Last week Tina Knowles-Lawson, the almighty matriarch who has given us all the gifts of Beyoncé and Solange Knowles revealed on Maria Shriver’s show during her Architects of Change segment that she placed her daughters in counseling early in life. Knowles-Lawson said that the inspiration came from her own childhood and thoughts that her own mother loved her brother more than her.

Knowles-Lawson also discussed how her family’s reaction to her decision was less than ideal and is in keeping with the commonly held stigma that counseling is for ‘crazy people’: “My family was like ‘you’re going to make them crazy because they’re too young for you to take them,’ but I wanted Beyoncé to be sensitive to the fact that Solange had to deal with being a little bit in her shadow,” Knowles-Lawson continued; “It made her way more sensitive and protected and they’re still fiercely protective of each other.”

Knowles-Lawson also revealed that she had days dedicated to each of the girls: “I had days that I devoted to [each of them]. On Wednesdays, I took off from work and that was Solange’s day. She was a lot younger than Beyoncé and it was tough because [Beyoncé] was five years older and Beyoncé was this little superstar in our city”

Both of Tina Knowles-Lawson’s daughters have gone on to become incredibly successful artists in their own right, both on their own merits with differing styles of creative work and the two occasionally share the stage together, as they did during Beyoncé’s incredible set at Coachella. Both sisters remain steadfastly protective of the other, refusing to play along whenever the media wants to try and pit them against one another.

It looks like the early life counseling sessions Tina Knowles-Lawson invested in worked well for her daughters, perhaps it is time that we destigmatize therapy and counseling sessions so we can become such well adjusted and whole people.

The full interview is below: