018: Getting the Siblings to Get Along

In the Boat With Ben

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One of the biggest frustrations we experience as parents is when our kids aren’t getting along. Especially if one is hurting or doing something unfair to another. It’s easy to get emotionally involved and express our feelings through our correction, but this can have adverse effects and can end up pitting our children further against one another.

In this episode Ben and Rachel talk about a healthy approach to dealing with sibling conflict that will allow our children to see the value in maintaining good relationships with their brothers or sisters. They share some practical steps and language to foster good conflict resolution skills and lead our children into closer relationships with one another.

Highlights, Takeaways, & Quick Wins

• We assume that sibling rivalry is inherent in sibling relationships, but it doesn’t have to be.
• Conflict is natural and unavoidable.
• See conflict as an opportunity for your children to practice working through it in a healthy way that protects the relationship.
• Each of your children have different needs; they value your time, attention, and the things you give them differently based on who they are as individuals.
• Our children watch our behavior so much more than they listen to our words.
• Keep your personal feelings out of the objective process of helping your children work through their conflict.
• The way we talk about our children in front of their siblings can inform how they see each other.
• Let your children know that they are heard and their desires matter.
• The basis for a good sibling relationship is, as parents, having good relationships with each of our children.
• Avoid pitting your children against one another, even playfully.

Show Notes

• 05:04 Ben: We are going to get into our pasts with this subject. I don’t remember much of how my parents managed conflict between my brother and I, but I definitely remember conflicts with him. He’s my younger brother by three and a half years, and he was really tricksy. We would get into an argument over something, and eventually I would hit him. He would bend over and act like he was really sad and upset. I’m a pretty compassionate person, very empathetic, so I would feel bad almost immediately.
• 05:45 I would go over and I would put my hand on his back and start to apologize, and right in the middle of me apologizing he would turn around and nail me. I fell for it every time. My mom has told me that seeing us fight was one of the most infuriating things she dealt with as a parent. She couldn’t get her mind around the fact that we couldn’t get along. It angered her so much that we would argue, fight about something, or hurt one another. Do you remember how your parents dealt with disagreements, sibling rivalry, or anything like that?
• 06:37 Rachel: I had a different dynamic than you did, because I had a younger sister and an older brother. I was kind of the forgotten middle child. My brother and I are only ten months and two weeks apart, so he and I were very close in age. When our sister would do something, we would team up against her. Three is a crowd, right? I remember having a tape recorder and we would tape her crying so it sounded like an ambulance siren. We would record it when she was upset and we would play it back for her, and she would inevitably start laughing so she wouldn’t go tell our mom.
• 07:51 We did it so we wouldn’t get in trouble. I don’t think my mom had a specific way of handling those sibling arguments, but I do remember that she never compared us. She would always tell us that the ways we were different were ways that we were unique, and we were valuable as we were. We were very different people. We grew up being okay with that individuality instead of trying to compete against each other.

We assume that sibling rivalry is inherent in sibling relationships, but it doesn’t have to be.

• 08:41 Ben: I’d really like to dive into how that works and where it comes from. Sam is joining us in the chat tonight, and he says, “I’m excited for this episode. When I was little, my mom had a method of making us get along. When we would fight one another, we would have a time out where one of us sat at the top of the stairs and the other sat at the bottom. We couldn’t leave the stairs until the other person said it was okay to leave. It was only once we were done being mad at each other and we had forgiven each other that we were ready to let the other person off the stairs.”
• 09:23 Earlier in the chat, I asked the question, “Did you have siblings growing up? What were some of the tactics your parents used?” I got a couple of fun responses. I really like this one from Kelsey. She said, “What helped my brother and myself the most was learning how to communicate after a conflict in terms of, ‘I experienced this,’ and not ‘you made me feel.'” We’ve talked about owning your emotions before, not letting someone else have control over your emotions by saying, “You made me…” Instead, say, “I feel…” Kelsey continued, “Our parents taught us how to speak from our own perspectives without adding drama or insult. It saved our relationship in the end and we actually became good friends.” That’s a really good one.

Conflict is Normal

• 10:35 I want to start with the idea that conflict is natural and unavoidable. There’s a difference between conflict and sibling rivalry, and we’ll get into those differences in this episode. Conflict is a natural part of cohabitating with other people. It doesn’t matter what age you are or how emotionally mature you are—there’s always going to be some level of conflict you will have to deal with. Over time, some of us learn to deal with that really well. Our children, on the other hand, don’t come into this world fully equipped with the ability to resolve conflict without help and instruction. One of the best things we can do as parents is to embrace the fact that conflict is going to happen.

See conflict as an opportunity for your children to practice working through it in a healthy way that protects the relationship.

• 12:03 Rachel: As parents, we can’t be afraid of that conflict. Every time my kids fight is another opportunity to teach them good conflict resolution. If we’re diligent about getting involved in that, we have the opportunity to teach them how to manage conflicts wisely. I know a lot of adults who don’t know how to do that. This is a huge gift we can give our children.
• 12:45 Ben: One of the first things we can do as parents, and I love this approach for many things, is to start with ourselves. Our children watch our behavior so much more than they listen to our words. When we start with our own ideas and thoughts about things, those ideas and thoughts shape our actions and behaviors in a way that can demonstrate a better way for our children. That’s much more powerful than anything we could say. That’s where I like to start.

Focus On Your Childrens’ Individual Needs

• 13:35 I’d like to redefine equality. One of the books we’re reading is called Siblings Without Rivalry by Elaine Mazlish and Adele Faber. One of their sections talks about equality, and they say not to focus on making things equal. I think it depends on how you define equality. There’s a cartoon I really like, and it’s three people standing in front of a fence at a baseball game. There are two panels: on the first panel, each of them has a box that’s the same height, but each person is a different height. There’s the tall person who, especially with the box, can see over the fence just fine. There’s the normal person who, with the box, can still see over the fence.
• 15:21 Then there’s the short person who, with the box, still can’t see over the fence. They all have the same, equal thing, but because they’re different individually, their experiences differ. In the second panel, the taller person doesn’t have a box but can still see over the fence just fine. The normal person has one box and can see over the fence, and then the short person has two boxes and can also see over the fence. It was a powerful visual for me to look at equality in that way. It’s no longer about whether sibling A has the same amount of my time or a specific thing as sibling B, but it’s about their individual needs.
• 16:02 Rachel: We’ve seen examples of this in things like holidays and Christmas. We used to try to have a certain amount we would spend on each child. When your child is six months old, you’re not going to want to spend as much on them as you would an eight year old, because the things eight year olds are interested in are more expensive than what a six month old is interested in. You have to use that re-definition of equality.
• 16:35 Ben: It’s kind of like something we talk about on the seanwes podcast when we talk about how to price for design projects. It really has less to do with the work you’re doing and more to do with the value of that work to the client. For example, a large company like Coca Cola stands to gain a lot more value out of an effective marketing campaign than a mom-and-pop store would. For our audience that are also designers and entrepreneurs who think that way, you can assign that same kind of thinking to your children.

Each of your children have different needs; they value your time, attention, and the things you give them differently based on who they are as individuals.

• 17:37 If a child recognizes that another child has more than they do, they might say, “Hey, he got two more of whatever than I did.” Instead of saying, “Let me give you the same amount,” or even pointing out, “But you’re smaller than he is,” address the child’s needs and focus on that. Say, “Are you still hungry?” or “Do you feel like three cars isn’t enough for you? How many cars would be enough?” This way, we can focus them on their real needs. Think about how that plays itself out over a lifetime.
• 18:27 If you’re constantly after having the same amount as somebody and never content with having just what you need, you’ll have a miserable life, and a lot of adults are in that same place. They look across the street and see what their neighbor has that they don’t, or they look on Facebook and see what their friends post about what they have in their lives that they don’t have. We play this comparison game and we feel like we should have the same things that they do instead of looking at our own lives and saying, “We have what we need and we’re okay.”

Avoid Comparison

• 19:12 Avoid comparison at all costs because our children are individuals. Comparison doesn’t just have to do with stuff you have or the time or attention that you get. Sometimes, comparison has to do with your own personal attributes—how tall, kind, or pretty you are. We talk about this on the seanwes podcast also. When you compare yourself to another artist or designer, you’re doing yourself a disservice. You are a different person from that other designer and you’re in different circumstances, so there’s no way for you to make a fair comparison and be fair with yourself.

The only way to be fair with yourself is to compare yourself to yourself.

• 20:17 If there’s something about you or your life that you’re dissatisfied with, it’s better to make goals and move toward something and then look back and say, “I made this progress,” than it is to compare yourself to other people and let that discontentment drive you. Discontentment and comparison to others won’t drive you in the same way that personal growth does.
• 20:52 Rachel: A lot of times, we as parents are good at comparing ourselves to other people. A lot of people come up to us and say, “I don’t know how you do it. I only have three and I’m barely hanging on.” I don’t think it’s so much a comparison game as it is that we adjust to our realities and we try to become better parents in the situations that we have instead of comparing ourselves to another parent. I remember when our oldest was about two, and we would take him to a church nursery. I would see all these other kids who would sit quietly on their seats when their teachers told them to, and he was hanging out in the back, didn’t really want to sit down.
• 21:45 He wasn’t running around, but even then he wanted to do his own thing. I remember thinking, “How in the world do parents get their kids to do that?” It was a subtle comparison between those kids and my kid. I was wondering what was wrong with my kid. When we parent from that place, it’s a dangerous place, because we aren’t vocalizing that comparison so much, but in our actions we are propagating that comparison.
• 22:22 Ben: It’s really difficult. Our second oldest’s personality is very easy going, he’s much more compliant, and he’s just a very different individual from our oldest. I always have to catch myself when I see him, who is two and a half years younger, demonstrating maturity in his behavior that our oldest doesn’t seem to grasp yet. There are a couple of things going on there. There’s an expectation I have that, because he’s older, he should be more mature than his younger sibling. That’s a dangerous expectation to have, because each of our children develops and grows in different ways and at different times. Where one may be very emotionally mature but not as intellectually mature, the other may be very intellectually mature but not as emotionally mature.

Realize that your children are going to be different developmentally from one another.

• 23:54 The second thing that’s going on there is a little bit of fear. Is something wrong that he hasn’t reached this level of maturity yet?
• 24:05 Rachel: A good example of this is potty training. Each kid develops at their own rate. Our oldest was potty trained before he was two, which is unheard of for a little boy. We were coming up on the second oldest’s third birthday and he was still having accidents. I remember asking the pediatrician about it and he set my mind at ease, but I kept comparing the experience we had with one of the other boys. I remember feeling angry about accidents because I thought, “You should be old enough to do this because your brother was.” It wasn’t that I would say things like that, but that belief in your mind can come through in all of your actions.
• 25:02 Ben: That’s where we as parents can do ourselves a great service—by talking ourselves out of those thoughts and beliefs as much as possible. Our pediatrician was wonderful. One of the things I loved about speaking with him was that because he was such an expert, he understands child development, and he’s an unbiased third party, he was able to give us objective information about child development, which served as a great compass for us. All we had was our personal experiences. There are times when I get those feelings and I force myself to do my own independent research, which helps, because I’m usually able to find that my fears or frustrations are unfounded. It’s okay to feel frustrated, but I let the reality change the way I’ll respond to this in the future.

Voice Objective Truths About Your Child’s Identity

• 26:23 In that vein, I want to get into the way we talk to our children about their conflicts and the way we talk about them in one another’s hearing. Rachel and I are working through changing our language and the way we speak when we’re dealing with sibling conflict and relationships. The anchor that holds all of our healthy communication together is speaking objective truths about the situation, and this has to do with their identity. We speak objectively about who they are.
• 27:16 For example, we say, “You’re his or her brother or sister,” and there are some implications there about how that relationship speaks to their true identity, versus saying something like, “You’re being a bully.” That’s subjective; it’s really not who they are, but it seems that way because of their actions. If you stepped back and looked at the objective truth, a child is not a bully. They just think that’s the best way to get what they want, and they haven’t learned a better way yet.
• 28:01 Rachel: One of the things we try to do is to reinforce their identity for them. When they make a bad decision, we don’t say, “You’re a bad boy,” or, “You’re a bully,” those kinds of labeling things. We frame it by saying, “You made a bad decision, but this is not who you are. You are not this bad decision; you are something better than this bad decision, and I believe you can figure out how to make it right.”
• 28:38 Ben: Another thing you can say that’s objective is to talk about their capacity for goodness. It’s okay if they haven’t demonstrated this consistently, but if you’ve ever seen them do something kind or selfless, you can say, “I know that you can be kind and you are capable of being selfless.” Remind them of what they’re capable of in that situation, and then make observations about the situation itself. It’s okay to say something like, “Oh, you took that car from your brother,” without becoming emotionally invested in the outcome or without trying to attach your feelings about the situation to what you’re trying to do to help your children walk through that.

There is a time and a place for you to express your feelings, but during a conflict, be the objective observer.

• 30:09 Rachel: We have had the conflict of someone taking a car from someone else multiple times in our house recently because the twins are home with the baby and the three older ones are in school. In my mind, I thought that would eliminate half of the fighting, because half of the boys are gone. That hasn’t been the case because the twins like to fight as well. In times when they both want the orange car even though there’s another orange car over here, one of the twins is really bad about just taking it from the other one. One of the kids has taken the car and the other kid is crying; you can come into that situation and observe. Say, “Huh. I saw a little boy take a car from another little boy, and now this other little boy is crying.”
• 31:12 You can use their names, obviously. Then, just ask a question: “What can we do about that?” You can even ask the one who took the car away, “What do you think is wrong with your brother?” Ask those questions and get them to think about what they just did. Guide them through how they might feel if their brother had done the same to them. It’s hard for our twins, who are three, to think about empathy. That’s not a part of the brain that is developed and won’t fully develop until they’re 25. It’s always a work in progress, but the more we can open up these conversations, the more our kids will start thinking about that kind of thing, and we can help develop that in them.
• 32:10 Ben: I also really like using “we” language when we’re talking about giving our children some instruction. What I like at first about your example is that it puts it on them to think through that, but if they still don’t seem to be getting it, it might not be a bad idea to nudge them in the right direction. There’s positive “we” language and negative “we” language. I’ll say, “We use our words and ask when we want something.”
• 32:56 Rachel: That reinforces our house rules. One of our house rules is that when you want to play with something that someone else is already playing with, we ask. We don’t take.
• 33:09 Ben: What Rachel just said was an example of a positive “we” and the corresponding negative “we.” I try to avoid negative “we’s” as much as possible, so instead of saying, “We don’t hit,” I might say, “We touch each other gently.” We’ve talked before about using positive rather than negative cues. It’s good to know what your boundaries are, and sometimes it’s necessary to let your child know that something is not acceptable. I really like that “we” because it is inclusive and reinforces the fact that they are part of a family, a community, and this community has rules by which it operates, rules that help us live together peacefully and for things to happen in the best interest of all of us who are in the boat together.

Dealing With Violence

• 34:12 Rachel: I’m sure somebody is thinking, “So how do you do this when there’s violence?” Kids are pretty good at escalating their feelings to where they’re hitting each other because they feel so angry.
• 34:36 Ben: There are times when your child or children may be so emotionally flooded, whether they’re being violent or not, that they can’t work through the conflict at that moment. It is good to try to help them get to that place and work up to being able to work through their conflict. Certainly, if there is violence involved, if one of them is hurting the other—physically or emotionally through things like name-calling—we can step into the role of protector by removing the aggressor from that situation.
• 35:34 You may need to physically get involved and remove them from the situation where they’re putting themselves and their sibling in danger. You’re not just protecting the person being hurt, but you’re also protecting the person doing the hurting by keeping them from doing something that would harm them emotionally as well. One of the things we read in Siblings Without Rivalry was that once you’ve gotten the situation under control, you want to focus on the individual who was hurt. Again, we go back to speaking objective truths. Make observations like, “You look sad because your brother hit you.” You do that in the other person’s hearing so that they can see the effect their actions had on the other person, not in an accusatory or shaming way, but to connect their actions to the outcome and to allow them to see that in an objective way. You can do that by focusing on the person who was hurt rather than pointing fingers at the person who did the hurting. That’s hard to do.
• 37:05 Rachel: It’s really hard to do because, as parents, we hate to see our boys fight. They’re very physical, so a lot of times, when they’re arguing, that’s where it ends up. One has hit another or they’re both hitting each other, and it’s hard not to get emotionally involved in that. We know that’s not how the real wold works, but they’re only eight, six, and five. The more we can point them toward a better way of showing their feelings, the better they’re going to get at that.
• 37:51 Ben: We need to acknowledge our feelings. As the parents, it’s good for us. It’s not invalid that you feel frustrated. There are so many reasons why you would feel frustrated in that situation. There’s the fear they will continue behaving that way for the rest of their lives and they’ll become this person that nobody wants to be around, and you don’t want that for your child. There’s also the inconvenience of dealing with conflict and working through that. It may have taken you away from something else, or it may be keeping you from somewhere you need to be. Then there’s the fact that you love both of these people, and it’s painful to see them at odds with each other.

There’s nothing wrong with feeling frustrated, but do your best to keep your personal feelings out of the objective process of helping your kids work through their conflict.

• 38:40 After they’ve done that, it’s okay to let them know, “I felt sad because I love both of you, and I’d like for you to get along. When you’re fighting with each other…” Explain your emotions that way.
• 39:14 Rachel: I have to confess something here. The other night when you did episode 200 with Sean and I was here with the boys by myself, the boys were fighting so much and I was at the end of my rope. The oldest punched one of the other boys, and I said, “I can not believe it, after all the training we’ve given you!” He’s made huge bounds in trying to control his emotions, and I just spouted off these words. I think I said something like, “If that’s the way you’re going to act all the time, you’re just going to be put in jail!” It was awful. I feel terrible about it.
• 40:02I went back and apologized for all the things I said, and I explained to him how it made me feel to see my oldest son, whom I love very much, hitting his brothers or choosing something that is not a wise choice. In those moments when we fail in these things, the way we can repair it is by going back, apologizing, and letting our children know that we can feel flooded sometimes, too. It’s about being honest about our own feelings and our own failures, because we’re still learning, too. It’s hard to be a parent.

Start With Words

• 41:05 Ben: We want to be careful about how we talk. Rachel said those things to our son, but she didn’t just say it in front of the oldest. His other siblings also heard that. We want to be careful about not just what we say to the individual, but what their siblings hear from what we say as well. Even if what we say isn’t direct or seemingly harmful, it could be a subtle thing, but the way we talk about our children in front of their siblings can inform how they see each other. One examples is of a sibling having difficulty reading something. If you say, “It’s okay, you can’t read that yet because you have this disability,” the sibling might hear that and think, “My brother’s not smart.” Instead, you could say, “Reading is hard. The word you’re trying to read rhymes with ‘park.'” You help them achieve something difficult. What the sibling might get out of that is they did it; they overcame that.
• 42:42 Rachel: “My brother or sister can do hard things.”
• 42:51 Ben: Without getting into too many different examples, it’s important for us as parents to be mindful of the way we talk about our children, knowing that our kids have ears like radars that pick up all kinds of stuff that you don’t want them to pick up. Making this practical and taking advantage of these opportunities is one of the great benefits of conflict. Because it’s going to come up, we get to walk them through these things.

Take advantage of opportunities to help your children practice healthy communication as often as you can.

• 43:51 One of the ways we can do that is to give them the correct way to communicate to get what they want. One of the things we’ve done for a long time is to say, “Use your words and if your words don’t work, ask for help.” This covers a lot of stuff, like when they want something and their brother isn’t giving it to them or their brother is bothering them and they don’t want to be bothered. As we said, our children tend to be physically driven when it comes to their feelings.
• 44:50 We’ve said this over and over and made it our mantra: “Use your words and if your words don’t work, ask for help.” We just implemented this new one, and I’m not sure how I feel about it yet, but I’m going to share it. It was something I came up with because I thought it was kind of funny and it might dispel some of the tension. It’s an acronym, and the words for the acronym are:
  1. Breathe.
  2. Use your words.
  3. Talk about your feelings.
  4. Take a step back.
• 45:41 The fourth one is kind of arbitrary, but I needed the second T so I could spell “BUTT.”
• 45:48 Rachel: That’s actually a word we don’t allow our kids to say, so they think it’s hilarious every time we use it.
• 45:53 Ben: They’re not allowed to say it, but they can use this word when they’re talking about this method. Breathing helps them calm down. Use your words, talk about your feelings, and then take a step back, which really has to do with removing yourself from the situation so you aren’t as prone to acting out physically to try to get the outcome you want. I’ve said on several occasions during the past few weeks, “Uh-uh, Jadon, use your BUTT!”
• 46:39 Rachel: He always gets this funny little smile on his face. It does help—it brings humor to the situation. They learned really quickly what the words were, so it’s been helpful. I think it’s a good one. I don’t know that I would like them to use it in public, unless they’re whispering.
• 47:18 Ben: The important emphasis here is on having communication and being able to use words and express feelings without using name-calling or physical aggression to get the outcome. I remind them that, if that’s not working and they’re still not getting the outcome they want, they can ask for help.

It’s not always just about getting the outcome they want, but I want them to know they are heard and their desires matter.

Don’t Dismiss Feelings

• 48:01 That’s a way we help them express their desires and have their desires heard without giving in to unhealthy requests. Stepping in sometimes is necessary to help them work things out in a way that is fair. One of the things that isn’t quite as obvious is to help our children explore and articulate their negative feelings. We have a tendency as parents, when our children have negative feelings toward their siblings, to try to push those down. One example is when our children say, “I hate my brother!” I find myself often jumping to, “We don’t use the word hate.”
• 49:01 A healthier approach there is to acknowledge how they’re feeling, then help them re-articulate those feelings. State objective truths about what is going on and how they feel as a result of the situation. When we do that and validate those feelings, we’re not saying it’s okay to hate your brother or be hostile toward your sibling, but we are saying that it’s okay to feel your feelings and to work through them.
• 49:50 Rachel: It’s important to see what hides behind that expression. When a sibling says that they hate another sibling, it’s important to see what drives that feeling and put it into words for them, so they know that next time they can use these words. They know, also, that Mom and Dad understand them and that we’re not just being dismissive. I’ve found also that it’s not helpful to be dismissive of what our kids say. If your kid, in a moment of rage says, “I hate my sister!” and we say, “You don’t really hate her, you just feel like you hate her,” even though we’re trying to be gentle about that, it’s not helpful to kids when we dismiss the way they feel.
• 50:57 Ben: They may have heard that word somewhere before. If our children were exposed to a TV show that used the word “monkeys” to describe strong frustration toward another person, they might say something silly like, “I’m monkeys at that person.” They don’t understand the subtle differences between words you can use to describe their emotions. They just know that what they’re feeling is very strong and that seems like the strongest word they have. They don’t understand that word like we do, and it’s important to understand that as a parent. Whatever meaning they’ve assigned to that word, it’s valid to them in that moment. By saying that the word isn’t valid, to them, it’s like we’re saying that their feeling isn’t valid.
• 52:04 Rachel: The even greater challenge for us as parents is when our kids turn that on us. If they say something like, “I hate you!” the challenge we have as parents is to not become emotionally connected to that. That’s a huge challenge for me, whenever the kids are saying things like that because it feels like an act of disrespect, when really it’s just our child trying to communicate their feelings. The challenge is to get below that language and see what’s really going on at the basic level for our kids. Sometimes, it means that they feel like they haven’t spent enough time with us or it stems from the need to fill their cup with time, and different kinds of things.

The basis for a good sibling relationship is, as parents, having good relationships with each of our children.

• 53:37 One kid sees that you have a better relationship with his sister, and he starts to feel like, “Why don’t I have that kind of relationship with my parents?” The work for us as parents is to make sure that we’re always keeping that good relationship going. In the times when that relationship is severed, we are doing the work to repair it.
• 54:03 Ben: Just for clarification, that doesn’t prevent conflict necessarily, though it can lessen it. It just communicates to them that they are important to you as an individual and that their unique needs matter to you regardless of how you treat their siblings. It goes back to what we were talking about with equality; it’s not about giving everybody the same amount of time or attention, but it’s about giving each of our children the time or attention they need and the type of attention they need. In a previous episode, we talked about how knowing your child’s personality type can help you speak their language (Related: e008 How Knowing Your Child’s Personality Type Can Help You Speak Their Language). Each of our children have different needs, different personalities, and different ways of receiving affection. It’s good to recognize those things and give them what they need, and not just what’s equal so everyone has the same amount.
• 55:32 We want to make space for them to communicate about what happened. There’s some aspect of story telling in there, and story telling can be a powerful tool in helping our children work through conflicts. At a time when they’re not as tense or as emotionally flooded, maybe after they’ve already resolved the conflict and they’re no longer fighting about something, you can create space to revisit that and tell the story of what happened. What’s important is that they’ll each get to be part of the story telling process by talking about what they were feeling at different times during the story, but the really important thing is for them to see that they’re both characters together in the story, and one character is not more important than the other character. There isn’t a hero and a villain; they’re just two characters in the same story who had an experience together. There was a situation and there was an outcome.

It’s important for our children to see that they’re in the same story and that they are equally important parts of that story.

Fostering Sibling Relationships

• 57:13 Those were some practical ways you can help your children work through conflict. Outside of those situations, you can help your children by fostering a healthy relationship with each of them individually. You can also help your children avoid rivalry, comparison, and conflict by giving them opportunities to enjoy time together and grow closer in other ways. This comes through working together. It could be that they have a chore they work on together, and it may be one of those things where they say, “I can’t believe Mom and Dad are making us do this,” and there’s a kind of camaraderie that comes through suffering. You can take advantage of that by putting them on the same side of the issue. Also, they can play together. Doing fun things together as a family and giving them opportunities to play games and do fun things together is another way to foster that closeness.
• 58:31 Rachel: As long as the emphasis is not on winning. I would recommend the book Peaceful Parent, Happy Siblings by Laura Markham. She has a lot of games you can play with your kids that pits kids against parents, where they’re working together to play against Mom or Dad. It helps with the team spirit instead of the rivalry. The book is really great, even if you only read it for how to foster relationships with games and fun things. I would highly recommend it.
• 59:49 Ben: The way that we as parents work through conflicts in front of our children becomes an example of how they work through conflict. It’s a good thing to keep in mind, and it’s a little bit freeing, because sometimes as parents we feel like we need to hide our disagreements and arguments. When there is conflict in your marriage and it’s something you know you can work through in a healthy way, doing that in front of your children can be a powerful example they can learn from and use when they experience conflict.
• 1:00:45 Avoid pitting your children against one another, even playfully. This is something I’m guilty of. I’m in a hurry to get somewhere and it’s my fault but my children aren’t dressed yet. I make it a contest, because if I don’t make it a contest, it’s going to take forever. I’m going to have to intervene and dress them, because if I leave them to do it, it’s going to take a long time. I give them their clothes and I say, “Let’s see who can get dressed first!” They love it; they eat it up. They love that competition, but I always have to deal with the fallout from that when someone wins. There are other ways where we let that competition and pitting children against one another sneak in, which creates an unhealthy precedent.
• 1:02:34 Rachel: If you wanted to do something like that to see how fast they could get dressed, you could just say, “Let’s time it and see how fast you can get dressed!” It could be about individually setting a personal record. Think about also what it could teach them in the entrepreneurial world.