A guide to dealing with the hell that is sibling rivalry

A couple of months ago, a friend revealed to me the secret to ridding my home of sibling rivalry.

As a parent of three children who frequently tear each other down in breathtakingly cruel displays of shoulder-shrugging disdain, barbed comments, and malevolent singing, I was all ears.

“Do they need help, or is this a vent?” is one question parents should ask themselves, says Adelaide clinical child psychologist Kirrilie Smout. Credit:Getty

Her parents, she explained, were finally getting along with their siblings after decades of sniping. The key was that they no longer competed for their own parents’ attention or obsessed over who was the parental favourite.

“You know what happened?” my friend texted to me. “Their parents died.”

I’m not proud of it, but I’m going to be honest: my soul shimmied.

“That’s sad,” I tapped into my phone, in the kind of adrenaline-spiked rush a junkie must feel when they spy their dealer coming around the bend, “but all I have to do is DIE? Count me in!”

Let me be clear. I didn’t want to die. God no. But finally â€" sweet lord, finally â€" I had a sense of certainty that one day there would be an end to the fighting that has been leaching the joy out of too many moments in my house for nearly 13 years. Even if I wasn’t around to witness it.

This was the Rosetta Stone of parenting: the elusive solution to a struggle every parent I know whether their children are two or 20, is grappling with.

We’re not inventing the wheel. Sibling rivalry is as old as the Book of Genesis â€" See: Cain and Abel â€" and pop culture never seems to tire of turning over the often torturous relationship dynamic to discover its baffling origins. The rivalry between artists Georgia O’Keeffe and her sister Ida O’Keeffe continues to thrill us (Georgia raged that her sister had gained fame without what she deemed was a sufficient amount of sacrifice.)

Although there have been numerous studies on sibling rivalry over the decades, they often leave more questions than they answer. Is it beneficial for parents to intervene in sibling conflicts? Debatable. But is there a longitudinal association between being the target of sibling aggression and developing depressive symptoms and risky behaviour? Yes. What about a link between experiencing sibling conflict and a greater likelihood a person will take part in criminal activities? Also yes.

And sibling rivalry is common. One study notes that sibling conflict may happen up to eight times an hour. (As for death being an end to sibling rivalry? Possibly not. In 2016, and at the age of 99, Gone With The Wind star Olivia de Havilland â€" one member of Hollywood’s most enduring sibling feud â€" called her sister, Joan Fontaine “Dragon Lady” three years after Fontaine died and decades after their parents exited the picture.)

“We want our kids to get along, it’s one of the good joys as parents, to see your children have good times together,” says Adelaide clinical child psychologist Kirrilie Smout, who guides many parents through the “very stressful and very worrying” issue of sibling conflict that’s playing out in their homes. “When it doesn’t happen, it’s really disappointing, tiring, and frustrating. We worry about the future and the impact.

“Unfortunately, when we sign up as parents, one of the things we sign up for is to teach our children to manage disappointment, frustration and conflict with other people. If that was a simple thing to do, then none of us, as adults, would have difficulty with it.”

Hollywood’s longest sibling feud, between Gone With The Wind star Olivia de Havilland, left, and sister Joan Fontaine, allegedly began when Olivia, then six, accidentally hurt her sister in a pool. Credit:Getty

But we can minimise our children’s conflict if we’re intentional in our lessons about how they should handle it, rather than reactive. The key is to see our children’s frustrating behaviour, when they’re fighting with each other, for what it is: not an attempt to torture us, but a gap in life skills.

Of a child who, for instance, is dismissive or disdainful of their sibling?

“That child clearly has a skill gap in being able to manage disappointment, in being able to kindly and positively assert what it is they want or what’s important to them,” says Smout. “So our job as parents is to go, ‘How do we help them get better at managing whatever that specific skill is?’”

The key to this, she says, is to coach children before they get into conflict. In other words, not to say, in a strangled Mister Rogers voice, “It’s not kind to speak to your brother like that, is it? Would you like it if he spoke to you like that?”

“That’s just nagging,” says Smout, adding that it’s ineffective, too, as it makes your child reliant on you to solve their problems.

What parents need to do instead is kindly instruct their children to practise how to speak to each other in an acceptable way. Repeatedly, until they get it right.

And if you know that certain situations are primed for conflict â€" for instance in the car on the drive to school, or getting ready in the bathroom in the morning â€" Smout suggests that parents get their children to write out different statements that they can use (and shouldn’t use), should those situations arise. Parents can also ask their children to pretend the situation is happening, and practise talking to each other using acceptable language, as you look on.

Should parents intervene during a verbal fight? While primary children might often need it (see tips below), teenagers might not.

“You have to think, ‘What does my child or young person need from me in increasing their skills?’” says Smout, of a teen who walks off in a huff, and calls their sibling a name. “Do they need help, or is this a vent?”

A parenting tone we’d all do well to adopt regardless of the age of our children is an “authoritative” one espoused by Diane Baumrind, an American pioneering parenting and child development researcher and psychologist, which research shows leads to less sibling arguments. Defined by warm connection, expectations and boundaries, “authoritative” parenting is the middle-ground between punitive parenting (defined by rules) and permissive parenting (no expectations or boundaries, and very few instructions).

How to nail it, besides the coaching?

Spend one on one time with each child throughout their childhood, as this will lead them to learn how to not only feel accepted, appreciated and cared for, but also to handle conflict, and manage their relationships in a functional way, says Smout.

“It’s a long game, you’re planting an oak seed,” she says.

Know, too, that sibling conflict is “normal”, and that triggers for it are numerous. Yes, it is often associated with children sensing “injustice” in a family, that they aren’t being treated fairly by their parents. Other times, says Smout, a kid just wants the remote.

We’re not going to get it right all the time. All we have to do, as I’ve learned, is to avoid my best instincts (constantly telling my kids how to behave, and snapping and separating them when I’ve had enough, which, says Smout, are two of the least effective methods to stop fighting. The third is ignoring it entirely.)

I’m also thankful that my kids aren’t as creative as Olivia de Havilland. As the actress allegedly wrote in a make-believe last will and testament for a school assignment when she was nine: “I bequeath all my beauty to my younger sister, Joan, since she has none.”

Make the most of your health, relationships, fitness and nutrition with our Live Well newsletter. Get it in your inbox every Monday.

Samantha Selinger-Morris is a lifestyle writer for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

Share this post