'I wanted Beyonce to be sensitive to the fact that Solange had to deal with the fact of being a little bit in her shadow,' mom Tina Knowles says.
- May 12, 2018
AceShowbiz - Beyonce Knowles's mom Tina Lawson put her daughters in counseling when they were kids to help them cope with the singer's growing fame. Beyonce became a local celebrity in her native Houston, Texas from a young age, after forming a group named Girl's Tyme with bandmates including Kelly Rowland and LaTavia Roberson.
The line-up eventually evolved into Destiny's Child when Beyonce, Kelly, and original member LaTavia were teens, and together with LeToya Luckett, they went on to achieve astronomical success.
Tina knew her eldest child's meteoric rise to fame would affect Beyonce and her little sister Solange Knowles mentally, and decided to get them professional help to deal with any issues early on.
"I was very sensitive to that (favouritism) because I grew up where I felt like my mother liked my brother more and she loved him more so I was very sensitive to it," she told newswoman Maria Shriver in an interview on Friday, May 11. "So I had days that I devoted to Solange..."
"It was tough, she was five years younger than Beyonce and Beyonce was the little superstar in our city," she continued. "So I took them to counselling so that the counselor could help Beyonce be more sensitive to Solange because she couldn't stand her for a minute when they were little... But it made her [Beyonce] more sensitive to who her sister was and what she [Solange] had to deal with because of her."
However, Tina admits her relatives weren't too keen on the idea of therapy at first.
"My family was like, 'You're going to make them crazy because they're too young for you to take them,' " she shared. "But I wanted Beyonce to be sensitive to the fact that Solange had to deal with the fact of being a little bit in her shadow, and it made her way more sensitive and protective. And they're still fiercely protective of each other."
Solange went on to follow in her big sister's footsteps as a performer, and has since established herself as a creative force in her own right.