life for help with cars/housing, travel, boyfriends… it never ends,” some commenters are pretty sure. If you agree with this, please express your opinion in the comments below. However, if you disagree, then we are also interested in finding out your point of view – after all, the truth, as you may know, is born in discussions.

Experts claim that parents playing favorites is no good neither for them nor for the kids, and the folks in the comments massively agree with it

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