In a household with three or four children of school age, attention is a finite resource and an unevenly distributed one. The parents know this. The children know this. The household, as a system, prefers not to discuss it.

Much of our family advisory work, after the second year, is the management of attention across siblings. It is a quieter form of education work than tutoring or admissions. It does not produce a letter of offer. It produces, when it goes well, a household in which a quieter child does not become invisible.

The shape of the problem

Three patterns recur, almost exclusively.

The eldest who is performing

The eldest child is, in many households, the one whose schooling is most visibly managed. The household’s entire vocabulary of education is learnt around her. By the time the second child reaches the same age, the household has habits - and the habits often do not fit the second child at all.

The middle child whose work is described comparatively

The middle child is, in many of our files, described to us as “not quite as quick as her sister.” She is rarely “quick” or “slow” - she is comparative. We work, often for a year, to remove the comparison from the household’s vocabulary before any tutor is engaged.

The youngest whose results are pre-decided

The youngest child arrives at a school that has already decided, on the basis of two siblings, what to expect. The teaching adjusts very slightly upward or downward, and the child is taught, gently, into a shape that may or may not be her own.

The most useful question a parent can ask of a school, of a tutor, or of us, is whether the child in question is being seen on her own terms, or as a sibling of someone we have already met.

What we change, when we are kept on

We change three things, slowly, across a year.

• The household’s vocabulary. We replace comparative language with descriptive language. “Quick” becomes “quick at this”; “slow” becomes “careful” or “not yet interested.”
• The household’s scheduling. Each child has at least one weekly hour with a parent or principal in which no other child is the subject. It is a small change. It is rarely sustained without a quiet structure around it.
• The school’s briefing. Each new term, we write a short, written brief to each child’s housemaster - describing the child as she is now, not as her older siblings have established her.

None of this is dramatic. None of it produces a letter the household can show a friend. It produces, over years, a household in which each child has a school career that belongs to her.