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   Sibling Rivalry or Abuse   
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   This page addresses the growing problem of sibling violence. How do you decide   
   what is sibling rivalry or abuse?   
      
   Sometimes young kids may not know what behavior is acceptable. It is the   
   responsibility of the parents to teach them and set boundaries. Hopefully, the   
   information below will help you to find out if one of your children is abusing   
   the other. Some of the    
   information may be repeated throughout the different articles.   
      
   I have placed on this website a true story of sibling abuse entitled "Sibling   
   Abuse: A Survivors Story". Everyone needs to read this story. It will help you   
   understand what children who are abused by their brother or sister are going   
   through. Follow this    
   link, "Sibling Abuse: A Survivors Story", to read the story.   
      
   * As always, we advise you to seek professional help if you find there is   
   abuse or violence between your children.   
      
      
   Sibling Violence A Family Secret   
      
   By Katy Butler   
   The New York Times   
      
   From infancy until he reached the threshold of manhood, the beatings Daniel W.   
   Smith received at his older brother's hands were qualitatively different from   
   routine sibling rivalry. Rarely did he and his brother just shove each other   
   in the back of the    
   family car over who was crowding whom, or wrestle over a toy firetruck.   
      
   Instead, Smith said in an interview, his brother, Sean, would grip him in a   
   headlock or stranglehold and punch him repeatedly.   
      
   "Fighting back just made it worse, so I'd just take it and wait for it to be   
   over," said Smith, who was 18 months younger than his brother. "What was I   
   going to do? Where was I going to go? I was 10 years old."   
   To speak only of helplessness and intimidation, however, is to oversimplify a   
   complex bond. "We played kickball with neighborhood kids, and we'd go off   
   exploring in the woods together as if he were any other friend," said Smith,   
   who is now 34 and a    
   writing instructor at San Francisco State University. (Sean died of a heart   
   attack three years ago.)   
      
   "But there was always tension," he said, "because at any moment things could   
   go sour."   
      
   Siblings have been trading blows since God first played favorites with Cain   
   and Abel. Nearly murderous sibling fights -- over possessions, privacy,   
   pecking orders and parental love -- are woven through biblical stories,   
   folktales, and fiction and family    
   legends.   
      
   In Genesis, Joseph's jealous older brothers strip him of his coat of many   
   colors and throw him into a pit in the wilderness. Brutal brother-on-brother   
   violence dominates an opening section of John Steinbeck's "East of Eden".   
      
   This casual, intimate violence can be as mild as a shoving match and as savage   
   as an attack with a baseball bat. It is so common that it is almost invisible.   
   Parents often ignore it as long as nobody gets killed; researchers rarely   
   study it; and many    
   psychotherapists consider its softer forms a normal part of growing up.   
      
   STUDY FINDS TRAUMA   
      
   But there is growing evidence that in a minority of cases, sibling warfare   
   becomes a form of repeated, inescapable and emotionally damaging abuse, as was   
   the case for Smith.   
      
   In a study published last year in the journal Child Maltreatment, a group of   
   sociologists found that 35 percent of children had been "hit or attacked" by a   
   sibling in the previous year. The study was based on phone interviews with a   
   representative    
   national sample of 2,030 children or those who take care of them.   
      
   Although some of the attacks may have been fleeting and harmless, more than a   
   third were troubling on their face.   
      
   According to a preliminary analysis of unpublished data from the study, 14   
   percent of the children were repeatedly attacked by a sibling; 4.55 percent   
   were hit hard enough to sustain injuries like bruises, cuts, chipped teeth and   
   an occasional broken    
   bone; and 2 percent were hit by brothers or sisters wielding rocks, toys,   
   broom handles, shovels and even knives.   
      
   Children ages 2 to 9 who were repeatedly attacked were twice as likely as   
   others their age to show severe symptoms of trauma, anxiety and depression,   
   like sleeplessness, crying spells, thoughts of suicide and fears of the dark,   
   further unpublished data    
   from the same study suggest.   
      
   "There are very serious forms of, and reactions to, sibling victimization,"   
   said David Finkelhor, a sociologist at the Family Research Laboratory at the   
   University of New Hampshire, the study's lead author, who suggests it is often   
   minimized.   
      
   "If I were to hit my wife, no one would have trouble seeing that as an assault   
   or a criminal act," Finkelhor said. "When a child does the same thing to a   
   sibling, the exact same act will be construed as a squabble, a fight or an   
   altercation."   
      
   The sibling attacks in Finkelhor's study were equally frequent among children   
   of all races and socioeconomic groups; they were most frequent on children 6   
   to 12, slightly more frequent on boys than on girls, and tapered off gradually   
   as children entered    
   adolescence.   
      
   Few experts agree on how extensive sibling abuse is, or where sibling conflict   
   ends and abuse begins. It is rarely studied: Only two major national studies,   
   a handful of academic papers and a few specialized books have looked at it in   
   the last quarter-   
   century. In addition, it is as easy to over dramatize, as it is to   
   underestimate.   
      
   REPEATED PATTERN   
      
   In 1980, when the sociologist Murray Straus of the University of New Hampshire   
   published "Behind Closed Doors," a groundbreaking national study of family   
   violence, he concluded that the sibling relationship was the most violent of   
   human bonds. Judged    
   strictly by counting blows, he was right: Straus and his colleagues found that   
   74 percent of a representative sample of children had pushed or shoved a   
   sibling within the year and 42 percent had kicked, bitten or punched a brother   
   or sister. (Only 3    
   percent of parents had attacked a child that violently, and only 3 percent of   
   husbands had physically attacked their wives.)   
      
   John V. Caffaro, a clinical psychologist and family therapist in private   
   practice in the San Diego suburb Del Mar, defines sibling abuse as a pattern   
   of repeated violence and intimidation.   
      
      
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