Sibling Relationships

As an only child, this is an area that I cannot relate to my children. I do not understand the dynamic of a sibling relationship. I cannot understand how their interactions with each other can change so drastically. There does not seem to be any middle ground with how they feel about each other.

They go from loving each other to loathing each other in 0.2 seconds some days and the cause of the arguments are so trivial and quite frankly ridiculous. For example my daughter decided to punch her brother in the leg because she was annoyed with looking at his face!! How does that work?

Siblings also play weird games such as “leg wars”. So far as I can tell this is how you play. Each sit at one end of the sofa, put their feet together and push against each other. The winner is whoever manages to squeeze the other in to the smallest space and wherever their legs land becomes their territory.

There also seem to be days where their sole purpose and aim for the day is to aggravate the other constantly any way that they possibly can. When it is one of those days no amount of potential consequences that may be at your disposal as a parent makes any difference.

The ways to annoy each other vary and its like seems like a weird science experiment that they each have a role in. They try the tested routes that have succeeded in the past to see if they still work and if the other party has become immune to that tactic they try a different one.

When they were younger my children would use a muslin cloth as a comforter when they were tired to help them fall asleep. A sure fire way that the eldest would irritate the youngest would be to steal and hide their comfort cloth, tell the youngest they have hidden it and then watch with glee as she was looking for it leaving a wake of destruction in her wake.

Soon, that stopped working because Mummy has eagle eyes so as soon as I saw the process beginning I would be there and take the cloth from the hiding place and produce said cloth, as if by magic, and hand said cloth to the slightly distressed child.

The eldest then decided to take the game up a notch. The amendments that were made to the tactic were as follows. Instead of taking the cloth and hiding the cloth, he would now take the cloth and suck on it to make it wet before then handing the material back to his sister with one soggy corner. After this it was a waiting game. He would sit back and wait with glee for his sister to find the wet corner at which point he would laugh.

You may think that the youngest doesn’t have any methods for winding her big brother up. But you would be wrong. She is cunning and bides her time. The main way she extracts her revenge is mentally taking note of films, stories and activities that her brother has said that he doesn’t like. Then whenever it is her turn to choose something to do, watch, or read she will draw on this knowledge and pick something she knows that he has said he does not enjoy.

For example, my son does not like The Chronicles of Narnia. He is not interested in fantasy stories or films. He loves factual texts about traction engines, diesel locomotives, engineers such as Brunel or the Titanic.

My daughter takes great joy in picking either the book or the films just to watch him have a hissy fit about her choice knowing that there is nothing he can do about it. She knows to keep things fair she has to be allowed her opportunity to choose.

To be fair, half of my time is spent refereeing their spats about silly things and trying to explain to each child why that is a silly thing to be annoyed by or trying to explain why that action has upset the other person. My children are effectively a combination of their parents personalities.

A lot of the time they are quite calm and relaxed which is a reflection of their dad but on the flip side they can be so stubborn and unwilling to listen that the only option left is to send them to their separate rooms to battle it out with each other with the division of a hallway between them. (Guess which parent these traits herald from) Eventually they will reach the conclusion that they love each other really and will apologise to each other on their own.

When that happens I feel like I have taught them something about conflict resolution and thank goodness for that… but then an argument will erupt from the front room because one of them has a toe on the wrong side of the sofa. Back to square one.

I need to accept that I cannot fix this. Is it even a problem that needs to be fixed? When I talk to my husband at the end of the day about different arguments that have cropped up during the day, 9 times out of 10 he stands there laughing at me. Apparently it is normal and I do not need to worry nor do I need to “fix” it.

As they get older and mature, the dynamic will change but there will always be a bond there. I just hope that it will always be based on a love for each other and not resentment.

One thing I do know from my observations of my children and as a result from talking to friends who have siblings is that they would be completely lost without each other.

Another bonus is that there will be two people to foot the care home fees in my old age.