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JULY2014 THE PREMIER PARENTING MAGAZINE FOR CENTRAL ALABAMA
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Editor’s Note Happy Birthday from Birmingham Parent Parenting with Dr. Friedman Short Stuff July Pull Out Calendar July Expanded Calendar of Events Page in a Book Curling Up with Cat Books Ask the Specialist Death by Children: "I Quit"
30 School News Knowledge: 32 College Writing the College Essay ON THE COVER: Olivia, age 18 months, of Birmingham, our ages 0-2 COVER KIDS SEARCH WINNER, is celebrating the birthday party issue. PHOTO BY DONALD LOVE, 205-902-5357, dlovephotos@gmail.com, www.dlovephotos.com.
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Home Isn’t 26 When So Safe: Finding and Fixing Hidden Dangers
parenting
Parenting with Dr. Friedman My daughters will soon be three and six. With the three-year age difference you might think that they wouldn’t fight, but they do. The 3-year-year-old pulls her sister’s hair and kicks her until the 6-year-old feels the need to retaliate, even as I am standing right there telling her to back away. Some people say let them fight it out, but this just doesn’t seem right. They could get injured and I don’t want them to see fighting as an option. My three-year-old is sweet in every other way, but she is very aggressive where her sister is concerned or if she feels she is bring slighted by being the youngest. Spanking them and telling them not to hit each other doesn’t work and seems to be counterproductive. My 6-year-old simply is a teaser and can’t seem to stop. Please help!
Q:
answer: Fighting between siblings is not part of normal behavior. It always indicates issues of jealousy and competition between the brothers and sisters. When there is enough love and attention to go around, there is no need to compete for the limited supply. Letting them fight it out doesn’t work to resolve the problem. It simply allows the stronger child to win. If you let them fight it out, you will end up protecting the younger child which will only make the older one angry. Nothing fuels sibling rivalry more effectively than a parent choosing sides or seeming to favor one child over the other. Letting them fight it out would also be
giving them the message that conflicts are resolved by hair pulling and kicking. The correct punishment for fighting is separation. “If you can’t get along then you can’t play together.” Send each child to her own room. Make sure neither is with you. The punishment for social conflict is social isolation. Scarcity fuels competition. If there is not enough to go around (attention, cake, first turns etc.) they will fight. By making sure that there is enough for both girls to get their needs met, you decrease the competition. When they fight over who got the biggest piece of cake, interrupt them and tell them that instead of focusing on
what the other child got, you want them to tell you what they need. Tell them you will meet each child’s needs. If they need a bigger piece of cake they can have one. They will quickly learn that more cake is not what they are after. Some parents unknowingly encourage sibling rivalry by attempting to be even handed all the time. By over-emphasizing that things should always be equal, you are teaching them to watch and measure what the sibling gets. In place of promising “the same” you want to emphasize that each child will get what he needs and that sometimes one will get more than the other because he needs more than the other at that time.
If they have trouble making this transition in their thinking, carry it to an extreme. Buy them exactly the same thing- Size 7 dresses for both girls when your younger child wears a size 4, and baby toys for both that your nearly six-year-old has long ago outgrown. They will soon see that their needs are different and they don’t really want everything to be the same for both. For further reading I recommend the book: Siblings Without Rivalry by Faber and Mazlish. Another excellent book about siblings is Mixed Feelings by Francine Klagsbrun. It deals with sibling relationships in adulthood.
Vivian K. Friedman Ph. D. is a child and family psychologist at UAB, Department of Psychiatry. Send questions for response in this column to Viviankf@gmail.com. No personal replies are sent.
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