Tina Knowles Recalls Putting Beyoncé and Solange in Therapy as Children After Seeing a ‘Wall Between Them Coming’

Tina Knowles is reflecting on raising her daughters — and one impactful decision she made early on after seeing “a wall between them coming.”

The Matriarch author, 71, shared in a new interview with anchor Sara Sidner on CNN News Central on Friday, April 25, that when Beyoncé and Solange were children, she sent them both to therapy in an effort to prevent a divide between them.

While detailing how she helped “forge” the pair’s relationship, Knowles explained that both Solange, now 38, and Beyoncé, now 43, “were very, very different” in their youth.

“I was terrified when Beyonce turned around 10. She might have been 10 or 11, and she was in the singing group. And the kids would say to Solange every day, ‘Be quiet, Solange,’ because she would try to choreograph and, you know, she wanted to be involved. She bossed it, too. And they didn’t want her involved,” Knowles told the outlet.

“And then I started noticing that Beyonce would allow them to talk to her like that or she would say, ‘OK, Mom, can you get Solange out of here? Because she is’ — and I’m like, ‘Wait a minute, this is her house, and you’ve got to be nice to her.’ And I told her all the things, you know, how important it was for her,” recalled Knowles, who released her memoir on April 22. “But finally, I realized that they weren’t listening, and I saw a wall between them coming, and so I got them in therapy.”

As Knowles explained, while therapy was “really taboo” at the time and her now-former husband Matthew Knowles thought they were “too young for you to do that,” she was determined.

“And I’m like, ‘I’m not asking. I’m going to find somebody.’ And I found this wonderful therapist, child therapist,” she said. “And it’s funny because he told Beyoncé all the things I had told her, but she listened from him, even though she hated therapy. She hated going. Solange loved therapy. She loved talking and, you know, expressing herself.”

“And the outcome was great,” she added. “It was really great because they had been super tight since.”

Knowles also caught up with PEOPLE in this week’s World’s Most Beautiful issue, as she shared some family memories, discussed her private breast cancer journey and detailed her decision to document her story in a memoir.

Knowles, who “told my kids the sky’s the limit every day,” explained that as a parent, she “looked at my kids very differently” — referring to both of her biological daughters, as well as “bonus daughter” Kelly Rowland, 44, whom she helped raise from age 11.

“All three have totally different personalities so I couldn’t lump them into one category. And I always spent time with each one of them separately so that they could feel special,” she said, later adding that her girls were there for her amid her breast cancer diagnosis and treatment last year.

“They were very supportive of me and very conscious of the fact that you have to get your mammograms on time,” Knowles said.

“I think we’ve always been very close,” she added, “but it renewed our commitment to spending more time together because life can be short.”

For more on Tina Knowles’ story pick up this week’s issue of PEOPLE, available on newsstands everywhere now.