How to Stop Sibling Rivalry

"He took my toy!" If you're like most of the parents out there, you've heard this cry more than once. It's usually followed by the sound of feet stomping in your direction and a cacophony of voices trying to tell you six different sides of one story. Sibling rivalry--it's frustrating, it's annoying and it's common. Though you may not be able to banish it completely from your household, there are some things you can do to try to stop sibling rivalry in its tracks.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

1. Encourage your children to communicate directly with each other and not through you. Ask them to look at each other when they are talking and encourage them to have conversations in which you don't take part. This helps each child to view his sibling as an individual with opinions and as someone worthy of attention
2. Provide your children with the skills they need to come to reasonable compromises. You can't expect them to work things out if they don't know how to. Try role-playing rivalrous situations when everything is calm and give each child an opportunity to present solutions to problems. You'll probably need to begin by explaining the concept of compromise.
3. Avoid the urge to play referee. Instead, walk away and tell your children they'll need to work out a solution amongst themselves. In part, sibling rivalry is a bid for a parent's attention--a way to see whether a parent will choose one child over the other. If you allow yourself to be sucked in and to take sides, one child is bound to feel like he's lost and the other that he's won.
4. Intervene if someone is going to get hurt. Though it's best to let children to try to work things out themselves, it's never acceptable to let them hurt each other. Calmly take away any items that are being used as weapons and separate the children. After they've calmed down, they'll need to come back together and work out whatever was going on, but if they're too angry to be in the same room without hurting each other nothing positive will be accomplished.

Tips & Warnings

• Try to celebrate the good qualities in all of your children and not to compare them to each other. Sure, one may be better-behaved than the other, but sibling rivalry is often born from a child feeling inferior to his sibling. Every child has positive traits--find one and bring it to everyone's attention.