Most parents carry preferences they are reluctant to examine, and the damage of unexamined favoritism runs in two directions: it costs the disfavored child a baseline confidence they should have inherited freely, and it often costs the favored child the freedom to fail. Naming it honestly — not as condemnation but as something to become aware of — is the beginning of doing something different. Children know before they can speak; pretending otherwise serves no one.
Each step builds on the last.