Cooling the Fires of Sibling Rivalry : Co-Authors Discuss Its Causes, Offer Practical Advice

Sibling rivalry is a family affair. Listen to the whine: “That’s mine!” “He hit me!” “She started it!” “You love her more than you love me!” “I hate him!” It starts when the second child is brought home from the hospital, and it can last a lifetime. A child gets food, shelter, understanding and love from his parents--everything needed for survival. No wonder the competition for attention and devotion is so fierce, and the effect so likely to linger.

“The very presence, the very arrival of the other child makes child No. 1 feel he or she is immediately getting less time alone with the parents, less approval for accomplishment,” Elaine Mazlish says. “And they feel that if they’re getting less, maybe they’re worth less.

“That’s why they fight so hard to be first, and why they mobilize all their energy to have more. Security lies in having all of Mommy, all of Daddy, all the food, all the toys.”

New and Useful Book

Mazlish and Adele Faber, former lecturers at the New School for Social Research and at the Family Life Institute of C.W. Post College of Long Island University, have spent five years and given hundreds of parenting workshops to produce a self-help book that is actually useful.

“Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too” (Norton, $14.95) follows up on the authors’ earlier success, “How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk.” The first book engendered a kit that’s been used by thousands of groups around the country. The likelihood is that the new book will do the same.

In any family, there is the undercurrent of competition. “What parents can do,” says Faber, “is either fan the flames or reduce them to a small, safe flicker.”

Smaller Families

There are no statistics to prove it, but the trend toward smaller families quite possibly has accelerated the struggling and infighting among children. In the four-, five- and six-children broods regularly produced just a generation ago, there was only so much Mom and Dad to go around.

“When there’s limited access, kids fill in with each other--you turn to your big sister to mother you, or to your big brother to teach you how to play ball,” says Faber, who grew up in a family of three. “With only two children, there’s nothing to break the intensity, nothing to act as buffer. If you’re trapped together on a rainy Sunday, it’s imperative that you work out some mode of getting along other than tormenting each other.”

The heart of “Siblings Without Rivalry” is a series of illustrations drawn by Kimberly Ann Coe from dialogue supplied by the authors. These cartoons vividly explain strategies for dealing with children’s disputes: Instead of dismissing negative feelings about a sibling, a parent should acknowledge the emotion; children should be encouraged to channel their hostile feelings into symbolic or creative outlets; both favorable and unfavorable comparisons between siblings should be avoided; equal time can make each child feel as though he is getting less, so time should be given in terms of need; kids shouldn’t be made into either bullies or victims.

While the drawings ring true in both the descriptions of the problems and the solutions, the fact that cartoons are used can make the authors’ approach sound more simplistic than it is.

‘Complicated Stuff’

“It’s very complicated stuff we’re dealing with here,” Faber says. “It takes practice, thought, commitment, and a desire to change. But the difference between a wounded child who feels bad about her sibling, and one who feels like a whole person and feels good about her sibling--that’s worth it.”

The most important skill to learn involves letting angry children express their rage. “It’s the one thing parents cannot tolerate,” Faber says. “They cannot hear one child, whom they love, say something nasty about another child, whom they love.”

To their credit, the authors refuse to make generalizations about those cases or ages in which sibling rivalry is most likely to spring up. Two boys, two girls, one of each, any combination of three children--with any of these, there can be relative peace or total war.

Natural Antagonists

And it’s not always the parents’ fault. While some children just seem to hit it off, “others are natural antagonists from the beginning,” Mazlish says. “They irritate each other and are constantly measuring and sizing themselves up. They define themselves in terms of their sibling.”

Even with these cases, the authors say, the prevalent attitude until recently has been “some day they’ll outgrow it.” Parents felt that there was little that could be done--except, perhaps, to replay the tapes from their own childhood: “Shut up.” “Go to your room.” “You’re behaving like animals.” “I don’t want to hear any more.” “Why can’t you be alone for a minute without fighting?” “Give it to the baby.”

To be sure, a certain amount of bickering is normal, and even helpful. Siblings provide a perfect arena for children to practice their relationship skills, to learn the give and take of normal life.

“Even from their envy of each other, children can learn to work harder and achieve more,” says Mazlish, who was an only child but competed with her cousins for achievement. “That’s the best of it. But the worst of it can be so damaging.

“Some of the people we interviewed still feel, in their 70s and 80s, ‘Yeah, I’m OK, but you should meet my brother.’ That comes not just out of the brother’s excellence, but the fact that the mother and father may have compared them--’Why can’t you be like your brother?’ ”

As for their own lives, Faber’s two sons “were at each other from very early on,” she notes. Now in their 20s, the boys get along fine with each other and their sister. Mazlish also has three children and says she “certainly witnessed sibling rivalry at first hand.” Her children are also in their 20s, and she makes similar claims about their mutual friendship.

Not that getting there was necessarily easy. “If you’re going to have a happy family, you’d better be prepared to deal with a lot of unhappiness,” Faber says. “Not until the bad feelings come out can the good feelings come in.”