Why is Sherlock mummy's favorite?

 (Sherlock meta by thediogenes, harriet-spy and anarfea)

Q: Why do you think Sherlock is mummy's favorite son? (she favors him) Beside his drug addiction, he doesn't make an effort to please his mother. On the other hand, Mycroft is the non problematic son with a stable and respectable job.

thediogenes:

I’m an elder sibling with a similar age gap between me and my brother and my educated guess is I think it’s down to the following reasons:

• Mycroft is considerably older than the other two so is almost certainly held to higher standard of maturity and behaviour from the get go. 
• Mycroft is emotionally closed off, secretive, cold, snarky, pragmatic to the point of moral ambiguity, all that good stuff which makes having a nice warm relationship with him a bit of a challenge. Sherlock, for all he can be similar isn’t anywhere near as bad imo. 
• Mycroft is not ‘non problematic’ - your fave is very much problematic, especially when viewed through the eyes of the parents. He’s hidden the fact their youngest child is alive from them for years. He’s always on the periphery of Sherlock’s little transgressions with drugs and danger, and I’d put money on him being blamed for them every time. “You should have kept a better eye on him” etc etc. He also gives the impression he has to be dragged kicking and screaming to family events (such as Christmas in His Last Vow, and Les Mis in The Empty Hearse). I’d guess that for all he tries to do the right thing and do his best his parents - especially Mummy - know he’s just going through the motions to try to please them. 
• We actually know next to nothing about what Mycroft was like as a child or teenager. The flashbacks and information we’re given in The Final Problem about their childhood are very much from Mycroft’s perspective, and we know he’s willing to censor or re-tell past events with a different spin. Pretty much all we have to go on is his own version of what happened. For all we know he could have been an absolute nightmare child who drove his parents up the wall. I highly doubt he was, or that he’d be the type to act out for the sake of it, but given his snark and harshness now I can only imagine what a hormone-riddled teenage version would be like. I could imagine him being outright nasty with his tongue at times without even really meaning it – can you imagine the “everybody dies, caring is not an advantage” stuff coming from the mouth of a puberty-raging 12/13 year old? I bet he really did upset Mummy. Several times.
• (Did I mention he’s the eldest and we get blamed for literally everything.)

harriet-spy:

Three other thoughts:

* Parents can take respectable, successful children for granted, especially when there is a more troubled child to focus on. This can cause tensions on all sides. Especially because, unfortunately, people do tend to attribute a higher “value” to the things they’ve been denied, so the child who doesn’t show up just seems more valuable than the child who does. This is a story so old it’s actually Biblical.

* I suspect that Mycroft was a child unresponsive to affection, solitary, self-sufficient in an eerie way. That is genuinely hard on a parent, who ordinarily invests so much of their own love and care in a child and naturally hopes for the child to return it. It takes a particular kindness and strength of character to keep offering that love when it doesn’t seem to be returned, and not everyone has it. (Thinking about it like this is about the only way I can summon up a scrap of empathy for Mummy Holmes in particular.)

* Neither Sherlock nor Mycroft seems to respect their parents. But it’s far more noticeable in Mycroft because Mycroft actually goes through the motions of family gatherings and such. I’m sure at least Mummy knows, and, while she downplays it, as an ex-successful mathematician her ego must be tied to her intelligence to some degree, so I’m sure she’s visited by the occasional “Who do you think you are, you little shit?” thought when Mycroft is condescending.

anarfea:

This. Sherlock, though he can be an arsehole on occasion, is actually pretty motivated by a desire to please people whose validation he craves. I headcanon him as a really affectionate child who was always clamoring for his parents’ attention, Mummy’s especially. And I suspect they almost lost him on a couple of occasions when he was deep into drug use, so that makes them appreciate him more.

Mycroft, [on the other hand], probably wasn’t much trouble as a child (in part because he couldn’t afford to be–Sherlock and Eurus were such handfuls, and it seems like a lot of the work of wrangling them was foisted on Mycroft). But he doesn’t strike me as someone who ever tried to earn his parents’ approval. If he was well-behaved, it was because he’s naturally fastidious, or because he realized adults would treat him more favorably if he behaved as expected, not because of any genuine desire to be “good.” He almost certainly broke whatever rules he thought were pointless when it suited him and he knew he wouldn’t get caught. And Mummy in particular has to at least have suspected that Mycroft was like that and resented him for being two-faced and secretive. And even though he was probably successful in school and later at work, Mycroft isn’t nice. If we look at the Christmas scene and see Mycroft ad Mummy snarking at each other; he seems continually irritated with her and she knows it.

Also, while Mycroft is “successful” in the sense that he has power and money and isn’t a drug addict or a psychopath, I’m not sure that his parents approve of his career. The Final Problem seems to imply that it was Uncle Rudy who got Mycroft involved in shady government work. Mycroft seems to have had a closer relationship to him than to either of his parents, and it’s possible they disapproved. Even if they don’t actively disapprove of his job, they don’t think much of it (or at least Mummy doesn’t):

MRS HOLMES: Mikey, is this your laptop? (Standing at the end of the table, she points down to a silver-grey laptop on the table, half-obscured by a chopping board on top of it which has several whole peeled potatoes and the peelings on it.) 
MYCROFT: On which depends the security of the free world, yes … (he smiles rather sarcastically up at her) … and you’ve got potatoes on it. (Sherlock glances over towards them.)
MRS HOLMES: (to Mycroft) Well, you shouldn’t leave it lying around if it’s so important. [x]

Also, in that scene, Mycroft continually snarks about how very much he hates spending time with the family, “How can it only be two o’clock? I’m in agony.” He doesn’t exactly come off as a dutiful son. Even if he does take them to see Les Mis. It’s gotta be clear to them there are other places he’d rather be.

Which is not to say that Sherlock does any better. He literally pushes his parents out the door in The Empty Hearse because he’s ashamed of them. But they almost lost Sherlock, multiple times. He’s just come back from exile in The Empty Hearse, and then in His Last Vow he gets shot and has just come home from hospital. Mycroft has always been around, and they take him for granted. Possibly they even blame him for Sherlock’s disappearance (what good is his supposedly powerful government job if he wasn’t able to dispatch Moriarty before he could do Sherlock so much harm). And Mycroft isn’t even pleased Sherlock is back. “Am I happy too? I haven’t checked.”

Anyway, Sherlock being the Holmes’ parents favorite child I can totally believe. I know a lot of fanfic shows Mycroft as the favorite, model son and Sherlock as the dysfunctional drug-addict who gets disowned. But the canon doesn’t bear that out I don’t think. What I don’t understand is why Mummy tells Sherlock “you were always the grown-up” at the end of The Final Problem. Because that seems to be completely untrue and I’m sure she knows it. Sherlock is clearly the baby of that family, even if Eurus was younger. The only reason I can think of is that she says it to hurt Mycroft. He has just admitted to concealing her daughter’s death from her.

The super intriguing Holmes family

 (Sherlock meta by strawberrypatty)

I’m really just super intrigued by the Holmes family in general now. During series one and two they were portrayed as super cold minor nobles. But after series three it was like “Okay, cute little elderly couple who are utterly and completely normal”.

But now we’ve been introduced to Musgrave. Also the fact that cross-dressing Uncle Rudy held a position similar to Mycroft in the past. So like… I think the answer is somewhere in the middle of the two portrayals? Like, Mr and Mrs Holmes are incredibly chill and normal folks, but they actually do have some social status they just kind of ignore it?

I’m wondering how the loss of Eurus changed Mr. and Mrs. Holmes too. Like they totally left the grandeur of their old life behind after their daughter died and their youngest son was so traumatized he basically forgot his sister existed.

Holmes v. Hoopers: A Sherlolly/Parents meta

 (Sherlock meta by sincerelydayyy)

 I know we have the ily but my mind is forever going back to the scene where Molly tries to talk about her dad with Sherlock.

I like to think they do eventually talk about him. Maybe Sherlock apologizes for being so curt because he was uncomfortable with knowing that she really saw him for who he was, and asks her about him. I’m sure he was able to read early on that she only had her mother now.

But I think as someone who has both his parents still he would want to understand what it felt like. He knows in the coffin scene that she is distant from her remaining family members (she could have a sibling although we don’t know, I always imagine it’s an older brother), but her father was important enough that she actually made an effort years past to connect him to Sherlock because she sees something in him that mirrors her dad.

I’m not a huge fan of the "you sometimes fall in love with someone like your parents" but I think it’s something worth thinking about in relation to Sherlock and Molly. I actually kind of see Molly in Sherlock’s dad. They’re both very quietly observant, not to mention their adorable little quirks.

The idea that his dad somehow got Mummy’s attention is also worth noting. It mirrors Molly too, doesn’t it? When Sherlock didn’t realize it he had grown comfortable with Molly as his companion and friend, possibly more.

I see them getting along more than Mummy and Molly could - not saying they wouldn’t because I definitely see Mummy doting on Molly when she meets her. I can see it being easier because the two are more in-tuned to their respective partners. I think it would be a quick hello and while Mummy is berating Sherlock for something he would take her aside to get the tea ready and probably make some sort of joke to break the ice.

I got slightly off topic but Molly for a little while at least notices something specific that makes her think of her father. Perhaps it’s the idea that he tries to hide his pain. We know that her dad was sick when he was dying and he tried not to show it. Sherlock even still after he ‘died’ would try to this repeatedly as to not put his problems on to others. He was used to taking everything on himself. Which is truly significant when you realize Molly was the one person he felt inclined to ask for help on more than one occasion. I can’t feasibly see it as him using her for what she could do for him, not because I like them as a pair but more because of the way he went about it. It was all very dramatically emotional (teary gaze, pleading, eyes dilated - feelings involved).

Molly has always been a giver, always trying to be there for someone even if she couldn’t do what they needed. I need you. While Sherlock could have just gone on his taker role but not with her. Everyone else he feels inclined to do so. He doesn’t really take their feelings into consideration - many times even with Molly. He just doesn’t see the point.

Except the three times he did: I hope you’ll be very happy, Molly Hooper. I am sorry, forgive me. You’re wrong you know. You do count. You’ve always counted and I’ve always trusted you. 

I think Sherlock probably sees his mother in Molly too. The brain, the worker of problems, someone that is constant even when he attempts to push away. It’s a comfort for him.

It’s almost too obvious when he thinks about it. She’s the best parts of the person who gave him life. But she’s also nothing like them which leads me to believe it could also be why he didn’t catch his emotion context until it smacked him in the face.

/when you sat on a certain scene for years and then a headcanon turns to meta

Blaming Mycroft, blaming the parents...

(Sherlock meta by bbcsassdeadass, anarfea, mollymatterrs, 

introspectivenavelgazer, strawberrypatty and nctanthcaarchive)

bbcsassdeadass: 

This. This made me so angry because she’s blaming him again. She is blaming a poor kid that tried to make everything better for his God damn family and all he gets is this response. Like do you think about what age he was when shit started? When Euros killed Redbeard and he had to comfort and change his brother’s memory. Can you imagine how guilty he felt? Do you think about how stressed this man is about everything and the fact that he is raising your God damn children and makes sure that Euros gets what she wants? Where were you when Sherlock was using drugs? Why aren’t you making a list? Where were you when he searched for his little brother? Do you think about the fact that he is always wearing that gun-sword-umbrella because he is always in a defensive mood because when he took the job he knew the risks it involved? So no lady, he shouldn’t have "done better". You should’ve raised your children. You should’ve done better. You should’ve thought about the brother that raised your other children when you weren’t there.

anarfea:

And this is why Mycroft has a file …..

mollymatterrs:

I feel inclined to remind people that Mycroft continued what their Uncle Rudy had started, that it’s implied Eurus was taken away from the family against their wishes, that Mycroft explicitly told his parents that Eurus was dead, burned in a fire, that Mummy Holmes didn’t have the resources Mycroft has had, and she was just moments earlier told that all of that was a lie and her daughter had actually been alive for years, kept as a prisoner.

She’s mother, who has just learned her daughter’s been locked away and grown up without her in a remote island prison. How do you think she’d react?

“I’m so sorry Mycroft, that you purposely took on this burden and didn’t involve us, didn’t allow us to make the choice when it came to our own child.”

This is a broken family, for lots of reasons, and I am so angry that people are shafting the parents to bolster Mycroft. They made mistakes, Uncle Rudy made mistakes but, hell, let the men suffer concequences too. 

introspectivenavelgazer:

It’s more interesting that he messed up by not telling his parents. Like his attempt to protect backfired SPECTACULARLY.

strawberrypatty:

I feel the need to also mention: Mycroft encouraging Sherlock’s memory suppression is NOT a good thing. Sherlock has had childhood trauma that had impacted his ability to form relationships and most likely contributed to his drug abuse. Repressing that doesn’t make it go away, it just buries it. Mycroft has good intentions, but he does do things he shouldn’t. Sherlock should’ve been able to heal from his problems. Eurus should’ve had human interaction other than solving things for the government.

We know very little about the Holmes family dynamic, but we do know there are three children who from a very young age thought they were smarter than their parents. Uncle Rudy (who I’m guessing is very much like the Holmes children) also thought he was smarter. People made decisions for Mr and Mrs Holmes about the way their children should’ve been raised.

nctanthcaarchive:

[...] This is not okay. As an older sibling myself I can empathize with Mycroft so much. This is not fair to him in the slightest. Also his Uncle is the one that helped him with Eurus. Why is darling Uncle Rudy not in trouble as well?

Mycroft has done everything in his power, practically his whole life, to protect his family. No one, NO ONE, is more dedicated to watching out for them than Mycroft Holmes. So don’t you dare tell him that he could have done better. You are the parent. You could have done better.

I do realize she didn’t know her daughter was alive but even for Sherlock it doesn’t seem as if she has done much to help him since he moved out. She just expects Mycroft to do everything. I understand the fact that parents have to let their children make their own life choices. But you can’t decide that and then decide that it is your other child’s fault for not interfering with his sibling’s downward spiral.

In defence of the Holmes parents

 (Sherlock meta by thelonelybrilliance)

I keep seeing people complaining about the Holmes parents being too normal.

But are they really normal? Did it ever occur to anyone that they were so freaking traumatized by the tragedies that came with having three brilliant children, one so intelligent and emotionally unbalanced that she murdered someone as a small child? That their middle son, the emotional, imaginative one–then repressed his memories and emotions for the next few decades?

That their family home was burnt down and then their daughter was committed and then they thought she died?

At the very least, the Holmes parents must have serious, serious guilt and PTSD. SO maybe the way they coped was by moving to a small, comfortable home, and just finding what little bits of normalcy they could, while they continued to cope with their two remaining very complicated children, one of whom ran the government and the other who struggled with a recurring drug problem and later faked his own death.

And the fact that they were willing to get in touch with Eurus later, and were angry at Mycroft for not telling them, says that they weren’t at all normal. They wanted to love their psycho daughter. Even after all the pain and fear and guilt they’d likely suffered.

The Holmes Siblings

 (Sherlock meta by cogentranting)

So the Holmes parents, two brilliant but relatively normal people, have a son who’s a genius. And Mycroft grows up seeing through the workings of the world, knowing how people think, being able to manipulate and predict etc. etc. He’s acutely aware of the fact that he’s different. Other people aren’t like him, and probably don’t like him, so he’s very isolated and very lonely. He sees food as a comfort and gains weight. But while Mycroft isn’t very good with people, he does understand them. So he becomes very concerned with appearance. It leads to dieting as an adult, and above all a very high sense of propriety. Myrcroft follows the rules. Mycroft does what’s right. Mycroft never has a hair out of place. Mycroft wears the best suits. Mycroft doesn’t care what you think of him. Mycroft is in control.

After Mycroft comes Sherlock, seven years later. And things are different for Sherlock. He’s a genius too, also doesn’t get along well with others. But Sherlock isn’t alone. He has Mycroft. He’s not the only genius- there’s someone else like him, someone he can look up to. So he has the same problem the same isolation, the same feeling of being different from everyone else, the same loneliness. But just a little less.

Mycroft is the oldest, held to the highest standards of behavior. But it’s been seven years and the Holmes parents are a little more lax on the rules with Sherlock. And he’s seen his brother do things, break the path. And on top of that Sherlock and Mycroft have an interesting relationship. There’s a lot of love (despite what they say). Mycroft cares for his brother, wants to protect him and so he looks out for him. But sometimes he does so in odd ways that looks a little more like bullying. And sometimes he resents him a little bit for being that little bit less lonely, that little bit better with people. And Sherlock looks up to his brother. Believes he’s the smartest person in the world (because he’s, of course, the second smartest). So while Sherlock takes after Mycroft in certain ways, he’s very determined not to be like him in a variety of other was. So where Mycroft decides to give the appearance that he doesn’t care what others think by being above reproach, the perfect gentleman, Sherlock decides to show he doesn’t care what others think by spinning out and being different in whatever way he wants. Mycroft is above it all. Sherlock has abandoned it all. Mycroft wants control, Sherlock wants excitement. And Mycroft’s control, his protection and just the fact that he went first, gives Sherlock the room and the safety to be the pirate and the adventurer and the dragon slayer.

And then, a year after Sherlock comes Eurus. So Sherlock not only has a role model, for a time he has a peer. Someone like him, someone close to him. Between this difference, the freedom he has to be himself whatever the consequences and just his natural friendliness, Sherlock manages to make a friend. Little Victor Trevor, his co-pirate. And Sherlock gets to be almost normal for a time at least.

And Eurus might have been more like Sherlock. Except that she was a little bit more than genius. Smarter than Mycroft or Sherlock. And her emotional and interpersonal issues didn’t stem from her situation, being isolated or lonely because of her intelligence. No for Eurus there was actually something off, something not right. And it probably hid a bit behind the fact that something similar had developed in her brothers. So maybe her parents thought at first that it was the same thing but more. Eurus for all her genius couldn’t quite understand the world in some ways that counted. And so instead of adjusting herself to deal with the world the way that Mycroft and Sherlock did, she tried to bend the world to her shape.

Sherlock was her peer, close when they were young, and she wanted to relate to him but couldn’t quite figure out how. She ends up hurting him, and it puts a wedge between them. Then Sherlock manages to do what no other Holmes child was able to- he makes a best friend. And it really drives Sherlock and Eurus apart. Because Victor can bridge the gap for Sherlock and connect. Sherlock isn’t good enough with people, with forming connections, to make up the difference for what Eurus is lacking. But Victor can make up the difference for Sherlock. And Eurus gets jealous. In a regular child this wouldn’t be that big of a deal. Hurtful, formative, maybe. But Eurus doesn’t understand people so she tries to change them. She doesn’t understand Victor, so she gets rid of him and in her own way asks Sherlock to come back to her. And she can’t quite understand the reason why he doesn’t. Why he’s so upset. Why he won’t let her replace Victor. And so she gets angry and tries to change Sherlock- she sets the house on fire. Which of course leads to her being locked up and taken away (combined with the fact that the family is pretty sure she’s the reason behind the neighbor boy’s disappearance).

Sherlock might have grown up really pretty normal. Nice parents, a protective if somewhat mean older brother, a sister he was close to, a best friend. But then his sister murders his best friend, tries to kill him and is taken away. And Sherlock, naturally, is traumatized. So his mind rewrites his memories to get rid of the trauma- he forgets Eurus and Victor. But he can’t quite write out the pain so his mind creates something new as the source- Redbeard, the dog that he loved that died.

And the pain and the trauma create in him a fear of attachment and affection. His parents are devastated by the loss of their daughter, they feel they’ve failed her. But they also feel incredibly guilty, thinking they allowed her to kill a little boy and allowed her to hurt their son. They don’t know how to help their traumatized son who suddenly can’t remember his own sister. And because now they’re desperate to protect him, they decide maybe it’s best that Sherlock doesn’t remember any of it. So they lie, and let Sherlock believe his mind’s lie. Mycroft does too. Which sets the example for him for some of his later decisions- particularly faking Eurus’s death.

Meanwhile Sherlock gets older and his parents can’t quite bring themselves to keep him in line. Because they feel guilty about what they let happen, because they excuse his behavior as a symptom of his trauma and his intellect. And because he’s their baby and they’ve already lost one.

So Sherlock, wanting to embrace standing out, afraid to form attachments, afraid to love, becomes prouder and ruder and more insensitive and meaner. And wanting excitement and adventure and a challenge he becomes more and more self destructive and more impulsive. He gets into drugs. He becomes fascinated by crime (a subconscious effect of the Victor mystery) and eventually becomes a consulting detective addicted to danger (and heroin).

All this continues until Sherlock stumbles into a group of people (John and Mrs Hudson and Molly and Mary and Lestrade) who love him despite his worst qualities, despite the fact that he’s made himself unlovable and unable to love them. They love him anyway and so he slowly begins to accept that. And he begins to heal and begins to love them. And when he’s healed enough to admit that he is loved and he does love them, then he reaches out to his brother first, then his sister and starts to help them heal too, in what small ways he can help.

So in the end, the Holmes siblings find that, for the first time, none of them are alone in the world.

Mycroft and mummy Holmes

 (Sherlock meta by enigmaticpenguinofdeath)

Anonymous: Non tblr user who follows you anyway. I need to get something off my chest. I can't be the only one who's angry with Mummy Holmes, right? I mean, I get that she was upset Mycroft had lied about Eurus being dead, but,come on! You're the one who a) raised a psycopath who murdered your son's best friend, then tried to kill HIM by setting the house of fire, and b) raised junkie Sherlock, who Mycroft takes care of while you're comfortably living in the countryside. And you dare to call him "limited"!?

enigmaticpenguinofdeath: Hey Anon - yeah I must say my estimation of Mrs Holmes has rather gone down a bit with TFP.

It has to be said that if you’ve got a five year old super genius who doesn’t seem to understand pain/empathy in the slightest and is able to kill another child - that has to be a fairly difficult thing to cope with. They can’t be completely oblivious because you hear them discussing “we can’t make her do anything”, and were apparently getting their kids professional assessments.

And Sherlock and Mycroft do seem fond of their parents, to a degree. Mycroft has a photo of them in his house, he took them to see Les Mis (horror!). Sherlock had them visit and natter away in TEH, and we hear that the boys told them the truth about Sherlock faking his death - so they didn’t want to worry them. But you can be fond of and even love people who are quite shitty to you; plenty of people with abusive parents could vouch for that.

Back in HLV the Mycroft & Mummy bickering seemed to be jokey family banter - about his name and leaving work stuff lying around. Mycroft was being a Christmas grouch so that’s understandable really. But by the time we get to the “you should have done better” and “he’s very limited” comments - those were harsh. Yes she’s obviously emotional, and the taking his hand in the scene at the end suggests some thawing, but it’s fueled a suspicion that Mycroft has always had the shitty end of the stick when it comes to their parents’ view of them.

As with my gifset yesterday - Mycroft repeatedly takes the blame for anything and everythng to do with Sherlock as well as himself. That’s a habit I say he picked up in childhood - he’s the oldest, he’s supposed to be the responsible one. Calling Sherlock the grown up? Hmm, not something I quite buy.

Why had Mycroft never met other children before Sherlock did? 

 (Sherlock Meta by ibelieveinmycroft)

Anonymous: Mycroft is supposedly about 7-8 years older than Sherlock. How come he never met other children before Sherlock grew up old enough to meet other children? Surely Mycroft had had experienced "other children"before Sherlock was born? Their parents seem "normal" so they would've introduced their first son to other kids as toddler, surely? Because if both never seen other kids for sometime-even thought "Sherlock is idiot"- then they did have unusual upbringing after all...

Answer: It would be, indeed, very unusual!

Assuming that the house that we saw in His Last Vow was where the boys grew up, their home was was quite rural and remote. This shot, when Sherlock and John leave after drugging everyone, shows what is immediately outside the front doors of the Holmes household:



There is nothing but green fields for miles around. There may be the odd house dotted in the distance, but otherwise that is idyllic, secluded countryside.

It is equally likely that the canonical Holmes grew up in such isolation too, as it does lend a certain slant to this famous line from The Copper Beeches:

"It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside."

What little we know of Sherlock’s upbringing - a fondness for board games, pirates and a dog called Redbeard, alongside becoming obsessed with the Carl Powers story in the newspaper - seems to indicate that he was, in many ways, both a very normal and a very odd child all at once. This may be due to his parents attempting to normalise him and give him something more akin to a childhood, after Mycroft.

Seven years older, Mycroft was probably born just after his mother ended her academic career. A mathematician who, although a bit scatty, had a brilliant mind, likely chose to home-school her first born son - a step that would have kept Mycroft alone in that remote country house, nurturing an impossibly brilliant mind with mathematical equations and any book he could lay his hands on. This way, he could easily reach age seven without meeting another soul save for his parents.

Mrs Holmes probably home schooled Sherlock too - Mark Gatiss has said he thinks the Holmes brothers were brought up "like hothouse flowers" - and, after some years, she realised that he was gifted in similar ways to Mycroft. She will have wanted her younger boy to be better adjusted than her elder - so was probably the one to encourage him towards pirates and Operation and bought him the dog. But Mycroft will have held real sway over his younger brother’s forming intellect too, with Sherlock constant attempts to keep up with and surpass Mycroft’s unmatchable genius the foundation for more than a little sibling rivalry.

At some point, when Sherlock was old enough to remember, Mrs Holmes had taken the decision that both her sons needed to meet other children, likely realising, from the strange behaviour of her eldest son with his unwieldy genius that even her enormously intelligent second son could not parallel, that it was a mistake to have kept them so isolated and they should make some friends.

It went badly, of course. The realisation that the rest of the world were mostly unbearably ordinary cannot have been an easy revelation for the brothers, and especially not for Mycroft, who was much older and had been long working on the assumption that his incredible intellect was the norm.

I think this meeting, though, probably gave him a new found appreciation for his little brother, who could almost keep up with Mycroft and, compared to ordinary people was blindingly brilliant. It was this realisation that made Sherlock the single most important person to Mycroft in the world, and his only pressure point.

Now that we've met the parents

 (Sherlock Meta by ibelieveinmycroft)

Anonymous: I know you need time to mull it over, and I'm unlikely to be the first to ask this: what do you think of Mycroft and Sherlock's childhood, now that you've met their parents? No wonder they are constantly upsetting mummy!

ibelieveinmycroft: I loved that moment! They’re so delightfully ordinary, it makes their boys seem even stranger. I hope they crop up again at, say, a family dinner, so we can see the family dynamic.

Mark Gatiss once described the Holmes brothers as growing up like “hothouse flowers,” and I think this depiction of their parents and the revelations in this episode sit rather well with that. As Mycroft and Sherlock both thought Sherlock an idiot until they met other children, and Mycroft is seven years Sherlock’s senior, they must have been left on their own for a long time. Home-schooled, is likely then, and their home is probably quite remote. I’m still clinging on to the image of the rural country manor, with two mad, brilliant boys rattling around inside it, pouring through the books in their library, roaming the woods and conducting experiments on insects, educating themselves and each other rather than deigning to be taught.

Their parents allowed, even encouraged this, for years before trying to get their children to socialise more, and meet other children. That Sherlock was old enough to remember the event suggests that he was at least three or four and, thus, Mycroft had been allowed to remain alone for around ten or eleven years. It certainly seems that for a very long time they had no one else.

I can see what upset Mummy - she had a rather odd set of boys that sprung from nowhere. Mycroft was long a cuckoo in the nest, until Sherlock came along. I think it likely that their parents never really understood their slightly odd sons, but accepted them. Though the constant bickering can’t have been easy to live with!

Their parents certainly loved them, and Sherlock and Mycroft evidently love their parents too. Who else could get the British Government himself to suffer through Les Mis other than a devoted mother!

Why The Holmes Parents are Perfect for Sherlock

 (Sherlock Meta by wellingtongoose)

Analysis of Sherlock’s parents and why their normality is vital in explaining how Sherlock became the man he is.



The moment I saw them I had the sinking feeling that Mr and Mrs Holmes are irreparably wrong.

Then I realise that this was only my own narcissism getting in the way of logical analysis because if one looks at them from an impartial perspective Sherlock’s parents are surprisingly right, in every sense of the word.

I explain:

* Why the Holmes Parents fit perfectly into Sherlock and Mycroft’s background. They had to be ordinary in order to explain why Sherlock and Mycroft are extraordinary.

* How normal loving parents can produce such eccentrically maladjusted offspring.

* What we can tell about the Holmes Brothers’ childhood from their parents.

Hot House Flowers

 

The Holmes parents’ apparently banality appears to have spoilt many deeply held fan beliefs regarding “Mummy”. The truth is I also fell into the horrific logical trap of assuming that just because Sherlock has arrested emotional development – his parents must be utterly eccentric, over medicated, psychologically unstable, adulterers who evidently neglected him something terrible.

What we all lacked was a sarcastic voice of reason to interject with a perfectly time “really?” and an elegantly raised eyebrow.

The age old belief that parents pass their problems onto their children is definitely true but the way these problems manifest in children can be surprising and counter-initiative.

For a doctor who has been surprised too many times to actually be surprised – I really should have seen the Holmes parents’ coming because actually they fit perfectly into Sherlock and Mycroft’s background.

Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

 

Intelligence has a strong genetic component – but this does not mean it is directly inherited in the way eyes or hair colour are (Sherlock, IQ and the Concept of Genius).

We know that Mrs Holmes was a well educated and intelligent mathematician, and perhaps Mr Holmes merely downplays his own intelligence. However there is no indication that they are of the same intelligence level as Mycroft or Sherlock. Mycroft and Sherlock appear to derive most of their intellectual stimulation from each other and not their parents.

Even through the Holmes parents are not as outwardly eccentrically intelligent as the Holmes Brothers, it does not mean that the parents have to be disowned.

Strange things do happen – take Albert Einstein, he did not come from a family of geniuses. His parents were comfortably middle class and there was no indication that anyone else in his family had his unique talent. It is entirely plausible that Mycroft and Sherlock were both gifted their intelligence and observation powers by a quirk of nature. More importantly, Sherlock and Mycroft have worked very hard to hone their skills and sharpen their intelligence to end up where they are today. They have a wonderful symbiotic relationship where their interactions only serve to further train and enhance their intelligence.

To say that people with ordinary intelligence cannot have extraordinary children is an insult to all the parents of past and future Nobel Prize Winners and to all the great geniuses out there who work damn hard and didn’t just rely on their genes to get where they are today.

Making Sherlock’s parents intelligent but not exceptional geniuses is a brilliant move that I fully support.

The Holmes parents’ reminds us all that no matter who our parents happen to be, we are unique beings with our own paths through life.  As much as we love our parents, we are not destined to trudge the same track they did. We do not need Nobel Prize Winners for parents to become the next Einstein or Curie.

There is whole world out there and we should embrace all our talents (and our faults) to make the most of life.

The Counter Intuitive Equation

I had a firmly held belief that Sherlock’s emotional dysfunction cannot have come from a childhood with normal loving parents, but fate (and other psychiatrists) have made me eat my words.

Maladjusted parents do not have to produce maladjusted children or vice versa. That is just a long held folly.

I will now reiterate what I have been saying for the past three years: the Holmes Brothers do not have any psychiatric problems.

There are unfortunately hundred of children on my case lists who have been neglected, abused and exposed to parents with mental illness. From a psychiatric point of view Sherlock and Mycroft really do not resemble adults who have gone through that kind of deprivation in their childhood.

Emotional dysfunction of the kind seen in the Holmes brothers is both very common, and relatively harmless. It is because of the brothers’ exceptionally high intelligence that they seem particularly distant and eccentric.

Their emotional coping strategies are not unhealthy, but they would be a lot happier and easy to live with if they had more balanced/mature ways of dealing with emotion.

The Good Parenting Guide for Geniuses…



It is important to remember that the home environment does not need to be actively harmful to produce dysfunctional emotional responses in children.

All that is needed is misunderstanding, and you can be sure there was a huge amount of misunderstanding in the Holmes family.

Mr and Mrs Holmes did not know they were going to produce two geniuses and even if they did, how do you prepare for that? Raising one exceptionally gifted child is extremely difficult, raising two in a closed off and isolate environment is certain to create massive problems.

Sherlock states in The Sign of Three:

“You can talk to my mother but she understands very little”

We can see immediately that there has never been true communication established between mother and son. The entire conversation he has with his parents in The Empty Hearse is a classic example of two sets of people completely entrenched in their own beliefs, trying to communicate but failing miserably.

It is not that Mrs Holmes is stupid, she wrote a book on the Dynamics of Combustion, and she appears as possessed of her common sense as any sweet elderly pensioner I have had the pleasure to treat. Mrs Holmes just doesn’t understand Sherlock’s emotional needs and Sherlock has clearly never been able to get through to her, which is unsurprising given his innate tactic of dealing with emotions is to turn them into a melodramatic pantomime.

I often see very well meaning, competent, intelligent parents make an absolute mess of raising exceptionally gifted children. A significant proportion of OCD, depression, anorexia, self harm cases that I see are in children with outlier IQ scores. All of them get social services assessments and the majority of them come from homes where there are no safe guarding issues.  Their psychiatric problems are not the result of deliberate parental abuse; the parents simply do not know how to relate to the child on an intellectual or emotional level.

If we think of the parent – child relationship as a dance: the parent is trying to teach the child the steps through life. Parents on instinct teach the same dance to their children as they themselves learnt, which can work out very well if the child is similar to the parent and they can both adapt. However in the cases of exceptionally gifted children: the child is dancing to a completely different suite of music from the very beginning and thus this throws the entire dance out of sync as almost soon as it begins.

If the discord is consciously recognized and accepted, the parent can rejoin the dance and guide that child through their own unique suite of music with astounding success.

Of course, it is very difficult to understand the mind of a genius, let alone a child genius but problems arise when the parents refuse to acknowledge that they are not connecting with their child and simply escalate the same patterns of behaviour without questioning why it is not working. This creates a vicious downward circle where the distance between parent and child becomes irreparable. Often parents don’t become aware of this until it is too late.

What we see in Sherlock and Mycroft is the net result of two loving, ordinary parents who set out to raise normal children and simply didn’t realise where they had gone wrong.

The crucial reason they never changed or adapted their “dance routine” is because Mycroft was born first. Mycroft is a classic “Thinker” (The Holmes Brothers a Psychoanalysis). He suppresses his own emotional needs to facilitate the emotional expression of others. This means that even though his parents failed to connect with him, Mycroft was far too considerate to make this known to them. Superficially he appeared to be a successful product of the Holmes’ parenting skills. The problem with people is that when they find something that works, they prefer to doggedly stick to it rather than explore new and better paths. Thus when Sherlock came along and made it very clear that he wasn’t connecting with his parents, the Holmes  simply escalated the same pattern of behaviour they had “perfected” with Mycroft because it worked once so why wouldn’t it work again? All they had to do was try harder.

Unfortunately for Sherlock this was the worst thing that could possibly happen because instead of bonding with and learning emotional coping strategies from two mature adults, his only true source of emotional connection and teaching came from Mycroft who was a child himself and had yet to develop a balanced emotional coping strategy. Thus it is not surprising that both brothers ended up with dysfunctional approaches to managing their emotions.

A Very British Expression of Love



I have discussed previously in “The Holmes Brother a Psychoanalysis” that Sherlock and Mycroft are at two extreme examples of dysfunction emotional coping strategies.

Many people have interpreted this to mean that the brothers had a neglected or unhappy home life.

However, the fact that these two boys were given the emotional space to develop extremely different coping strategies shows that the Holmes parents were too tolerant and supportive of Mycroft’s introversion and Sherlock’s histrionics. They did not set boundaries firmly enough to prevent the two boys from journeying to their extremes but encouraged their unique brands of emotional coping too much.

We know that Sherlock and Mycroft care deeply about their “Mummy” and refuse to accept responsibility for upsetting her. Even in The Empty Hearse, whilst Sherlock is rudely shepherding his parents out his flat, he looks into his mother’s eyes and promises to ring her more often.

This is not a wonderful, open and happy relationship filled with mutual understanding but there is love and plenty of it.

Unfortunately the British have never been terribly good at expressing such sentiments. Instead we talk about anything other than our own emotions and the stronger the emotion, the more it is treated like a giant elephant in the room. This is the reason why we are experts on discussing the weather and making other inconsequential small talk. It means we don’t actually have to say anything meaningful because that could be embarrassing. The entire conversation between Sherlock and his parents is absolutely typical of this phenomenon. We see that Sherlock does care about his parents because he takes the time to ask if they have found the lottery ticket, even if it is in a grudging tone.

It is only when Sherlock forces them to leave, that Mrs Holmes finally says what she’s been wanting to say for the entire conversation. She misses her son, and she worries about him. I love the final moment when Sherlock looks into her eyes and lets go of his embarrassment to promise her (in a very quiet voice) that he will phone her more often.

If people were expecting some sort of rabid American display of affection, why are you even surprised it did not happen?

Despite love on both sides there is a yawning chasm in the parent-child relationship that simply screams: well meaning parents who just could not cope with these two gifted boys.

Now if the Holmes parents had been every bit as intelligent as Mycroft and Sherlock – it might explain their deduction skills but it would not explain their emotional dysfunction, which is a centre piece of this show. It is vitally important that the Holmes Parents were ordinary people or the entire scenario just doesn’t fit.

Diving Into The Goldfish Bowl

My theory for why Sherlock and Mycroft were isolated during their childhood has nothing to due with their parents being utterly eccentric underneath all that sensible clothing.

Mr and Mrs Holmes would never have purposefully isolated their children during such a critical time period in their lives. I have pointed out before that there is nowhere in Britain that is so remote that there are no educational services available and the Holmes Brothers had no chance to meet other children.

It is more probable that one of the parents had to work abroad in either developing countries without adequate educational services, or dangerous political hot-spots. The most likely profession is a post in the diplomatic service, a close second is probably oil/gas company employee.

It is very interesting that the parents did not want to split up the family despite the risks of moving them to certain countries. It shows that no matter how little they understood their exceptional sons, the Holmes parents never wanted to leave them.

Unfortunately Mycroft and Sherlock became incredibly isolated. They probably spent their life living behind the high walls of international enclaves, not able to socialise with native children. They really did only just have themselves, so how would Sherlock know he wasn’t stupid? He really had Mycroft as a benchmark.