MFP 265: Brothers and Sisters - Our First Community

Messy Family Podcast : Catholic Conversations on Marriage and Family

“The family is where children discover how to be human.” - Archbishop Charles Chaput

Over and over again people ask us how to help their kids get along with each other. We usually respond that of course their kids don’t get along - because they are kids! That is what you are doing as a parent. You are the ones teaching them how to live at peace with other human beings in the world and they are practicing what you teach them in your home! This is the training ground for their lives. But that doesn’t mean that parents do nothing. There are important lessons that parents need to teach their children at home so they can learn key social skills and have great relationships with their siblings not just while they are under your roof, but for the rest of their lives. Listen to this re-release of our 2016 podcast on this subject.

Key Takeaways:

• Be open to giving your children as many siblings as possible.

• Don’t always intervene. Let your children alone to work things out on their own.

• Help them value differences between different personalities by learning to appreciate each other.

• Teach them how to forgive and repair relationships when they are broken.

Couple Discussion:

• How can we structure our home routine to foster better relationships between our children?

• Do we intervene too much in sibling conflicts? Not enough?

• Have we taught our children how to ask for forgiveness? If not, how can we do this?