Helping Siblings Get Along

Siblings 101: Top Ten Tips to Help Siblings Get Along

If you have more than one child, you're bound to have some sibling rivalry. It's very, very hard for children to have to share us. In fact, when a younger sibling is born, virtually all children worry that they've lost their parents' love. Why else would you have gotten a newer, younger, model?

Parenting Siblings - Videos

The only thing harder than raising a child is raising more than one child at the same time!  Many parents say that sibling conflict stresses them out more than any other child-raising challenge.  You can't completely avoid sibling rivalry, but the good news is that you as the parent have more power than you know to help your children get along. In these videos, Dr. Laura Markham explains:

• What causes sibling rivalry
• How to intervene in a sibling fight
• How to heal resentment between siblings
• What parents can do to prevent and heal sibling rivalry

These videos will help you transform sibling tensions, so you can stop the fighting and raise friends for life!

10 Tips to Foster a Sweet Sibling Relationship From the Start

“I let my five year old son give my two month old a bottle. It gives the older kids a care-taking role. Now if the baby cries, they both start offering solutions.’ Maybe he needs a diaper? He's hungry Mommy. He needs a binky.’ Then I'll suggest the wrong thing, and they'll correct me. ‘No Mommy, he doesn't want his binky. He's hungry.’ ‘Oh, I see, you're right... Thank you for letting me know!’”

Why Kids Bicker and How To Help Them Stop

What's bickering? Arguing about something trivial. But of course nothing is too trivial for siblings to argue about, or at least it seems that way some days!

Teaching Kids To Share

All parents want to raise children who are generous, good people. We find kids' frequent fights over toys wearing and a bit ridiculous. After all, your son hasn't looked at that toy in over a year, but as soon as his little brother (or visiting friend) unearths it, he has to assert immediate ownership. 

How To Intervene In a Sibling Fight

Charley: "Jane, did you mess up my lego ships?  You did!  You messed them all up!"
Jane: "I didn't hurt your stupid legos."
Charley: "They are not stupid, you're stupid!"
Jane: "Get out of my room!"
Charley:  "You're not the boss of me!"
Jane:  "I'm the boss of my room! Get out!"
Charley: "You messed up my lego ships!  I'll mess up your room!"  (CRASH!)
Jane:  "I hate you, Charley! MOM!!"

Should you make your child apologize?

After there's been a falling out between siblings, most parents insist that their children apologize to each other.  Most of us do this automatically, because it's expected, but also because we think that will teach the child how to repair things after a conflict.

Bickering in the Backseat: How to Cope on the Way to School

It’s finally the first day of school. Your children are so excited, they took forever to fall asleep last night. They struggled this morning over what to wear. They barely picked at that healthy breakfast you got up early to make for them. Their excitement is tinged with nervousness, naturally. And who better to take it out on than their brother or sister, sitting next to them in the back seat?

3 Tools To Dissolve Sibling Jealousy

In When Your 3 Year Old Hits the Baby, I gave you a script for setting limits, using the example of a three year old lashing out at the baby. But enforcing your limit in the moment is only the beginning. Since all "misbehavior" is driven by upset feelings or unmet needs, the real work here is helping the child resolve the tangled up feelings that are triggering his aggression. As promised, here are three tools to help dissolve Sibling jealousy.

7 Powerful Ways to Help Kids Develop Social Intelligence Skills Every Day

How do children learn social and emotional intelligence skills?

12 Tips to Build a Stronger Sibling Bond

“In many sibling relationships the rate of conflict can be high, but the fun times more than balance it out. This net-positive is what predicts a good relationship later in life. In contrast, siblings who simply ignored each other had less fighting, but their relationship stayed distant long term.” - Po Bronson

Can You Prevent Sibling Fighting?

"When your son and daughter are fighting with each other, you want them to learn to resolve their differences successfully, but you may have never learned to successfully work through conflicts yourself. Before you can teach your kids to listen, identify the problem, express their feelings, generate solutions, and find common ground, you have to learn those problem-solving skills yourself."
-Laura Davis & Janis Keyser

When Your Older Child Hits the Little One: A Script

Henry, age 3, is playing with Sophie, 15 months, by grabbing a toy away from her.   Sophie loves his attention and giggles at this interesting game, especially because he restores the toy to her every time. But Henry is getting rougher each time, and Sophie is clinging harder to the toy. He wrenches it away from her.  Sophie bursts into tears.  Henry, feeling guilty, says “You act like a baby!” and reaches out and shoves her down, hard.  Now Sophie is wailing.

Why Kids Hit Younger Siblings, and How To Help Them Stop

"Dr Laura -- My 4 year old hits my 9 month old. It is very hard to see any danger signs with him as he will push or hit her out of the blue. One minute he is sitting there patting her gently and cooing and then in a flash he will push her over or hit her. There is not much outward anger in his feelings so I struggle to know how to deal with the situation as I feel silly saying to him "You are angry" when he shows no signs at all of being angry or upset -- he seems to just do it for the fun of it. - Belinda

Helping Siblings Communicate Instead of Fight

Conflict is part of every human relationship, because every relationship has two people with different needs and perspectives. Our job as parents is to teach our children to manage that conflict in ways that bring them closer.

When Your Toddler Grabs from the Baby

“Now the 3 month old is starting to play with toys, and the toddler always grabs them away from him. The baby is still too small to care that the toy gets taken... for now. Until now, we've handled sharing toys as you suggest -- we don't force it, we talk about taking turns, asking the other child if they're done, etc. I'm a little less sure how to apply this logic when there is an age discrepancy. We can't ask the baby if he's done. I feel quite certain that I don't want to force my toddler to share, but sometimes I find myself saying, "Your brother is using that!" because it seems like he shouldn't just be able to take every toy the baby plays with.“

How to Help Each Child with Big Emotions

 

“I have found when another child is witnessing the process of helping kids with emotions they become aware and able to help. Mine often imitate what they've seen me do and can even help each other through upsets on their own with empathy and understanding.”
-Seasyn

Staying Calm When One Child Hurts the Other

“The only thing that really makes me lose it is when my four-year-old repeatedly is physically violent to his two-year-old sister. I try to do what you say, and say, ‘Quick, Sammy, can you get her an ice pack?’ and turn him into a helper. He’s good at it. But it makes me mad if they’re fighting and I say ‘I’m coming to help’ and then he throws her to the ground and busts her head."

Everybody's got a hungry heart, especially when siblings are involved.

"Whereas he was once the center of your universe, he has been displaced from this paradise. He is now in time out, while you coo at his tiny rival. You cannot, of course, push back the clock to a time when he, alone, was the apple of your eye. All the same, trying to imagine how frustrated your 3 year old must often feel can help you counteract his sense of loss. Your expressions of love, gestures of devotion, and moments of intimacy with your son can help him feel less deserted and alone. Helping your son recapture a sense of shared joy in his relationship with you will turn down the fuel of his hate, and smooth the pathway to his identification as a loving, protective, sharing person." - Elizabeth Berger

How To Stop Your Toddler From Hitting Older Siblings

"My toddler climbs on my five year old's back like a monkey and won't get off."

"My 22 month old younger daughter very aggressively scratches my older daughter, who is 3 and a half."

"The 2 year old is beating up on the 8 year old at our house!"

Preventing Middle Child Syndrome

Studies have found that middle children are often less close to their parents. That makes sense. They never had time as an “only” child the way the oldest child did, and they didn't get to linger as the baby because another child came along. Often, parents really are less close to the middle child because there is simply less one-on-one time to build a relationship.

Supporting Your Oldest Child 

It’s hard to be the big sib. No matter how old you are, you’re expected to take more responsibility, even when you’re a very young person yourself. That’s one reason that oldest children are often described as responsible, sensitive, perfectionistic, and a bit more anxious than their siblings. 

Supporting Your Youngest Child

“You always win because you’re eight! But someday I’ll be nine, and then I’ll be older than you, and I’ll win!”- Five year old.

Siblings Downloadable eBook

One of the most fundamental ways you influence your children’s relationship is the expectation you hold about it. If we can hold the expectation that as a family we will always work things out with each other, that we deeply value our relationships with each other, that siblings have a unique bond that is to be treasured and protected, then we’ll transmit that assumption to our children. 

Sibling Transition Downloadable eBook

Many women worry about leaving their older child when they go to the hospital to give birth to the baby. It doesn't help that labor is by definition unpredictable in both onset and length, making it even hard to prepare a child who is often little more than a baby himself.