Sibling relationships

Sibling relationships are a hot topic. The 7/10/06 cover of Time magazine reads "How your siblings make you who you are." Of course, for those of you with more than one child, it's likely to be high on your parenting agenda, media attention or not.

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When I was in training as a fellow in behavioral and developmental pediatrics with T. Berry Brazelton, I was asked to see parents who had been determined to prevent their two year old, Petunia, from resenting their new baby.

"We don't understand it," they confessed. "We've done everything the books advised to avoid sibling rivalry. We frequently talked about the new baby in mommy's belly, which we encouraged Petunia to lovingly stroke. We assured Petunia we would love her as much as ever and explained how wonderful it would for her to have a new playmate. Soon after delivery, we allowed her to hold her baby brother, Gregory. The doll she took home from the hospital was bigger than the baby! Petunia was allowed to help feed and diaper Gregory. When he was asleep, we gave her extra 'just you and me' quality time together."

Sound familiar?

Two months later, following the appearance of inexplicable scratch marks on Gregory's face, Petunia was seen lobbing her Cabbage Patch doll into his crib and was quite adamant that the time had surely come for Gregory to go back the hospital, "where he belonged". That's when her distraught parents sought help from the great Dr. Brazelton (alas, they had to settle for a very green Dr. P).

As Petunia's parents learned, sibling rivalry is inevitable. To help her parents understand why this is so, I asked them to picture this scenario:

Without asking your permission, one day your husband/wife/partner comes home with a new man/women, saying: "Hi honey, this is Rachel/Freddie. S/he is going to live with you and me now. Sure, s/he'll be getting lots of my love and attention, but don't you worry: I love you just as much as always! This is just a wonderful addition to our family! Hey, why don't you look happy!?"

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Time magazine's certainty aside (to be fair and balanced, see their alternative viewpoint to mine), the importance of sibling relationships in "making us who we are" is still hotly debated.

Here's the key issue: Of course sibling relationships are important within the home. Do siblings get along? Who is dominant? Whom does mom love best? What behaviors get you more attention and energy and affection from your parents, compared to your siblings? All this is pretty obvious.

But think back to when you were a kid: how similar was the way you interacted with your siblings within the home, as opposed to how you interacted with others outside the home?

Most of us (thankfully) behave and feel very differently with our parents and siblings than we do in the "real world." It's called "code switching" - we adapt our behaviors to succeed in new circumstances. We toddle off to school and quickly learn, for example, that those behaviors that were so endearing to our parents and allowed us to get along with (or manipulate) our siblings may not be good ways to make and maintain friends outside the home. Maybe I am mean to my little sister, but that behavior isn't going to make me very popular with my peers. I may have been under my big brother's thumb at home, but I can be a leader among my new friends.

(Incidentally, you may have thought that Frank Sulloway's 1996 Born to Rebel proved being a first-born made you more likely to be ambitious, domineering, conservative and aggressive, while later borns are more likely to be rebellious, open to new ideas, and agreeable. If this were correct, then sibling relationships are indeed a major force in"making us who we are." Alas, the findings in his book - at least to my mind - have been debunked, decimated really (e.g., by Judith Rich Harris in her new book No Two Alike or here).

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There is one important reason the research in this area remains muddled: Genetic effects are rarely taken into account. Sure, you may be cooperative and positive with your brothers and sisters, and subsequently with your relationships outside the home. But is that because you had good early sibling relationships in the home or because you had the disposition to be a cooperative and cheerful person in any setting? If you are a peace-maker, is it because you were the middle child or because of your pacifistic nature? Correlation of child and adult relationships does not mean cause-and-effect. And there is plenty of data showing how different we are in our relationships inside and outside the home.

So it's still up for debate. I have to say, in thinking about my own history and having watched a ton of kids grow up in a ton of families, I'm more on the side of the "code-switching" hypothesis: that we often behave very differently in different settings to get our needs for status and affection and affiliation met. Yes, our siblings "make us who we are" inside the home and in our relationships with them, but their impact on us outside the home is much more limited than Time magazine implies.

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As I often ask: Is that good news or bad news for you parents, you who are conscientiously investing so much time and effort to teach your unruly kids how to get along with each other? Does this mean that your efforts don't matter?

I think it's good news and, yes, how you handle your kids' relationships with each other matters a lot - although perhaps not in the way you imagine.

Of course, as a parent, you make a huge difference in how things go in your home. You can try to be fair with your motley crew of kids as best you can, to show them pretty equal affection (even if you don't always feel that way), to teach them to generally work out their sibling conflicts on their own without your choosing sides, to treat and respect them as individuals, to recognize each one's strengths and weaknesses without constantly comparing them to one another.

These efforts will have been critical - once the early inevitable rivalries and disputes are past - in how they come to interact with and feel about each other. It will enable them to grow up with wonderful memories and stories and lessons and values from the positive family relationships you are working so hard to foster. And this will serve to enable them (hopefully) to establish close and enduring sibling relationships which, at their best, can be one of the deepest and most beautiful relationships of our adult lives. That's a lot of power and importance in my book.

But if you hope by being the "perfect" parent (not that there has ever been one), you can avoid any sibling rivalry or conflicts, or that by enhancing sibling relationships you will have a major impact on your children's eventual personality and status and relationships outside the home, you may be disappointed. Khalil Gibran (1883-1931) the Persian poet said it best in his book The Prophet:

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They came through you but not from you.
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit,
not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you,
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

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