It's Tween Tuesday: 

Sometimes I feel like I'm living out a Smothers Brothers comedy routine. Remember in the show how Tommy would always tell Dick, "Mom always liked you best."

My sympathies to Mrs. Smothers.

How do you avoid playing favorites?

The other day, my older son wanted to go clothes shopping, so we piled into the van and drove to the Mall in Columbia to look for shirts and hoodies. We spent hours walking around and ended up with one shirt (and I thought girls were hard to please). But my problem wasn't just in finding clothes the older one liked. It was dealing with the younger one who also wanted to buy clothes.

But the younger one has a closet so crammed full of clothes it would be hard to squeeze another T-shirt in there. Very few of these items were bought for him. Most are hand-me-downs from his brother and a neighbor's older boys. They are perfectly good clothes and my younger son doesn't complain about wearing them, but he wanted something new.

Lately, this has gone beyond the desire for new clothes. He now wants a new house because he has the smallest bedroom. While older brother has a full-size bed in a room with a large closet and two windows, the younger brother has a twin bed in a room half the size.

I try to be fair to my kids, but I can't change their birth order. The older one has the bigger room because the younger one wasn't even born when we moved into the house. He gets new clothes because when he outgrows the old ones there are no hand-me-downs to give him.

What's a Mom to do? As a younger child myself, I try to be sensitive to the needs of the younger boy. At the same time, it seems ridiculous to throw out good clothes and impossible to give him a room that will be the same size as his brother's.

Should I rotate the rooms? Should I give the big room to the younger one when the big brother leaves home for college in a few years? I can't figure out how to be fair.

Photo: Baltimore Sun archives.