Tina Knowles put her daughters Beyonce and Solange into counselling from an early age to help combat one child feeling less "loved" than the other.

Tina Knowles with Beyonce

Tina Knowles with Beyonce

The mother of the two singers has revealed that because Beyonce, 36, was already a "little super star" in their neighbourhood when Solange was born - five years after her sister - she put the two of them into counselling so that Beyonce could learn to be "more sensitive" toward her younger sister, now 31.

Tina explained: "I felt that my mother liked my brother more, and she loved him more. I was really sensitive to it. So I had days that I devoted to it, on Wednesdays I took off from work and that was Solange's day, and she was a lot younger than Beyonce.

"It was tough because she was five years old, Beyonce was this little super star in our city and so I took them to counselling very early, so that the counsellor could help Beyonce be more sensitive to Solange, because she couldn't stand her for a minute."

According to her mother, the 'Halo' hitmaker would often become "irritated" with her younger sister who wanted to hang out with her, and says counselling helped the star be kinder to Solange.

She added: "Beyonce was really irritated, but it made her more sensitive to who her sister was and what she had to deal with because of her."

But the idea to put the girls into counselling wasn't met with praise from Tina's family, who claimed she would make her daughters "crazy".

Speaking to Maria Shriver as part of her 'Architects of Change' series, Tina said: "My family was like, 'You're going to make them crazy, because they're too young for you to take them.' But I wanted Beyonce to be sensitive to the fact that Solange had to deal with 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."