Sibling relationships are important

Siblings….your relationship with them is one of the most important ones in your childhood and into adulthood. Parents want their children to get along. In the U.S., more than 80% grow up in a family with siblings (more than with fathers!). yet the importance of these relationships is not always recognized, much less studied.

Importance of sibling relationships

Siblings are important teachers during early childhood often providing the first roadmap to navigating peer relationships before they enter school. Positive sibling relationships have been found to provide many benefits including:

• Peer acceptance and relationships
• Social competence
• Academic achievement
• Conflict management skills
• Emotional well-being

Healthy sibling relationships provide emotional support and create a sense of connection, protecting against loneliness and depression. When there is sibling aggression and conflict, it can have a negative effect on mental health. Relational sibling conflict has been associated with depression, low self-esteem and risky behavior in adults. Conflict

Sibling relationships are generally more emotionally charged than relationships with their peers. Kids treat their siblings in a similar way to how they treat their parents. With healthy relationships, kids feel safe with their siblings. This can lead to more explosive and higher emotional interactions. Parents can play a crucial role in fostering healthy sibling relations. You can improve your children’s well-being as well as the dynamics of your family by helping them get along.

Introducing a new child

For the first-born, the addition of a younger sibling can cause a variety of emotions. The majority of children are excited to have a new sibling in the family. However, there can also be some anxiety or resentment. Here are some actions to implement:

Introduce the idea of a new sibling during the pregnancy

• Include your firstborn (and other kids) into conversations about the baby that are age appropriate (names, setting up a room, etc.)
• Let them talk to the baby and learn about the pregnancy if they’re interested
• Once the baby comes, make sure you include them in the ‘fussing over’ and with visitors Here are some actions to implement:
• Introduce the idea of a new sibling during the pregnancy
• Include your firstborn (and other kids) into conversations about the baby that are age appropriate (names, setting up a room, etc)
• Let them talk to the baby and learn about the pregnancy (as appropriate) if they are interested

Once the baby comes, make sure to include them in the ‘fussing over’ and with visitors

Support their role as an older sibling

Read books about siblings and new babies

• Encourage your firstborn to help with caring for the baby (while not parentifying them). Remember to maintain a special relationship with them that is separate from the baby.Toddler conflict
• Toddlerhood is a time where you will start to see more sibling conflict. The toddler stage is a time of incredible intellectual, social and emotion development. It is an important time, and you begin to see many new and emerging behaviors like:Increased autonomy:
• I want to do it all by myself!
• Testing limits:

NO!

Development of impulse control

Temperament emerges: 3 main categories (Easy/Flexible, Active/Feisty, Slow to warm up/Cautious)

You will likely see conflicts over toys or other ‘things’. The toddler may declare something to be ‘MINE’ and get upset when asked to share. When a sibling knocks something over that they’ve built (accidentally or deliberately), there might be a tantrum, or other strong reactions directed at the person who did it. This can be a stressful situation, especially if it occurs in public. However, there are effective ways to deal with strong emotions. Emotion Coaching helps children learn to regulate their emotions and cope with them in a healthy manner.

Emotion Coaching

Created by Dr. John Gottman, Emotion Coaching is a 5 step method to use with children to increase their emotional awareness and communication skills. Researchers have found that emotional intelligence (EQ), which is a measure of EQ, can be more important to children than IQ when it comes to achieving positive outcomes in adulthood. You can help your child gain emotional intelligence by increasing their emotional responsiveness. The method is also effective for parents to use during times of conflict and distress.

Step 1: Being aware of your child’s emotion

Parents must first be aware of their own emotions before they will have awareness of their child’s emotion.

Step 2. Recognizing that the emotion is an opportunity to teach and build intimacy with your child

This step is especially important when you are dealing with a negative emotion such as anger, fear, or sadness. Ignoring an emotion or making your child happy will not teach them how to cope with negative emotions that are likely to continue to occur.

Step 3: Listening empathetically and validating your child’s feelings

Empathetic listening requires tuning into your child’s emotions and noticing facial expressions, body language, and other movements. Empathy is the ability to understand a situation from a child’s perspective. Then you reflect back what you are hearing, seeing and what they might be feeling.

Step 4: Help your child verbally label emotions

Labelling emotions goes hand in hand with empathy. Helping your child find words to describe what they are feeling has a soothing effect on the nervous system and will help them recover more quickly from the upsetting situation.

Step 5: Setting limits while helping your child problem solve

Dr. Gottman has identified 5 steps to this process (1) limit setting, (2) identifying goals, (3) thinking of possible solutions, (4) evaluating solutions based on family values and (5) helping your child choose a solution.

Conflict between school aged children

Sibling conflict at this age is often linked to sibling rivalry. Conflict between school-aged children

• Sibling conflict at this age is often linked to sibling rivalry. It can be a result of a desire to receive parental love and attention. Parents can do a lot to minimize sibling rivalry.
• Sibling rivalry
• This conflict can start in elementary school, and continue through high school. Sibling rivalry can be defined as jealousy, fighting and competition between siblings. It can often be linked to behavior, sports performance, or academics. Kids can sometimes link their loveability with their performance. This can be caused by parents or adults comparing siblings. If their sibling is more successful than them, they may feel that their “place in the family” has been compromised. Parents should never compare their children to each other. Here are some tips to prevent sibling rivalry:
• Avoid comparisons between kids
• Recognize each child as an individual

Nurture individual relationships with each child

Create an environment of cooperation vs competition

Promote family activities and regular family meals together

Favoritism

Favoritism is when children perceive their parent(s) having a preference for one child over another. Perhaps a parent will buy more items for one child, or let another child go out more with friends. Maybe boundaries and consequences are different for each child. Fairness does not necessarily mean equality. It is important to communicate any differences that may exist between children based on their age, gender, or development. As much as possible, parents should have the same expectations, boundaries and consequences for all children making allowances and adjustments for age and developmental differences.

• Teen conflict
• As children enter their teenage years, it can be easy for parents to favor a child without meaning to. It may be that one child is more easy to get along and parent. You may feel inclined to allow them to use the car or stay out longer. However, this can lead to conflict between your teens, and ultimately that conflict can negatively impact both their relationship and them as individuals.
• The ways that teen sibling conflict manifests is not drastically different than other times. Just about everything. Here are types of arguments you might see:
• Invasion of personal space

Using their clothes or other possessions

Use of car, computer, game console or other shared items

Fairness of parents’ treatment

Parents might normalize this behavior and say ‘it’s part of growing up and they can work it out.’ However, helping them work through conflict is still an important parental role. If you continue to help them with consistency boundaries and empathy you will nurture the sibling relationship and promote harmony in your family.

How parents can promote healthy sibling relationships

• There is a certain tension that parents experience around fair treatment of their children. Parents must be careful and intentional about how they communicate and enforce rules and expectations within the family. So parents must be careful and intentional about how they communicate and enforce rules and expectations within the family.
• Help your kids get along
• Here are some tips to promoting positive sibling relationships:
• Don’t play favorites
• Appreciate each child for who they are and not what they do
• Teach your children positive ways of getting attention from each other

Do not take sides during arguments (even when one sibling may be ‘right’)

Coach your children through conflict

Recognize patterns of the day when a child may need down time without sibling interaction01001010Final thoughts01001010Sibling relationships are often the longest relationships you will have in your lifetime. It is important for a child’s healthy development to have a sibling who understands their experience. This feeling of being understood is important as children grow and become adults. Parents can nurture and support this powerful shared experience.

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