River House Montessori

Siblings Rivalry: Is it something a parent shall worry about?

What on earth could make siblings become rivals? Turning the home into a continuous battle ground, anr parents into umpires?

To understand the topic better we need to understand the meaning of the two component words.

Siblings simply means each of two or more children or offspring having one or both parents in common; a brother or sister, while the word rivalry can be defined as competitiveness over the same objective or for superiority in the same field.

Sibling rivalry therefore is a persistent competition, struggling or fighting between siblings- brothers and sisters. This may sound familiar but it doesn’t have to be so. Parents must take caution to avoid this as once a pattern of sibling rivalry is established. The parent must work even harder to help their children get along.

Some of the causes of sibling rivalry are listed below:

Feelings of Being Threatened

Whenever a new child enters the picture, and there are already one or more children in the home. Each child is already settled into their environment. They may resent the attention lavished on the new member of the family, but they may also feel threatened by them. They fear that their parents will no longer love them or take care of them as they did before. They’re uneasy and easily upset because of this. So they fight with each other and try to draw attention away from the new child. Who they believe is intruding on their territory. Rather than punishing children for this behavior, in most cases, parents can recognize this difficult perception of the upset child and strive to validate, soothe and perhaps distract the behavior.

Inactiveness/boredom

Children who are not properly engaged or don’t know how to spend their time, they may result into fighting or struggling with their siblings. This is an attempt to engage them forcefully as a cure for their boredom.  When parents spend leisure time with their children, doing activities that they can do on their own, they teach their children how to come up with better things to do. Or, if the children begin to fight, parents can suggest an activity, and often the children will be happy to try it.

Need for assistance

Young children can’t take care of basic needs like getting food to eat or water to drink. If parents don’t take care of this, the children become hungry, thirsty, and cranky. Of course, parents who don’t meet their children’s needs have much more to think about along with sibling rivalry. But sibling rivalry can be one of the effects.

The Process of Becoming an Individual

In a family where sibling rivalry rules the household, children may go so far as to make fun of the siblings who have different preferences. A child differentiates himself from others, some may be very outspoken about their likes and dislikes.  They may even hurt them if they disagree. However, being open about what they both like and dislike is fine and doesn’t need to cause problems. This is when the child feels that he isn’t being heard or respected that the claws come out. Parents who are aware of what’s going on between their children can give them that validation. Thus, avoid severe sibling rivalry episodes.

Parents as role models:

Positive adult’s role modelling can be keen in child’s training and development. The behavior of parents around the children can have positive and negative influence on the children which they in turn try out on their siblings or peers at school

Preferential treatment:

Children often have a feeling of inequality. Some of this may just be a sense of insecurity, but sometimes it can also be due to a parent’s actual preference for one child or another. For whatever reason and this can lead to sibling rivalry. Parents who want to avoid sibling rivalry between their children can help by paying attention to their feelings about each child and monitoring their own behavior to be sure they aren’t treating their children unequally.

Progress or performance Differences Between Siblings

Children typically don’t understand their own development timetables. So, when one child can do something, they expect the others to be able to do it, too. When others can do things and they can’t, they feel bad about themselves, as if life is somehow being unfair to them. Spending time with each child individually and doing things with each child that is on their level can help them appreciate themselves better and be more patient to grow up.