Sibling Conflict (Siblings Part 2) #24

Do you want to know how you can successfully navigate sibling conflict? This is the episode for you.

Episode Number: #24

Description: In this episode of the Whole Parent Podcast, Jon delves into the challenging topic of sibling conflict. He shares practical strategies for parents to navigate and resolve conflicts between siblings effectively. Jon also talks about the importance of fostering a team-centric environment and being a safe person for your children to express their frustrations.

Timestamps:

• 00:00 - Introduction and Jon's return to podcasting
• 01:30 - Review of Raising Siblings Part One
• 03:53 - Principle 1: Foster a team-centric environment
• 09:49 - Principle 2: Be the safe person
• 17:13 - Quick call to action: Subscribe and review
• 20:24 - Principle 3: Be a mediator, not an arbitrator

Key Takeaways: Jon's Three Principles for Handling Sibling Conflict:

1. Foster a Team-Centric Environment: Emphasize that the family works as a team and avoid creating winners and losers among siblings.
2. Be the Safe Person: Ensure that children can express their feelings without fear of punishment or judgment.
3. Act as a Mediator, Not an Arbitrator: Facilitate communication between siblings to help them resolve conflicts themselves.

What episode should you listen to next?

• Raising Siblings Part 1
• Adding a New Baby

How to Connect:

• Never Miss a New Episode: CLICK HERE
• Subscribe: If you haven't subscribed to the podcast yet, please do so on your preferred platform.
• Rate and Review: Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
• Share: Share this episode with friends and family, especially those who would benefit from learning about handling sibling conflicts.

Links to Resources Mentioned:

• Mr. Rogers' Song About Feelings
• Siblings Without Rivalry Book

Connect with Whole Parent:

• Email: podcast@wholeparentacademy.com

Social Media Links:

• Instagram: @wholeparent
• TikTok: @wholeparent

Chapters

• 0:00 Raising Siblings
• 11:48 Being a Safe Person in Conflict
• 19:12 Sibling Conflict
• 30:14 Navigating Sibling Conflicts Principles

Transcript

Jon @wholeparent: 2:00

Hello and welcome to this episode of the whole parent podcast. My name is John. I am the host of the whole parent podcast and the creator of whole parent on all of the social medias that you may be on. If you have not heard an episode from me in a while, that's because I haven't been posting very much recently, but I'm going to try and get back on the horse and post again as much as I possibly, because I really enjoy making this podcast and now that I'm bringing Whole Parent back after a couple month break, I am excited to be talking about all of the things that we are talking about. And speaking about something that I'm really excited to be talking about. We're talking today about raising siblings, and so I'm calling this episode Raising Siblings Part Two. I don't know how many parts there are going to be that this whole raising sibling series but way back in March, the first week of March, we posted, or I posted, the first episode that I had on raising siblings, and I want to start this episode with a little bit of review, because this episode is going to be all about sibling conflict, and so maybe I'll call it sibling conflict, but this is siblings part two, if you're listening to it. If you're waiting for siblings part two, this is it. But this episode is all about conflict how do we handle, navigate sibling conflict? Because it is inevitable and I want to start again with a little bit of review from that episode where I talked about how inevitable the sibling conflict is, and I want to just highlight here again and say something that I said then and I encourage you to listen to the whole episode. The whole episode is good.

Jon @wholeparent: 3:30

I've gotten a lot of positive feedback about that episode in particular, especially from parents who are siblings or who themselves are siblings, but also parents of siblings, parents who are raising more than one child, and one of the positive things that people have come back and said raising more than one child and one of the positive things that people have come back and said is that sibling conflict is unavoidable, that you have two distinct personalities living in the same house. These two individuals have not agreed to live in this house together. You have conflict with your partner. Every good relationship has some level of conflict. If you can imagine, you picked living with your partner and you still kind of fight with this person. Sometimes you argue. Most likely you have conflict, things happen. You do things differently, and this is a person who you've chosen to spend the rest of your life with, that you've chosen to live with that, you've chosen to have children with and move in with in most cases. And so, like the fact that your kids, who have made none of those choices for themselves, are going to not always get along with their siblings, come on, that's just par for the course, that's just what it is, and so understanding that reality that your kids are going to fight is really, really important to begin there. And in that episode I talk about the importance of positive experiences outweighing those negative experiences, and that the research tells us that the more positive experiences siblings have together and the more of those positive experiences can outweigh the negative experiences, the better off they are. But how do we navigate those negative experiences right? How do we navigate those conflicts? Because it goes beyond just saying, well, outweigh them. Yes, some of them are avoidable and we are going to outweigh those with positive experiences family fun factor, all that other stuff. But beyond that, how are we going to actually navigate those moments? And the first I'm going to give is that we, as parents, need to foster a team-centric environment around our kids as siblings, a team-centric environment. Write it down, get a tattoo we're all on a team.

Jon @wholeparent: 5:53

If I ever write a sequel to the book I'm writing now, I think most likely it will be a book about raising siblings. Why Number one? Because I think it's something that we need to talk about more. As a parenting community, we are so focused on how parents parent their individual children. What we often fail to realize is that there's an intersectionality when you're raising more than one human at once, and that without talking about siblings, that we're never going to understand parenting as a holistic thing. And I don't know if you knew this, but my name is whole parent and this is like a big holistic, wholehearted living is a big reason why we use that term whole parent, as the name, and so, understanding that this is a holistic part of parenting raising siblings we have to begin with this idea of team building, and why the reason I said the siblings thing or that I would write a follow-up book about siblings, is because I'd probably call it something like team parenting or parenting a team or leading a team or something, because I think this is the place to begin. Everybody's on a team and I'm probably mentioned this to some extent in the last episode about siblings.

Jon @wholeparent: 7:07

But if you don't begin there the first principle we are all seeking each other's flourishing and good then the conflict is never going to manifest in positive ways. You have to begin with this kind of win-win mindset where your child realizes and your multiple, your children, realize that when you're interacting with them, that you're never going to do something so that they win and their sibling loses. You're never going to be parenting from a perspective of trying to create winners and losers within your own household. Now I think sometimes when you're playing a board game with your kids and this is another hot tip don't don't do that. You play board games with your kids, but don't play board games where they have to be against each other.

Jon @wholeparent: 7:54

There's just no reason to to feed into the rivalry any more than it already is right. If there's, if there's, one kind of takeaway tip that I'm not going to talk about extensively in this episode about sibling conflicts, it's don't fuel the fire. The fire is already there. Kids naturally have a sense of rivalry. They're competing with each other in their own minds for your attention and for resources and all that other stuff. There's no reason that you need to make them be on opposite baseball teams, that you need to play Monopoly on Friday night with them and watch one of them beat up on the other one. There's no reason to pour gasoline on that fire. Just don't add more conflict and competition than there already is. That's going to exist no matter what.

Jon @wholeparent: 8:37

So that's principle number one of raising siblings. It's really, really simple. You have to instill in your kids it's us against the world and I don't want to. That's. That's kind of a weird thing for me to say. That's the thing that we say in my family, and my wife used to, and I used to say to one another before we even had kids hey, it's Jess and John against the world. But this is something that is really important for you to instill in your kids that hey, if we are going to go forward as a family unit, we're doing so as a team and we have to understand your children as siblings, have to understand that you are not going to do anything that is specifically against their flourishing. And so when I talk to my kids about why I'm taking certain discipline steps with their siblings, why we're going to do this now or why we're going to that now or why nobody can have ice cream until everybody finishes whatever they're going to eat for dinner. Not like you have to clean your plate, but you see what I'm saying, right? Like we're not going to move on to the next thing until everybody crosses the finish line over here. Like I will make that very clear to them and because of that they understand we're on a team and so helping my sibling to achieve their goals is going to help me achieve my goals. Not that a kid has to be responsible all the time for their siblings, especially their younger siblings, but that helping is going to lead to, you know, shared enjoyment. And so we're all going to clean up right now or dad's going to clean. This is what we've been doing.

Jon @wholeparent: 11:48

At six 30 every night, when my middle child goes to bed, my youngest is still taking a nap, so he stays up. Later. My middle one goes to bed, my wife puts him down and then I got the other two for the last hour of the day and what we've been doing is hey, my, my oldest really doesn't like cleaning, it's really hard for him, he just really with it and that's not to say that we never work on that and pick up our toys and stuff like that we do. We work on that. Frustration, tolerance. But sometimes I'm like, hey, your little brother, two years old, is just going to be tearing up everything in the other room while we're trying to clean this room. How about you take him outside and entertain him in the backyard? You play games with him, you do whatever. You're going to babysit, for lack of a better term, and I'm not giving him anything to do that but he doesn't have to clean, so, so he doesn't have to clean. I'll clean the house on the inside, I'll do the dishes, do whatever, whatever we need to do, he'll go watch his brother.

Jon @wholeparent: 12:36

Team mindset we're all moving towards the same thing. Hey, he knows, every night, once his little brother gets his teeth brushed, whatever there's going to be some time between when I have now gone into my youngest room to put him down and my wife comes out from the middle's room which she, which he, shares with my oldest. And he knows, hey, if I can get my little brother through his bedtime routine, if I can help him do that, then that means, you know, I'm going to have a little bit more free time for myself to do what I want to do on my own, whether that's. You know, whatever, play Minecraft is usually what he does during that time. So all of this stuff like lead, this team mindset, that's how we get away from the conflict. So many of the conflicts come from this, these, these places where kids are in conflict because they don't see that they're a part of a team together, that they're all working towards the same goals. When you have people moving in the same direction, a lot of that little titchy, touchy, you know, spat stuff can go away, all right.

Jon @wholeparent: 13:33

Principle number two you have to be the safe person. So now we're into the conflict here. It is when you're in the middle of a conflict with your child, or when your children, I should say, are in the middle of a conflict between one another. You have to become the safe person. What do we mean by the safe person? Basically, three things. Safe in three ways.

Jon @wholeparent: 13:56

Safe person number one If a child brings something to you hey, my older brother is being mean because of X, y, z you need to be a safe person, to be an empathetic listener To not. Well, yeah, but you were doing this thing, and when you do that, that's what's going to happen. I'm a, I'm a perpetrator of that. I do that all the time. I will turn my my kids' conflicts into lectures about why they shouldn't have been. You know you shouldn't have been shooting your brother with Nerf darts If. If you didn't want him to shoot your, you would Nerf guards. You know I say that stuff all the time but really, if it's a true conflict you don't want to go there. You want to be a safe person that they can bring anything to. Who just says, yeah, I know that's really hard and remember, you're still team mindset. That was principle one, so you don't get to blame their sibling, but you still become the safe person. To just hear it.

Jon @wholeparent: 14:47

You're going to be a safe person in the second way too. Whatever they say you got to, it's got to stay with you. I'm not saying you can't tell your partner. You should be able to, especially if they're trustworthy and they're not going to share it with the kids. But if they say I hate my sister and I wish she were dead and I never want to see her again and I wish that you would have just never had her and she's the worst, you're not going to punish, discipline, react negatively to that at all. You have to be a safe vessel for their word vomit about their sibling. That's the second way in which you have to be a safe person and, by the way, this applies to both siblings. So maybe when you in in my principle three, when we talk about that, we're talking about actually navigating this conflict, having the conversation, being the person between your kids. You still have to be able to absorb, retain and hold those words, those experiences, those feelings from both parties.

Jon @wholeparent: 15:46

And oftentimes in a conflict between siblings there's no one who is in the total right and no one in the total wrong. But but oftentimes other times there's going to be one kid who is the total antagonist of this situation. They just woke up on the wrong side of the bed or something happened at school, whatever, and they just totally took it out on their sibling and it's. You can't see how validating their perspective could possibly be healthy. But you have to be the safe person because here's the thing If your kids can say it to you, they won't act on it more often than not. So if your kids can say to you, I just want to punch him in the head, I just want to throw him off the roof of the house, they're far less likely to take matters into their own hands and actually get violent.

Jon @wholeparent: 16:34

Now, sure, in a moment of conflict, kids do sometimes take swings, they push. You know we can talk about why that's not appropriate and how, how we can redirect that type of behavior and learn to communicate and all this stuff is doing that. But if you're worried about, true, like I'm going to go out and retribution, take revenge on my, my sibling, if they can say it to you, they're far less likely to do it. Now, if they say it to you and they're immediately met with, how could you say that about your little brother? How dare you say that about your older sister? She has been nothing but nice to you. Then you're not being a safe person and all of that rage will not be directed at you. It will be confirmed on their sibling.

Jon @wholeparent: 17:13

Here is one of the pivotal things we have to remember in the midst of sibling conflict. I didn't know when I was going to put this into this episode, but I knew it was going to find its way somewhere. It's one of the pivotal things you need to understand. Your child has an evolutionary survival instinct to maintain closeness to you. They have an evolutionary survival and survival instinct to give you the benefit of the doubt. You can hurt your child, you can torment your child, you can bully your child, and they will keep coming back. Why? Because you are intrinsically important for their survival, both in their evolutionary mind and even in their base understanding of nurture. In the world today, you are so massively important that they will not sacrifice that relationship unless they absolutely have to.

Jon @wholeparent: 17:56

And their sibling is not sorry, they're not. They don't hold the same place. And so when it seems like you're teaming up with their sibling or you're punishing them for the actions of their sibling, or you're being they're being punished because of something they did to their sibling, do you think that they're ever going to blame you? No, they will always blame their sibling. And so if they come to you and they say I just pushed him down the stairs and I know he's going to come get me, and you turn on them and say how dare you do that? You're grounded for a month, or go to your room and I don't want to speak to you or see you again, paradoxically, they're not going to be upset with you, they're going to be upset with their sibling, and this has been verified by so many family and marriage therapists and family counselors and psychologists. They see this all the time.

Jon @wholeparent: 18:46

Even adult siblings have not processed through the ways in which their parent reacted inappropriately and they took that inappropriate reaction, that inappropriate response from their parent and pushed it back on their sibling. They hit their sibling. The parent spanked the child. Who was the culprit? Who hit their sibling? The parent spanked the child. Who was the culprit? Who hit that child? Who hit now takes that animosity back onto their sibling. Happens all the time.

Jon @wholeparent: 19:12

You have to be a safe person. You have to be a vessel who can hold and not break and not crack and not go to your own stuff. And if you can't be, then you got to go to somebody and get help. So when their child comes to you and they say this is a situation, you're just going to listen and say I'm sorry, that's so hard, that's it, that's all you're going to do. And the last thing part of safety is that your child has to know that, no matter what, at the end you're seeking their flourishing and their and their siblings flourishing. So it goes back to the team mindset thing. So that's what I mean by safety. You have to be a safe person and you have to protect them, right, if you're.

Jon @wholeparent: 19:48

If a lot of people don't like this. They think that this feels unjust. But you know, one sibling hurts another sibling. We can process that later in a conversation about why we don't do that, but in the moment, if you invite their sibling to take revenge on them in whatever way, you are only perpetuating the harm long-term. So that's principle two you have to be a safe person for them to bring their frustrations, whether they're in the midst of a conflict. They might just come to you one night and just say you know, I hate my sibling for X, y and Z. We're not going to respond to that negatively. You know how could you say that? What do you mean? Look at all these positive ways that you see them. We're just going to come back to them like a therapist hey, I'm so sorry, that's so hard. That's a really big feeling to have about somebody who's so close to you. And, by the way, it's not all that bad when you do that. Usually they respond with yeah, well, they're not so bad actually. Right, sometimes they just have to say it to get off their chest. And once they hear it in their own ears from coming out of their own mouth they go oh, that's a little far. But if you say it's a little far, then they'll double down. So you just accept it. You hear it, you're the safe vessel. Vessel, keep everybody safe.

Jon @wholeparent: 20:57

Principle three we're going to get to in one second, but I do want to make one quick call out. I got to do this. I've been told all the time that I have to do this. If you want a place to know, if you want to know where to go, go to the show notes right now. Click on the first link and that's how you can get onto the list of people who receives an email every single time an episode is published. I try and publish two episodes a week. It doesn't always happen. Sometimes it's only one. You know, for the last several weeks it was zero, but but when an episode is released you will be the first one to know. You'll get an email in your inbox with a link to that. It'll have the show notes in the description there.

Jon @wholeparent: 21:27

It's a super simple way to make sure that you don't miss any episodes and make sure that you've rated and reviewed this podcast. I said that I was going to go in in the last episode and tell you who was winning and who was losing in the whole parent review games between the Spotify and Apple podcast listeners. And so I have done that, and I can tell you that the numbers have flipped. There was a time when the Apple podcast listeners were greatly outperforming the Spotify listeners, but, as it stands today, there are 122 of you on Apple Podcasts who have rated and reviewed this show.

Jon @wholeparent: 22:06

On Spotify, there are let me make sure I get this number right, I'm pulling it up right now 169. So for those of you Apple Podcast listeners which, by the way, I also have the metrics on, this is 70 plus percent of you, so the overwhelming majority of you listen on Apple podcasts, and yet you guys are really lagging behind. Now, I'm not saying this in a shame based way. I am fostering a healthy spirit of competition, though, because you guys are not siblings. The Spotify whole parent nation and the Apple podcast you guys are not siblings, and so I'm going to foster a little bit of healthy competition and tell you if you are a Spotify user and you keep this up, I don't think that the Apple users can catch you and then I'll say to you as an Apple user, you guys have the numbers.

Jon @wholeparent: 22:53

If you guys are underperforming on the review games here, that's on you. You guys have the numbers the Spotify people make up. Like do you guys outnumber the Spotify people? I think two to one or something close to that, and yet the Spotify people have what? 40 plus reviews on you guys, almost 50 more reviews than you. They got you by 30 plus percent, 40%, I can't do the numbers in my head right now. That's a lot. So Apple people get on it, rate and review.

Jon @wholeparent: 23:23

I do read all the reviews too, but at least rate it five stars If you're an Apple listener, so that you guys can catch up. And I will keep updating you on a weekly basis, potentially on the Thursday episodes on who is winning, because this, this is a big this. I I keep track of this, I do. I do maintain my listenership here. I do check the reviews, I check the ratings, and so I don't care about the number of downloads I get. I care about the number of people who take time to review. So if you like this episode or any episode, make sure that you go into your favorite podcasting hosting place and review it. And to the YouTube people who are like what do I listen on YouTube. I'm sorry, guys, I don't know anything about yours, but I know that a lot of the YouTube people get to watch the video, so that's like really cool, you guys. You guys are winning in your own way, which is which is great.

Jon @wholeparent: 24:08

Okay, back to what we're talking about with raising siblings and, specifically, handling sibling conflict. I'm going to present you with, kind of, my piece de l'essence. I don't know how to speak French, but I think that's how it's said. If somebody can correct my French, I'd appreciate it. My pinnacle, my contribution to the conversation about raising siblings, and that is the little turn of phrase parents need to be mediators, not arbitrators. Mediators, not arbitrators. If anyone who has ever read the terms and conditions on any of the things that you sign in order to you know, listen to anything or go on any of your devices, has ever read, like I said, the terms and conditions, you will see that a lot of them have what's called a mandatory arbitration clause.

Jon @wholeparent: 24:55

Arbitration is a legal proceeding whereby two parties who have a grievance go in front of a judge and the judge gets to decide what the most fair outcome of that grievance would be, and the idea of arbitration is that they are the party with all the power, so both sides get to share their piece, but ultimately, the person or persons party with all the power, so both sides get to share their piece, but ultimately the side, the person or persons who have all the power is the arbitrator. This is how most parents think that they are supposed to handle sibling conflict. They come in as this force, this arbitrator, who says I make the rules and I will decide what's fair, and you get one cookie. And you get one cookie. And that's how this is going to go.

Jon @wholeparent: 25:41

And we think of this because our kids tend to be illogical, they tend to be irrational. They're just kids, right? That's what happens. And because of that we think arbitration is the way in which parents should cope with sibling conflict. Not so, actually, if you want your siblings to learn to get along without you and actually avoid a lot of the pitfalls that we talked about in principle one, being a team, especially in principle two, with with being a safe person, not taking sides, you can't be an arbitrator because in arbitration, almost always someone feels like they lost. That's kind of like a hallmark of arbitration. That's why a lot of people don't like arbitration is because almost always the arbitrator will. Even if they give some consolation to both parties, they'll almost always give more to one party than the other. They, they side, they pick a side. If you're a parent and you're acting as an arbitrator, you're going to inevitably in the eyes of your child, even if it's not in your own perspective pick sides. You don't want to do that. Instead, you're going to act as a mediator.

Jon @wholeparent: 26:40

So mediator mediation is a different type of legal proceeding and a mediator is instead a person who just acts as a communication bridge between two grieved parties. So when I worked in HR, I often participated in mediation between as on the on the part of my company, with people who had been at that company before and who had fired or terminated or who had left, and we weren't in an arbitration setting where the person got to decide okay, this, this company has to pay X amount and you know, or this person just gets nothing or whatever. We were in a mediation, which is the mediator is only there to make sure that the parties are able to communicate effectively. So basically, what a mediator does, what an arbitrator does, is an arbitrator literally says you're right, you're wrong, or you're mostly right, you're mostly wrong. And here's how I'm going to fix the solution. What a mediator does instead is says okay, what I'm hearing you say is this Is that right? Okay, are you understanding what they're saying now? Okay, can I get your side of the story now? Okay, so what you're saying happened is this and what you're saying happened is this. So how can we reconcile these two things? So the mediator has essentially no power. I mean, they do have power in that they are the person who's bridging the gap, but they don't get to make a final decision. The parties have to agree in mediation on that final outcome.

Jon @wholeparent: 28:03

And if you can approach every parental conflict with your sibling children with your children who are siblings as a mediator, you're going to have so much more success in the longterm. Trust me when I say it is way harder in the short term to not just come in and just be the long arm of the law and just say this is what we're doing and you guys can deal with it Right. And a lot of parents try and do the arbitration thing by making everyone lose. Well, that's not good either. You don't want anybody to lose, because what's your kid going to do? They're going to place the blame on their sibling. They're not going to place the blame on you, and if two kids lose, that's just two kids who place the blame on each other, instead of either of them actually coming to any sort of reconciliation.

Jon @wholeparent: 28:42

Mediator, on the other hand, is a person who just acts as the communication bridge, so they just listen and they say what I'm hearing is this, what I'm hearing is this. That's really hard. Validate the experience. What do you think we should do about that? Okay, what do you think we should do about that? Okay, what do you think we should do about that? Okay, is that agreeable to you? No, okay, why not? All you're doing is acting as the bridge to communicate. Eventually, your kids are going to learn how to communicate and they're not going to need you anymore.

Jon @wholeparent: 29:08

You shouldn't be mediating every conflict between an eight-year-old and a six-year-old, or a seven-year-old and a nine-year-old and a nine-year-old or a 10-year-old. You should not be mediating every conversation, for sure, between 16-year-olds and 13-year-olds. You should be very much hands-off at that point, at least to an extent, where your children are learning to navigate those conflicts on their own. Now, that being said, you're going to have to mediate a whole heck of a lot more conflicts early on in order to get to that point. So if you arbitrate early on, they're going to expect you to arbitrate forever. But if you mediate, they're going to actually learn how to have those conversations and flourish in that relationship beyond your intervention in it. And so mediator, not arbitrator.

Jon @wholeparent: 29:55

So the principles again. I'm just listing them because we're out of time. I got to let you guys go. I know I'm making these episodes, especially these topical ones, a little bit too long, but three principles again to navigating sibling conflicts. Nothing you can do about it.

Jon @wholeparent: 30:15

So this is what we do. Number one we're arguing with the we in mind. We are on a team. First and foremost, we're looking for win-win solutions, in other words. Number two we're always the safe person, always To bring your grievances to all that stuff. And number three we're not going to take that role as a safe person and become this judge and jury. We're not arbitrators.

Jon @wholeparent: 30:37

There may be occasional times when you may have to act a little bit like an arbitrator, but ultimately our goal, 99 times out of a hundred, at least nine out of 10 times, is to mediate the conflict, where we just act as the communication partner. It takes much longer. It may require sending people to their corners for an hour before you actually mediate the conflict. Hot heads cannot usually have a mediated conflict. Sometimes you have to break off the mediation and then come back together when cooler heads have prevailed.

Jon @wholeparent: 31:08

But those are your three principles for navigating sibling conflicts and I think if you take these three principles and you run with them, along with everything else we're talking about in this podcast, I think you're going to foster kids who have lifelong friendships, who genuinely like each other, even when they're grown and out of your house. So yeah, that's what I got for you today and no call to action at the end. I've already given you all that because we've already out of time. Just know that this has been Siblings Part Two and or Navigating Sibling Conflicts on the Whole Parent Podcast. See you guys next.