The Nature of Sibling Relationships

Excerpted from
'Mom, Jason's Breathing on Me!' : The Solution to Sibling Bickering
By Anthony E. Wolf, Ph.D.

Many questions can be raised about the rules I've presented for sibling bickering. If parents never get involved in their children's disagreements, how do kids learn about fairness? How do they learn healthy ways of negotiating? And if parents only separate the children but take no sides except when there is threat of physical harm, what is to prevent the older, bigger ones from regularly bullying-physically and verbally-the younger, smaller, more emotionally vulnerable ones? These are all real and valid concerns, and I have answers. First, however, I want to talk about the nature of sibling relationships-what their behavior toward each other does and does not mean. Let me start at the beginning.

Soldiers going into a German concentration camp at the end of World War II found a group of six three-year-old orphans (three boys, three girls). As best as they could tell, these six children had their basic physical needs supplied by the adults in charge of them, but that was the extent of the care they received. Otherwise they had been left on their own. They were subsequently brought to England to live together in a special setting, where their behavior was described by the psychologist Anna Freud. She observed that the children ". . . cared greatly for each other... [they had] no wish other than to be together ... were extremely considerate of each other's feelings." They would not even eat unless they made sure that the other children ate, and they did not like to be separated. Obviously they were very attached to each other.

A simple fact is that from an early age children develop strong attachments to those other people in their lives with whom they have regular contact and who pay attention to them. It is in the nature of humans. Be in a child's life, give attention, and the child will love you. This very definitely applies to siblings.

A four-year-old boy and his two-and-a-half-year-old sister were with their father in a Starbucks, waiting for their order. Their father stood watching but not interacting with the two children. As they kept waiting, the boy did a stylized kind of walking, which his sister imitated. The boy, seeing her imitate him, then did a different kind of walk, and watched his sister who again tried to imitate his moves. He grabbed his sister by the arm, not roughly, and began pulling her along with him.

"Daddy, he's pulling me," said the girl quite happily. The boy was also smiling. Shortly afterward they left, and the two ran to the door next to each other. They clearly were enjoying each other's company.

Two brothers, seven and five (I asked), were getting ready to leave. As the seven-year-old put on his snow pants, he started being silly-making faces, doing comic postures. His younger brother watched, giggling at the older boy's antics. The seven-year-old kept up his silly routine, clearly enjoying his highly responsive audience. When they both finally got their snowsuits on, the five-year-old went over and playfully poked his brother. His brother returned the poke. Both were definitely friendly and playful, not aggressive. They were enjoying each other.

Here are two fictitious stories that easily could be true.

Hugh had been throwing a miniature football to himself, trying to make acrobatic catches. He accidentally bumped into a table, knocking a glass vase onto the floor, breaking it.

Later that day Hugh's father noticed the glass fragments in the living room wastebasket.

"How did this happen?" he barked at his sons, who were in the room.

"Maggie"-the family cat-"did it," immediately responded Bruno. Hugh's older brother, jumping unasked to his brother's defense.

"We're making a surprise for you. Dad." laughed the three kids, running into and swiftly exiting the room where their father sat doing a crossword puzzle. Giggling and happy, animated talking could be heard from the kitchen.

"You're really gonna like it." said the kids with another flying visit to their father.

Finally, all three marched into the living room. Rocky carrying a plate covered with a dish towel. They were still laughing.

"It's your favorite." Now all of them were laughing hard. Rocky placed the plate on the table in front of their father.

"See what it is." More laughing.

Their father removed the dish towel to discover a plate with six vanilla cookies, each carefully "iced" with ketchup.

"See, ketch lip-cove red cookies." And the three burst into hysterical laughter. Siblings often exhibit a flat-out enjoyment of and fondness for each other. They can be good audiences. They can be sources of admiration: "Jamie can make belching noises whenever he wants." They can be sharers of humor (which often does not seem so funny to adults). They can be allies. They can be buddies always available to play with. Or they can just be a warm body to lean against while watching TV. And all of this interaction and affection can belong to a realm wholly separate from parent involvement. Watching siblings engaged with each other, their happy back-and-forth, can be one of the true joys of parenting.

It does not take much. A normal part of being a child is that you develop a fondness for and an attachment to your siblings. Siblings can be a source of real pleasure in childhood. But as you know, it gets a little more complicated.