The meanest thing my mom ever told me, at least since I became a parent, is that (she feels) I favor my youngest daughter.     When she shared this observation, I laughed out loud in the false bellow I use to deflect true emotion but I was silently enraged on the inside. The anger was not directed at my mother per se but the message she gave to me. I hated what it implled; that a father, any father but more personally, me, could do this to one (or both) of his children. My own father, I like to joke, favored his other chidren over me -- and I was an only child! But seriously. What a terrible parent I've become; back to Parenting 101!     What annoyed me most was that I had entertained the very same thought earlier in the day. Oh, and for those who don't know me well, you may now know I have two young girls - one 5, the other 2.5. My eldest is what many call the Shirley Temple Stunt Double because, well, she look exactly like her. Actually, I'm the only person who calls her that but only because it's true. So true, in fact, that when we watch old Shirley Temple movies, she sits with her hands over her face and blurts out between giggles, "Look daddy, I'm on TV!"     She is, like many actors, very dramatic and clever. She's capable of sweetness and charm that disarms all mortals. She genuinely cares about others (like me) and the world around her (like me) but often lets her emotions get the best of her (again, like me). After a recent bout of playfulness during which we ended up falling over on top of one another she looked me squarely in the eyes and ask if I loved her more than her younger sister. Shocked, awed and hoping to say the right thing I told her this: "I can't love either of you more because I love you both equally and oh-so-much; however, I have loved you longer, because you're older, and that's got to be worth something. No?"    It worked and she went off again leaving me to contend with not so much a guilty conscience than a puzzle: it's true, I really do love them both fiercely and equally; how is it possible then that I can favor the younger one?   Then it dawns on me: the younger one is light and carefree (not me at all). With few exceptions, she let's everything roll off her shoulders and is always smiling (again not like me). The little one I favor because she represents so much of what I'm not in a socio-emotional way. And in this way she's just like my wife who everyone seems to favor over me.    At last, understanding and behavioral continuity!  It would be easy to end on this nugget of insight, that slight flicker of interpersonal perspicacity, but there's one more thing I've discovered since writing that may be even more important: Even if I tend now to favor one daughter over another, it doesn't mean I love her more. This fact, if true (and I do believe it is) is liberating for it postulates that I can still be a good father and love my children equally. Phew.