On the long car ride home, I looked back to see my oldest daughter sleeping soundly while my youngest child pulled her hair, pinched her nose, and stuck his hand over her mouth. When his antics finally roused her from her deep slumber, she looked him in the eye and said,
You little stinker!
Awww, sibling love!
Sometimes it looks like two boys tumbling over each other in a wrestling match. Sometimes it looks like two girls whispering through bunk beds late at night. Sometimes it looks like a little brother standing at the door waiting for his big brother to come home. Sometimes it looks like a big sister scratching a little brother’s back.
The sibling relationships around here aren’t perfect, but they aren’t what most people consider the norm either. My children actually like each other!
In an effort to foster the sibling relationships in our home, Ty and I have done a few things that we’d like to share with you in the hopes that you too can reap some long-lasting deeply-bonded sibling relationships between your children.
Don’t dwell on the negative. Our society expects terrible sibling relationships. In fact, I believe traditional school even encourages enmity between siblings by separating them and inadvertently teaching them that anyone not their same age is not worth spending time with. It simply is not “cool” to hang out with your siblings. If we buy into this and foster this negative outlook on siblings, we end up encouraging strife as a norm.
Don’t build walls. We have one child who flies off the handle easier than the others. At one point, I made the mistake of focusing in on that with the other siblings nearby. It took me a long time to remedy that. No, she shouldn’t fly off the handle, but my job as mom isn’t to call her out in front of her siblings, but rather to take her aside and guide her back to reconciliation with them. If I am constantly pointing out the faults of one sibling in front of another, I will build walls I will eventually be unable to tear down.
Make “togetherness” the norm. While we do allow our children their own space, we do not encourage them to spend massive amounts of time doing their “own thing.” We do take our children out separately on occasion, but more often than not, another sibling comes along. And more often than not, they WANT another sibling to come along.
Talk about their bond. Since losing Emily, we talk to our girls a lot about how they are the only sisters they have and how important it is that they foster that relationship. We don’t do it in a preachy way, just a matter-of-fact way. We talk about how perhaps one day one of the brothers will work with another brother. It might never happen, and we certainly don’t expect it, but there is no harm in building that bond with our words.
Encourage their similarities. My children are all so different, but they also have similar likes and interests that I believe deserve to be encouraged as a way to build that bond between siblings. All too often, we focus on differences and forget the lovely similarities that exist too. However, that brings me to my final point…
Complementary rather than comparison. Siblings are often far more different than the same, but rather than make that a comparison or a black and white contrast, find ways to show them how those difference work together within the dynamics of the family. My oldest is a talkative planner while the next sibling in line is the quiet, creative type. He plans trips while she takes the photos and journals her way through vacation. Together, they offer a complimentary benefit to the family. So, rather than making sibling differences insurmountable, we choose to point out ways each siblings strengths compliment the rest of the family’s strengths.
It’s all about strengthening, encouraging, and loving the individuals who make up the community you call a family!
