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How to tame sibling rivalry

One exasperated mom test drives strategies for dealing with sibling rivalry.

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Originally published in Today's Parent November 2010

Illustration Credit: Laura Perez

Good luck to me every time I nip downstairs to check on the laundry or dash upstairs to check my email. Within seconds, my absence is followed by a siren-like wail.

That would be my three-year-old daughter. She’s perfected this shriek just as her six-year-old brother has honed his smacks and other torments.

Yup, my two kids fight. It began in the early weeks of young Hazel’s life. When the grandparents had retreated, my husband got busy with work and I was left alone most days to care for the kids, I’d feed Hazel while Leo would stand beside my chair and scream. It’s never gotten better. I often tell other parents about my kids’ ongoing conflicts, and I get looks of concerned shock. “Really? My eldest just loves the baby! They never fight.”

But experts reassure me that those parents may be sugar-coating the truth. “This issue is a common one,” says Jacqueline Green, a parenting educator in Edson, Alta. Adele Faber, an American parenting educator and the co-author of Siblings Without Rivalry, adds that members of the same family have been fighting through history. “Just open up a Bible. See what Cain did to Abel; see what Joseph’s brothers did to him. Sibling rivalry is an old misery.”

But there may be a good side to the rows. “I think that siblings give children one of their first opportunities to try some of the skills they’re going to need with their co-workers, with their spouses, with everyone as they age,” says Green.

That is, if they can turn their nasty fights into calm conflicts they can resolve. My quest is to help my kids do that. So I spoke to experts and test drove some strategies for preventing and calming conflict. Read on for what I found out.

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