Tina Knowles saw the writing on the wall — and now, she’s opening up about why she chose to place her daughters, Beyoncé and Solange Knowles, in therapy when they were kids.
While speaking with Oprah Winfrey on Friday, the “Matriarch” author reflected on her decision to seek therapy for her daughters during a time when it was widely seen as unconventional.
“I think this is so interesting, that you put your daughters in therapy at a very young age, at a time when it was considered taboo, especially in the Black community,” Winfrey said.
Winfrey noted that one of Tina Knowles’ siblings believed that she would make her daughters “crazy” by having them partake in therapy, but the mother had a different mindset.
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“I got so scared because they were, like, super close,” Knowles remembered. “Then all of a sudden, Solange was going, taking Beyoncé’s stuff, and Beyoncé was kind of being a little mean to her. And I had never seen it before. It scared me to death.”
She noted that this behavior was completely unfamiliar — and clashed with the harmony she had always envisioned for her daughters. According to Knowles, the shift came after Beyoncé began performing and was becoming what she described as a “local star.”
“I saw the division,” Knowles said, adding that members of Beyoncé’s early girl group, Girls Tyme, would talk down to Solange whenever they came over to the family’s house.
“That defender in me said, ‘Uh, uh, you got to protect your sister,’” she recalled.
In the end, Knowles said that choosing therapy was “the best thing” she “could have ever done for them,” because the sisters eventually “got close again,” and “Beyoncé started respecting Solange.”
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