17 December 2023
Fights between siblings: a curse or a blessing? [What’s the role of the parents]
Reading time: 4′
Siblings quarreling is an inevitable situation. However, the way we react to their conflicts, can make all the difference in helping them form a healthy sibling relationship in later years, or on the flipside, to develop permanent rivalry and possibly, alienation.
Siblings have a great advantage. Their relationship as siblings can teach them conflict resolution skills that will prove useful in all relationships they will form later on, with family, colleagues, and friends, as well as the general public.
It’s up to us parents to contribute to this effort.
Because it’s not enough to simply let the children fight until they settle their disagreement. In doing so, we risk leaving the weaker, usually younger child, at the mercy of the stronger.
Depending on our own childhood experiences, we may react calmly or completely lose control in the face of a fight between our children. Sometimes, if we have been victims of some form of violence from our siblings, we have more reason to be deeply affected by our children’s conflict with each other and to react accordingly.
Whatever the situation, it’s important to intervene in our children’s fights as calmly as possible, in order to achieve two things:
- To stop the fight and any possible physical violence that may arise.
- To guide our children on how they can resolve their differences.
By maintaining our composure, we manage to demonstrate through our own behavior that any situation of tension can be dealt with calmly. Additionally, we avoid exaggerating the incident disproportionately, making it appear to the children as something more terrible than it actually is.
After all, fights between siblings are something normal and expected, and so we should treat them as such.
If we now notice signs of aggression from our child both outside the home towards other children or towards us, the mother or father, then we need to search for its deeper cause and address it.
What’s our role as parents?
Let’s assume the older sibling is very angry, shouts, and attacks the younger one. He hits her, resulting in the latter loudly crying. What can we do at that moment?
Without raising our voices and without reprimands, we hug the younger one, who in this case is the victim, ask if and where she feels hurt, kiss her at that spot, and comfort her in any other way.
Through this, the older one will see that when he hits the younger one, the attention of mom or dad is turned towards the younger child. The older one may envy this, but he also wants parental attention and thus he will understand that when he becomes aggressive towards his sister, he will not gain any attention.
However, we should not leave the older child feeling jealous, because the feeling of injustice he experiences persists, and we must address it by giving him the opportunity to express his own side. This is something we will do as soon as we realize that the younger child has calmed down.
We step in between the children and separate them, saying: Oops! What happened here? I see one very angry and the other crying / scared, etc. Tell me, what happened? And we give each child the opportunity to describe their side. A younger child may not be able to describe what happened eloquently, but we will understand it anyway from what they say or from the context of the situation.
When both children have been heard, we don’t need to do much, most likely they will have calmed down a bit so they can solve the difference on their own, aided by our mediation. Moreover, they will have heard each other’s side. We can let the children tell us what could be done first, and if we want and deem it useful, we can also suggest possible solutions.
Few concise words. ‘’We don’t hit, it hurts. This is our house rule. We don’t scratch, we don’t bite, we don’t shout, etc. Let’s see now what we can do.’
We certainly don’t say ‘we don’t get angry,’ all emotions are acceptable, the issue is how we manage those emotions. Especially the more difficult ones.
Nor do we hit our child because they hit their sibling, because in doing so, we display a mixed message. If they shouldn’t hit one another, how is it acceptable for us to hit them?
Will they stop fighting?
Doing the above once does not ensure the fights will stop. They will reoccur. So, again and again, we will have to stick to the strategy, that we have seen is easier for us or more effective.
In this way, we convey values to our children that gradually, as they mature, we will see them applying in practice. They must know that they do not have the right to harm anyone and this will be the first thing they will learn. However, they also learn that there is always the other side in a disagreement. They learn that differences are resolved, and they practice again and again how they can solve their own differences, with every fight that arises.
Over time, they will learn to better control their intense emotions and self-regulate, something that even many adults find difficult. At young ages under 5, impulsivity is usually the rule.
So if we see the older child who has become aggressive but eventually does not hit the other, this is a sign of maturity and proper guidance from us. Such an opportunity must be seized by the horns and we must praise the child who managed to restrain themselves, ideally privately to emphasize the importance of what we tell them, ‘Well done for managing not to hit your sister/brother even though you were angry.’
Such comments encourage the child to do the same next time.
Thus, the foundations are laid for the future relationship of our children, so that they grow up peacefully and develop a relationship of love and affection that will accompany them for a lifetime.
What if things don’t get better?
If you intervene in the fights of the children in the above way, without “blaming” the perpetrator with your attitude and helping the children solve their differences without taking sides, and yet the situation does not improve, the child who has the aggressive behavior may need to feel better overall.
Often, the older child carries hurt feelings from the time their sibling was born, which they have not been able to process, and moreover, we may have reinforced those feelings with our behavior, if, for example, we scolded the older child who was bothering the younger one.
These feelings would be difficult for any of us, and yet we require that the older child, who may be as young as one, two, or three years old, overcome them and accept them as if nothing happened.
So, to help them feel better, we must regularly make them feel unique, to feel that we love them, and that they hold a special place in our hearts.