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   Parenting » Dilemmas, Emotional smarts » Sibling rivalry — lifelong   
   relationships, lifelong effects   
   Sibling rivalry — lifelong relationships, lifelong effects   
   Sibling rivalry can be a positive training ground for life — or a negative   
   relationship between brothers and sisters that escalates to abuse.   
   by: S. Michele Fry | June 27, 2016   
   Sibling rivalry   
   “Lisette, why haven’t you finished your homework?” Lisette* looks up at   
   her mom incredulously. “Have you met me?” the 8-year-old quips.   
      
   Bryce Butler, her mother, feels like a balloon burst in her heart. Yes, she   
   has met her daughter, who makes a habit of not finishing her homework and   
   forgetting what she was saying. She sees Lisette interpret instructions   
   differently, make unusual    
   observations, and not quite “get” things — all of which might suggest   
   airhead. But Bryce tries to not betray this observation to her girls. She   
   doesn’t want Lisette to embrace ditzy as who she is, nor does she want   
   Lisette’s sisters to    
   reinforce it.   
      
   “Yet somehow I think Lisette has gleaned from me that, in some sense,   
   she’s not as smart as her sisters,” says Bryce, speaking from her home in   
   Pleasant Hill, CA. “That’s not true, and I don’t want her to claim that   
   or live down to it.”   
      
   Bryce is determined not to label her daughters. Not just because she wants   
   them to forge their own identities, but also because she doesn’t want her   
   three daughters comparing themselves to each other and feeling they fall short   
   in some way. This, she    
   believes, stirs up sibling rivalry and, ultimately, ruins relationships.   
      
   “Ruins relationships?” Doth exaggerate too much? Is it possible that the   
   ordinary squabbling, competition, and jealousy between brothers and sisters   
   can ruin relationships?   
      
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   Long-ranging effects — from work to home   
   Only recently have researchers recognized the significance of sibling   
   relationships. As siblinghood gets more attention and study, it’s quickly   
   becoming clear that the bonds forged between sisters and brothers have   
   long-term effects. Beyond childhood    
   they affect feelings about self, judgment of others, and actions within other   
   relationships — professional, romantic, and familial. Sibling relationships   
   are also linked to health, particularly mental health.   
      
   It’s the relationship that forms a laboratory for self-invention and   
   discovery. Sisters and brothers practice their social skills, conflict   
   resolution skills, and perhaps most important, their conflict prevention   
   skills. It’s where they learn to    
   cooperate and to compromise — skills they carry into adulthood. It’s the   
   first relationship where they can choose to be empathetic (or not) or choose   
   to compete (or not).   
      
   As Laurie Kramer, professor of Applied Family Studies and founding director of   
   the Family Resiliency Center at University of Illinois, puts it, siblings are   
   “agents of socialization.” Parents teach and model behavior, but siblings   
   become the walls of    
   a rock tumbler who smooth our rough edges into gemstones, shaping who we are.   
      
   Experts note that sibling relationships provide important freedom to   
   experiment. It’s often through these relationships that kids figure out   
   what’s good, what works, what’s acceptable — for better or worse. Unlike   
   with a friend, you’re not    
   going to lose your sibling if you call him a name or smack him in the back of   
   the head. While siblings allow the testing of boundaries, it’s up to the   
   parent to makes sure this behavior doesn’t impair kids’ development or   
   cross a boundary into    
   abuse. But therein lies the problem, how is a parent supposed to know when all   
   this normal behavior (which no friend would put up with) crosses the line? And   
   what parenting principles can help lessen rivalry?   
      
   Although Bryce Butler may not have delved into the growing body of scientific   
   literature on sibling rivalry, her instincts are right. Experts confirm the   
   connection between labels and rivalry. Labels can increase the competitiveness   
   within a family    
   because each child believes he or she should be best in the family at   
   something, says Sylvia Rimm, who is a psychologist, director of Family   
   Achievement Clinic in Cleveland, OH, and a clinical professor at Case Western   
   Reserve School of Medicine.    
   Labeling causes territorialism — where one sibling makes sure another   
   doesn’t encroach on his “expertise.” It also leads children to assume   
   they’re not good at whatever another sibling excels.   
      
   Bryce recalls experiencing that very thing growing up. Her parents conveyed   
   that she was “the smart one” and her sister was “the pretty one.” The   
   girls conformed to their assigned identities. “She didn’t try hard in   
   school, and I felt like    
   the ugly duckling of the family,” Bryce says. The labels also caused   
   friction between the sisters. Without knowing it, her parents established a   
   rivalry, Bryce says, one that tainted her and her sister’s relationship well   
   into adulthood.   
      
   Despite Bryce’s attempts to create a rival-free family, she concedes that   
   her girls still battle it out on a daily basis. Caitlin, 10, and 8-year-old   
   twins, Lisette and MacKenzie, bicker over iPad time or who has the best report   
   card or who gets to    
   hold Mommy’s or Daddy’s hand. Bryce rolls her eyes at their antics (or   
   holds back her yells), but she thinks the struggles are part of “normal   
   sibling stuff.”   
      
   What is normal when it comes to sibling rivalry?   
   When asked for the expert’s definition of normal sibling rivalry, Kramer   
   laughs. No one really knows what “normal” means, she says. Research has   
   found that disagreements and arguments occur frequently between siblings —   
   3.5 times an hour when    
   they’re between 3 and 7, more when younger, less when older. But the tone of   
   the interaction — what parents must interpret — can’t be quantified.   
      
   Kramer says sibling conflict crosses the line into not-normal territory when   
   interactions deteriorate into real physical violence or emotional tormenting,   
   and it becomes chronic. This sounds simple enough, but day to day, it can be   
   tough for parents to    
   make distinctions.   
      
      
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