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Struggle gets resources. Competence gets ignored.

Unspoken resentment doesn't fade. It hardens into distance.

Fairness isn't equal treatment. It is honest acknowledgment.

I see it every day when working with parents and families of struggling adult children. The sibling who never asked for help is quietly keeping score—and the bill comes due eventually. Every dollar, phone call, and crisis text message that makes you slip into your first responder uniform all add up in the memory of the one who does not need rescuing. Parents rarely see the pattern forming because they are in the thick of struggles that demand their immediate attention. The song "Urgent" by Foreigner comes to mind. That's because amid the emergencies of the struggling adult child, the one who is "fine" can feel lonely and isolated in trying to live up to the "low maintenance" title they have been typecast in. There is a silence that many more well-adjusted siblings suffer in. Here are three ways that silence costs.

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