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“Fight fight fight fight”… I can remember hearing the chants from the other boys in the playground. A common scene in most schools at some stage or another. 2 kids, scrapping, whilst a circle of onlookers chant “fight fight fight fight”. You can picture it, right? The only problem with this particular scene is the two people “scrapping” were me and my brother.
Sibling rivalry is a real, powerful emotion that cannot be wished away. It’s a part of growing up with brothers and sisters. Put yourself in the child’s shoes. For the sake of a comparison, imagine that your partner comes home one day with another lover. Your partner explains that (s)he still loves you, but this new person is going to live with you all now as well. And to make things worse, the new person is needier than you are so they are going to take up a lot of your partner’s time, sorry!
Birth Order
Apparently, when my younger brother was born, I would try to talk passers-by into taking him with them. I’m told that I berated the midwife for leaving her baby with my family! I was the eldest (of what became a very large family) and rivalry is often more intense in the firstborn, because he or she has been used to the spotlight without competition. A later child comes into the world already learning to share their parent’s time and attention. This doesn’t mean that subsequent children don’t have feelings of jealousy towards other siblings, because they can and do. It really depends on how the parents handle the situation.
Age Matters
No matter what the age of the child, jealousy and competition (the two major causes of sibling rivalry) will inevitably be emotions that they have to contend with. The fact of the matter is that, no matter how hard parents try to be fair to their children, every child will feel, at one point or another, feelings of jealousy toward their sibling or siblings. Generally speaking, though, experts believe jealousy of a newborn is strongest in children under five years. That’s because up until the age of 5, a kid is much more dependent on his parents and has fewer interests outside the family circle. Once the child hits 6, they have begun to build a position for themselves among circles outside of the family (such as with friends and at school). Therefore, being pushed out of the limelight at this stage doesn’t “hurt” so much.
Why Does Sibling Rivalry Exist?
It really comes down to the child(ren) seeking the attention of the parents. With me and my siblings, if mum gave more attention (what we, as kids, thought was “love”) to one of the other brothers or sisters then this would cause severe feelings of jealousy and we would inevitably end up competing for that attention (“love”). What my mum was especially good at was making sure that we all felt loved and attended to in equal measures, but I’ve seen many households where the same sort of equality didn’t exist between kids and that turned into a recipe for disaster.
Solving the Sibling Rivalry Conundrum
Though jealousy can’t be completely prevented, what my mum did so well was to instill a sense of fairness and parity amongst the siblings. We were taught to convert those negative feelings into ones of cooperativeness and altruism. In doing so, mum also taught us a valuable lesson about fearing rivals later in life (ie, instead of fearing, try to understand).
At the end of the day, siblings will feel competition and jealousy. That’s only normal. What is more important is how the child learns to resolve those feelings. For our family, the answer lay in communicating to each other. First of all, we had to explain what we wanted from each other. Then we were taught to listen and put ourselves into the other’s shoes. Looking at things from another perspective and learning to work cooperatively towards a solution were valuable lessons that we all learnt early in our lives.
And last, but not least, from as early as I can remember, we had to kiss and cuddle each other regularly; upon waking, upon coming home from school, before going to bed… and especially after fighting! It may have seemed strange at first (I really don’t remember) but it quickly became second nature and we all ended up very close and full of love for each other. (Though it did cause some murmurs of disapproval when our school peers witnessed our fights ending up with us hugging and “pashing” each other!)
The Positive Side Of Sibling Rivalry
Coming from the context of my family, there were good things that came out of our sibling rivalry. My parents managed to help the kids transform resentful feelings into cooperation and understanding. We learnt to put aside fear of the unknown and we learnt how to deal with stress. Learning to cope with the challenges of sibling rivalry taught us valuable life lessons such as sharing and conflict resolution… and we are quite comfortable expressing our feelings and emotions with one another.
So the lesson is: with patience and understanding, parents can help children that are struggling with sibling rivalry and jealousy. Figuring out a solution can be challenging, but with good communication, a willingness to listen, and an abundance of love and support in the family home, most rivalries can be transformed into enduring, worthwhile sibling bonds. They don’t say “blood is thicker than water” for nothing! 
