For several years, my husband and I each had our own dog-eared copy of Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too within easy reach on our individual bedside tables. The classic, by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish became our bible during the seemingly endless period when our two boys viewed each other as the enemy, and Bruce and I were the territory to be conquered. We even learned how to tag team -- one of us stayed put and kept the boys from killing each other while the other ran upstairs to frantically flip through the book for a refresher course.
"May you have children just like you," many a mother has wished on her squabbling children, and my own siblings and I certainly tested my mother the way mine tested me. A famous family photo shows the three of us, still grade-schoolers, at eye level to the three drinking glasses placed before us on a coffee table, monitoring whether one held a smidge more Coke than the others.
But more likely than my sons' rivalry being the result of some karma or curse, it probably reflects the fact that all children compete. Humans are hardwired that way.
"You're dealing with very primal stuff, Biblical, Darwinian," says Adele Faber, one of the co-authors of my life raft of a book. "Two sharks in utero will fight to the death so that just one is born. Two baby eagles, the mother ignores the weaker one and the older one will just peck it to death. It's a constant battle. It's like the pilot light on the stove, you can't put it out, but you have to keep it down to a mere flicker."
Speaking of primal, meet NeanderDad. Garrett Rice, a father of two who works in the tech industry, invented the persona to give voice to his feeling of being the helpless, clueless, bumbling father trying to figure out his children.
He has agreed to write periodic essays for Parentlode (you can read the archives of ones he has already written here.) This first is about sibling rivalry (you've figured that out if you have read this far, right?) and his discovery that he had unwittingly sparked it by...well, I'll let you go read for yourself.
Thinking he needed some advice, I called Faber and had her read Neanderdad's dilemma for herself, too. Not surprisingly, she had some advice:
What a discovery he made. Competition can really motivate kids, who, it's really exciting. But the fallout is really terrible. The fallout creates a toxic relationship, it creates a winner and a loser. And you don't want that. Studies have been done about competition at the workplace, and the hostile environment and physical and emotional symptoms of stress it creates. You don't want that in your home.
The goal, she continued, is to replace competition with cooperation. To do this, you might just have to trick the combatants -- as Neanderdad does.
Instead of beating each other, how about getting them to beat the clock. Things like "can the two of you clean up this room in five minutes? what an amazing team you are!" Or "pick a song on the iPod and see if the two of you can put on your pjs with teeth brushed and ready for story time before the song is over.
That is not exactly what Neanderdad did. You can read his essay here. Then use the comments to discuss sibling rivalry at your house -- and please, share any strategies that have worked...
at prechool they had a big room & a little room - late in the day they combined - they would run to each other and give a big hug - so sweet
ah - the spicks and the specks of our lives - as per the BGs
my daughter - 2yrs older - is an ace debater & tho my son has a gift for it - perhaps even better - v funny guy, he never really competed
I had 2 distant older sisters & 1 younger ~2yrs - best mates ever w/ younger one - i think younger helped - i dated her girlfriends etc. just how life panned out too - older ones moved out b4 olds moved to exciting sydney - in later life - it became clear i as the boy was resented as priviliged - imagined i can assure u, tho i did get to escape that pressure cooker to a govt boarding school 4 3 years.
mum & dad buried the hatchet when i was home on leave - others looked forward to that.
If parents believe that siblings treating each other badly is par for the course, they will allow mistreatment. Kids learn that it's ok and it can become a life long problem. If parents have the expectation that their children treat each other with kindness and respect (as well a modeling these behaviors themselves), and work to monitor and encourage their children's kind treatment of each other, the outcome will be very different.
My kids knew that cruel treatment of one another would not be tolerated. When they crossed that line, I came down on them very hard. Kids' relationships with their siblings can have as profound effect on them as their relationships with parents. It is our job as parents to emphasize kindness and understanding.
Sheri Noga, MA
www.grateful-child.com
I am going to read Neaderdad's essay now.
Cheers,
Louise
How do you know this? I don't think all children compete. I think adults consciously or unconsciously tell their children to compete. I don't think it's hardwired but I'd like to know what information you have that says it is so.
Perhaps my sister is not such a hard case as yours, but I could have written that description about my own (except for the stealing). After several years of refusing to engage in her or take up her bait (a well timed "so what?" usually sufficed to shut her up), I am on more cordial terms with her, but will never attempt to be close to her again.
The really sad thing is that she is very neurotic about having people like her. She wants everyone to like her, except me. And her ill treatment of me is one of the reasons other people dislike her. Neurosis is misery.
Mainstream American culture tends to be time-neutral and focused on immediacy. There isn't enough emphasis on the past or the future, and how what we do today is tied to both, whether we realize it or not. Influences from our family's and society's past wash over us. Becoming conscious of those influences, and teaching our children to see them, can be a powerful step in changing some of them for the better. Dysfunction unconsciously passed on is one of the worst burdens for children to inherit. If family history can be taught and the family's future can be discussed, especially from a young age, both of those influences can play powerful roles in helping children to see past the immediate present, and learn to accept the consequences of their actions.
I cannot say why this happened so -- I can't think of any particular parental intervention that we'd employed, but we also never encouraged competition or compared them to each other in any way.
Being competitive means you don't want to and won't accept losing and not getting better as an alternative. This is a positive to the extent you can learn how to win gracefully, lose with dignity. Important life lessons.
My job as a parent is not to squash competition nor to encourage it, but to ensure it does occur accross enough diverse skillsets that my children end up learning these lessons the same way I did. From both winning and losing and in so doing learning what we each excelled at.
The threat is from enculturating the belief that losing makes you a loser or that winning makes you superior. A much more pernicious risk that may result from competing but is reflective of the values one ascribes to the results of competition not the acts of competition themselves.
I think the one thing I never did is compare them to each other. I always let them be themselves. It might have made me crazy at times but never tried to change them. I remember one of the kids would never get up on time for school and it drove me crazy but I never said if your brothers and sisters could get up on time so can you. I think that probably helped in them not fighting and competeing against each other. I just let them be them.