Do your children have a good sibling relationship? Parents can play a key role in helping nurture a good sibling relationship and reduce sibling rivalry and conflict. By encouraging activities that foster teamwork, setting kids up to have fun together, and giving kids the tools to work out conflicts in a constructive and respectful manner, parents can help siblings develop a good relationship that will carry them through the rest of their lives.
Research has shown that sibling relationships often play a major role in how we will interact in other relationships with friends, romantic partners, and others later in life.
No matter how different your kids are from one another, sibling bonds are important. As a parent, there are several things you can do to foster the bonds between your kids, which will hopefully be lifelong. Are they competing for your time and attention? Do they fight more when they are tired or bored? Once you see a pattern that might explain this behavior, try to address those issues to minimize sibling squabbles. Do you have one child who loves to sit and read quietly and another who likes nothing better than loud games and constant activities?
When children have very different interests and temperaments, conflicts can naturally occur. If one child wants to choose a family activity that incorporates a lot of action while another child wants to do something quiet and low-key, you could set up a system where they can work together to plan how to take turns or find other common interests that can be fun for both siblings.
One of the ways companies build a sense of teamwork and cooperation among their staff is by having employees engage in exercises and activities that encourage working together. Parents can do something similar with their children, either by having kids work together on a project or assist each other with chores. Come up with a project, such as painting a spare room or cleaning out the garage, and have kids work together to get it done.
You can also have kids take on chores that are best for their age and abilities, such as sweeping or helping prepare dinner and have them race against the grownups in the house to see who gets their chores done faster. Making the kids one team and the grownups another can encourage kids to work together toward a common goal beating their parents.
Remind kids that they should treat others the way they want to be treated, with kindness and concern for their feelings. Teach your children that they may not always see eye to eye on things, but that they must not call each other names, let arguments affect their positive interactions, and most of all, engage in physical fighting.
Children who grew up with healthy relationships with their siblings tend to feel more supported and secure during adulthood. Not surprisingly, this is because siblings know you right through your soul as a result of sharing the same parents, same environment, same conditioning, same discipline and even the same disappointments.
According to Dr. Terri Apter, author of ' The Sister Knot' , siblings may not always agree with you or even like you, but they elicit a great interest in you that is difficult to replicate in any other relationship. The author writes on www. News U. Politics Joe Biden Congress Extremism. Special Projects Highline. HuffPost Personal Video Horoscopes. Follow Us. Terms Privacy Policy. All rights reserved. And, I am not even talking about zero-conflict situation here.
They shape the person you become:. Of course, the positive effects of sibling relationships change over time. As children mature, siblings take on more practical responsibilities, helping one another with schoolwork or with navigating friendships outside the family.
These effects can also vary with gender. Siblings can also serve as sources of comfort in adulthood. What was dad like? Good sibling relationships are the norm, but bad sibling relationships happen. And they can have strong negative effects. Indeed, sibling relationships are also the most violent relationships between family members. Sibling bullying is a real problem, with some studies suggesting that up to 80 percent of children report being bullied by their brothers or sisters.
In extreme cases, sibling bullying can lead to depression and self-harm — or teach victims to bully others, in turn. One of the best ways to discern normal from problematic sibling conflict is to watch its trajectory. What compounds sibling relationship problems?
For one, parental favoritism perceived or actual. Given the benefits of a good sibling relationship and the dangers of a bad one, trying to predict how outside factors might influence the interactions between brothers and sisters is a priority. One of the major factors at play is the age difference. There is limited evidence that adversity helps bring siblings closer to one another.
Kramer is fascinated by the science of predicting sibling relationship quality. She has dedicated much of her career to identifying predictors and helping parents implement positive changes. One of her long-term, longitudinal studies that followed children from birth through high school found that although gender and age gaps made some difference, the single greatest predictor of positive sibling relationships were positive social interactions with unrelated peers.
In a word, the best way to figure out whether a child or teen will make a good sibling is to look at how they treat their peers.
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