Coping With Sibling Conflict
by Alison Miller

Dear Alison,
My two kids, aged 4 and 7, fight constantly. Not only does the noise and tension bother me, but it bothers me to see how vicious they can be. I’ve tried time-out, separating them, and redirecting their energy, but nothing seems to work. The constant bickering is wearing me down. How can I break this cycle of never-ending sibling rivalry?

Dear Alison,
I need some advice about what to do about my 11-year-old and my 4-year-old fighting. The 11-year-old gets frustrated easily with his brother and always hits and pushes, and yells at him which makes him scream and cry. I have tried to do everything I can think of to get it to stop. I make sure that I spend time with each of them every day alone, but as soon as we’re done they immediately start in on the fighting. I have seriously considered walking away. I love them but I don’t know how to handle the situation and it seems to be getting worse with them.

As almost every parent of more than one child will tell you, sibling rivalry is frustrating. Here are some practical guidelines for reducing the amount of fighting.

Understanding Sibling Fights
1. Children are egocentric, they inevitably see things from only their own point of view. This is how a child’s brain works; it is not “selfishness.” Don’t blame or label the child for being like this. All children have difficulty seeing other people’s point of view.
 
2. Social skills have to be learned, like any other skills. Kids can’t be expected to know how to resolve conflict on their own, so we can’t just leave it up to them—we have to teach them the necessary skills. While they are learning, it’s important for us not to resolve the problem for them every time they fight, but instead teach them the skills to resolve it themselves.
 
3. Kids get hurt and bear grudges just like adults do. Their hurt and anger is often valid.

4. Older kids don’t understand why younger kids aren’t as mature as them. They get frustrated when younger kids don’t understand things. And younger kids get frustrated from repeatedly losing at games. These frustrations lead to conflict.

5. Kids develop their identities as “good” or “bad” within the family; a child often initiates a fight in order to get a parent to judge and select them as the “good” child. Often the younger or apparently weaker child is the instigator, but the parent only comes in after the instigation, when the older child is striking back. Therefore it’s important for the parent not to act as the judge, and not to protect the apparently weaker child, except for stopping any physical violence.

Observing the Conflict
First, you need to know what’s really going on. Observe a few fights from start to finish without intervening. Make sure you see as well as hear, because nonverbal behaviours such as kicking or making faces also contribute to fights. When you observe, put yourself in each child’s shoes. Here’s what might be going on in the younger child: He’s bored, because you (the parent) won’t play with him any more. He hasn’t learned to entertain himself yet and he’s discovered that bugging his brother makes life interesting. Sometimes he gets to play with his brother and sometimes his brother gets mad at him—if he yells loud enough, mom comes running to rescue him from his brother, and he gets mom’s attention and gets to be the “good boy” while mom reprimands his brother. Here’s what it might be like for the older child: He gets more and more frustrated because he can’t do anything without being interrupted, and he’s trying to read, play a game, watch TV, or do his homework. He doesn’t want to be a babysitter. His brothers escalates his “bugging” behaviour when he doesn’t get attention, and finally the older boy just can’t take it any more and explodes in frustration. This is a typical pattern. If the parent doesn’t get involved until there’s screaming, it’s easy for the parent to assume the older child is picking on the younger one, when in most cases it’s the other way round!

Preventing Sibling Conflicts
Here are some things you can do to minimize the number of conflicts that happen:

Establish boundaries around family members’ space, possessions, and time. Each child’s bedroom (or half bedroom) should be his or her own private space, where no one else can enter without permission, and where that child can go whenever he or she needs “time out” from conflict with anyone else. Probably the one who starts the fights won’t like it, but that’s tough. Each child’s possessions also should be clearly his or her own, and not available to anyone else without the child granting permission. There should be clear guidelines about sharing common toys or activities (e.g. TV, video games, Lego) so that a child knows when or how long he or she may use these before having to turn it over to another family member.
 
Anticipate difficult situations. Invite friends over to play with the little one so he won’t be bored, or put videos on for him. Ask the older one to do homework in his room. Intervene early if you see or hear the beginning stages of a fight to prevent it. For example, you can distract the child who’s bored and give him something to do.

Avoiding Jumping In
It is important to allow your children to work things out on their own, only calling upon you if they really can’t do it. The following are guidelines for parents:

1. Don’t automatically come running when someone screams or hits. After you’ve taught the children some conflict resolution skills, let them know they’re on their own and you’re going to walk away. They have to learn how to prevent it from getting to that point.

2. Never become the judge of who’s right and who’s wrong in a fight, or who started it. If you do, the kids will create more fights just for the opportunity to have you choose between them, hoping they will get to be your favourite.
 
3. If a fight gets violent or you can’t stand the noise, just separate the kids and send them to their rooms or to different places to cool down, or in warm weather tell them they have to fight outside. All the techniques these parents who provided our questions have used (time out, separating the children, and redirecting their energy) are good ones to stop a particular conflict. Parents do have a right to some peace and quiet! Barbara Coloroso’s “If you hit, you sit” is also useful.

Helping Kids Learn To Resolve Conflicts
What all these techniques don’t do is teach the children how to resolve conflict themselves. Once you have observed and understand what’s going on, coach each child on how to deal with the situation. The first skill they need to learn is to use words instead of screams and fists. For example, the little one can ask his brother to play with him rather than bugging him, and the older one can say “when I finish this, in about half an hour,” instead of telling his brother to go away.

Once conflict has happened, they need to use the very complicated set of skills involved in conflict resolution. Children (and adults) need to learn about attacking the problem rather than the person, being assertive rather than building up grudges, making I-statements rather than name-calling, making requests instead of complaints, taking time out instead of venting anger, apologizing, and making compromises. Practice these skills yourself! The first step in teaching conflict resolution is demonstrating the skills yourself (modeling) as you work out conflicts with your spouse and with your children.

Help your children use conflict resolution skills by helping them work things through. You may want to write out some simple guidelines such as:

1. Take time out if you’re mad.

2. People’s space and possessions are their own.

3. Tell but don’t tattle. If it gets someone else into trouble, it’s tattling. If it gets you out of trouble, it’s telling.
4. Attack the problem, not the person.

5. Say what you feel.

6. Say what you want.

As a parent, you can assist your children in working through each conflict, applying these guidelines to the way they deal with the problem. If they are too mad, give them time to cool off first. You may have a child write out the agreements they have reached, if the situation is a recurring one. You may also coach them individually at other times when you see they are upset about the problem, giving suggestions for how to handle it, without judging them or their sibling. Be reassured; most siblings who fight get on fine when they grow up.

Dr. Alison Miller (480-5192) is a psychologist in private practice. She shares LIFE (Living In Families Effectively) Seminars with Dr. Allison Rees. Visit the LIFE website at www.lifeseminars.com and sign up for one of the courses.