How to Deal with Sibling Rivalry

How to Deal with Sibling Rivalry by Anthony Kane, MD Introduction There are many new issues facing parents today. Sibling rivalry is not one of them. It is as old as Cain and Abel. Sibling rivalry is universal, but more importantly sibling rivalry is normal. More than that current research shows that sibling rivalry is a sign of a healthy family. One of the sign of a dysfunctional home or a home where there is a lot of stress is that there is no sibling rivalry. In these homes the children tend to cling together for security. So if sibling rivalry is universal and it is found in normal homes, it must serve a purpose. The Benefits of Sibling Rivalry One of the main benefits that sibling rivalry teaches children is conflict resolution. Life is full of conflict. As adults we have developed skills to resolve these conflicts in an effective and civil manner. How did we develop these skills? We learned this by pounding our little brother. We learned this by fighting with our big sister. You can learn certain skills by arguing with your parents, but it is not the same. Through your parents you learn how to deal with authority. But siblings are peers. Learning how to relate to them properly prepares us to relate to our friends and our spouses. You can only learn conflict resolution when there is conflict. Sibling rivalry provides a safe and supervised haven for children to learn how to resolve their disagreements with others. The second important lesson that we learn through sibling rivalry is that the world is not fair. This is a very important and bitter lesson to learn. There is always some who will do better than you. There is always someone who is richer, who is smarter, who has better behaved children, who has a happier marriage. Life is full of inequities. We may not like it but most of us have come to terms with these inequities. Where did we learn to accept that everything is not always distributed evenly? We learned it from our siblings. How to Manage Sibling Rivalry Now that we have a framework for what children accomplish through sibling rivalry, we can understand better how we as parents can use our children