The Whole Parent Podcast
The Whole Parent Podcast
How To Stay Regulated While Your Kids Battle Over A Lego #46
Subscribe on Substack to support the show!
Buy Punishment-Free Parenting (Jon's book) now
In today’s episode, Jon returns to the show’s original format—raw, unscripted, brain-based parenting questions—this time focused entirely on sibling dynamics. If you have more than one child (or plan to), this might be one of the most clarifying episodes you ever listen to.
Inside this episode:
Why kids compete… why they fight over nothing… why your nervous system spirals in the cross-fire… and the realistic brain-based tools parents can use to survive those hot-cold sibling dynamics without losing themselves.
What We Cover
1. Why Sibling Rivalry Is Normal
Kids don’t choose their siblings.
They don’t choose their living arrangement.
And unlike adult relationships, they can’t leave or create space.
Jon unpacks why built-in competition, developmental limitations, and underdeveloped emotional regulation make conflict inevitable—and why none of this means anything is “wrong” with your family.
2. Regulating Your Nervous System First
Listener Question: “How do I stay calm when their chaos instantly spikes my anxiety?”
Jon explains:
- Why your body responds like it’s an emergency
- Why entering the conflict dysregulated makes the conflict worse
- The power of taking 30–40 seconds before jumping in
- Quick grounding tools (breathing, sensory checks, tapping, internal scripts like “I’m safe, they’re safe, this is not an emergency”)
- How your energy sets the emotional temperature of the room
This is one of those “if you remember nothing else, remember this” moments.
3. Opposite Temperaments & Constant Clashing
Listener Question: “One kid is sensitive, one is impulsive—they constantly trigger each other. How do I help them get along?”
Jon dives into:
- The difference between describing temperament vs prescribing it
- Why comparison creates competition
- Why kids don’t need fewer shared moments—they need more positive moments
- How to create “positive association loops” in the sibling relationship
- What it means to aim for 51% positive interactions
This is less about fixing fights and more about building a foundation for lifelong friendship.
4. Sharing Without Meltdowns
Listener Question: “Both of my kids fight over everything—even stuff they didn’t care about five minutes ago.”
Jon covers:
- Why sharing is developmentally unnatural
- Why kids experience loss aversion when giving something up
- The game-changing strategy:
Every child gets a small box of “non-sharing” items. Everything else becomes community property. - Why this instantly calms power struggles
- How to use quick “attention flips” to reduce sharing meltdowns in the moment
- And how to speak self-fulfilling prophecies:
“You’re such a good sharer.”
Big Takeaways
- Your calm nervous system is more powerful than any script.
- Siblings don’t need perfect harmony—they need repetition of positive experiences.
- Sharing starts with autonomy, not forced generosity.
- You’re not trying to prevent every fight.
You’re playing the long game—raising adults who can have a lifelong relationship with each other.
If This Episode Helped You…
👉 Ra
Hello and welcome to the Whole Parent Podcast. My name is John. I'm at Whole Parent on all of the social medias. And this is my podcast where we talk about parenting, neuroscience, give you brain-based solutions to all of the common parenting problems that you might face. For those who may be joining us for the first time in a while, the podcast has gone through a bit of an evolution in the last couple of months. Boy, what two years ago when we were starting to record our first episodes. Even though we are only on episode 46, you can see that the reason for that is actually because for the last, we'll call it a season, we called it season two, we took the podcast in a completely different direction where we did scripted episodes. They were more interview-heavy, where I was interviewing guests and experts. And while that was a lot of fun and those episodes are really, really awesome, we are getting back to our roots here and talking about parenting, just answering questions, just going back to the basics and saying, okay, what questions am I getting? For those who may not know, I have a pretty large social media following. And in that social media following, as well as inside the membership, I also have a membership, as well as on other platforms where people message me about my book, I also have a book. I will get questions all the time. And so this podcast is devoted to answering questions about given topics and themes. And today our theme is questions related to siblings and specifically sibling rivalry. So if you have more than one kid, or perhaps you're planning on having more than one kid in the future, this might be a great episode for you to listen to. As always, you can go like, subscribe, share this podcast wherever you're listening to it, whether that's Apple Podcasts or Spotify. We're always trying to rack up those five-star reviews so that we can get pushed out to more and more people. We can get more and more questions answered. And hey, maybe I'll actually eventually start to make any sort of income off of the podcast instead of just doing it for fun. Uh, for those who are not watching this podcast, but rather listening to it, that's the overwhelming majority of you. Boy, what a difference a week makes. Last week I said that I was back out on the porch for the first time recording episodes in a while, and it was pleasantly warm. It was probably 60 plus degrees on my porch. Last week, the week of Thanksgiving, and man, immediately after Thanksgiving, all of the temperature, all the weather in Chicagoland, I live in Tinley Park, which is just south of the city, southwest of the city. All the weather just turned over, and we got dumped on over the weekend a couple inches of snow, probably more like eight inches at this point. So my weekend was spent plowing out with uh my dad's 15-year-old snowblower. So my dad has died, he died probably eight years ago at this point, and I have his snowblower that he used maybe in the last five years of his life. My, you know, 12, 13, 14-year-old snowblower trying to get it to start again and then clearing out all the snow from my driveway. My kids spent the time building eagle igloos and snowmen, and this year snow dogs, which has been uh the thing. They've been making dog snowmen, which is uh a unique thing. My son built an igloo out of a bunch of deck chairs and plywood and stuff that he found, covered in snow. And so that is where I've been, but that means that out on the porch today it's more like 45 degrees rather than 65 degrees, maybe even less than 45 degrees. I'm sitting under one of those infrared heaters, uh the same type that they use to warm up your pizza when it sits out at whatever pizza store for however long. When you're at a pizza shop and they have all the cheese pizzas or you know, different types of pizza you can buy by the slice and it's sitting under a heater. That's that's what I am. I'm just basically a gas station piece of pizza right now, sitting out under here. Uh, these are also the same things that they have at the at the train station. I remember using these when I was in college, and I went to uh college here in Chicago. I didn't always have my car, and I was sitting out under these things in the middle of the winter, trying to get to and fro. But anyway, that's where I record the podcast from. And uh I'm warm enough at least to answer some questions about sibling rivalry. So let me jump right into the first question, and I call this the earthquake moment question. I don't know why I called it that. My my wife writes these out for me ahead of time. She she organizes them and puts them into a document so that I can answer them fresh and clean without uh having a bunch of time to prepare. And part of that is that I think it it just kind of comes off better, and also uh I think that you it it's able we're able to have a more natural feel and an organic feel to these conversations. This is what I do in my membership, by the way, about once a month. Sometimes I do it more than that. Also, when I sell my course, which I think I'm gonna be selling again pretty soon here. When I sell my course, I do a bunch of these group coachings as part of that that are included in that. But basically what I do every month inside the membership, and I used to do it every week inside the membership, is I just get on a Zoom call with parents and they just rapid fire questions at me. And sometimes it's a bunch of people on the call and I have to answer a question in five minutes, and sometimes it's not very many people on the call, and I can spend 15 minutes on it on a question. But that's what I'm gonna do right now. And my question, my first one comes from Megan in Colorado. She specifies, I don't know, people don't always tell me where they're from, but Megan in Colorado in this case probably knows a little bit about snow. Says, hi John, my two kids, seven and five, are so hot and cold with each other. That's what we were just talking about, hot and cold. Okay. One minute they're building an entire imaginary world together, and next, someone is screaming because a Lego shifted one inch. I get so triggered by the chaos because I grew up in a house where arguments escalated fast. I react like it's an emergency instead of normal development. How do I calm my own nervous system so that I can coach them instead of panicking? Megan, I love this question for a lot of reasons. The first reason that I love this question is that you're framing it around what you can do, what you can control as the parent. And I can't tell you how often I go back to parents over and over and over, and I think I even talked about this last week on the podcast. I have to go back and say, look, there is going to be things that you just cannot control. Kids are going to fight. Kids do, they always fight. This is just part of life. It's part of development. We can talk a little bit, and I'm sure we will get into this with probably a different question, although I don't know, maybe I'll have to fit it in somewhere. But one of the things that I talk about frequently when I talk about siblings is that siblings are wired to compete. And this is not that we should be saying, oh, well, then we should lean into that and we should make them compete more, or we should set up a tiered structure in our home, and everything should be a competition. Far from it. They're going to compete anyway. In fact, we can mitigate and limit some of that competition. It's probably going to be better for them. But they're going to compete and they're going to argue and they're going to fight. And just remember, when your kids were being born, they didn't choose to be born into a family with siblings. You probably didn't ask their consent, although maybe you did. But you even if you did, they were probably too young to really understand what they were consenting to. You didn't ask their consent before you brought another child home. You didn't ask their consent before you had your third or second or third or maybe even fourth, if you're like me, kid. And so understanding that the sibling set that you have, none of them agreed to be siblings with one another. They were born into that. They didn't have, or perhaps adopted into that. They didn't have a choice in the matter. Unlike couples, where we choose who we get to live with, we choose who we get to love and cohabitate with. And we know from massive amounts of research that something between 30% and 50%, depending on how you're measuring, of marriages end in separation and divorce. And so understanding that 30 to 50% of marriages end in separation and divorce, and that are those are the people that we choose. Those are the people who we have intentionally made the call and said, okay, you know what, I want to be with this person. Our kids get no such choice. And so we have to frame things, as Megan is doing here, around the idea of things that we can control, because what we cannot control is how our kids are always going to feel with one another. And they're not always going to feel one way or another. They are going to be some measure of hot and cold. And what you're dealing with in the case of a seven-year-old and a five-year-old is two kids who often seem like they have a level of development that uh seems more like, let's say, a teenager than like a toddler. But that's not always the case. You still have kids who have underdeveloped brains. They lack deep skills for empathy. A seven-year-old and a five-year-old can probably do some perspective taking, and we can talk a little bit about how we can frame that. They can probably do some theory of mind activity of understanding what another person might be experiencing. Those are the basics for empathy. You have to have that foundation, the understanding that other people think different thoughts and they have a different experience of the world than you before you can even have empathy, so they can have some empathy, but they're not going to have bottomless or limitless empathy. Again, adults don't even have bottomless or limitless empathy. And so understanding that we can do some of that, but even in the midst of that, there's still going to be some measure of hot and cold. And some kids have different temperaments. Some kids have different just kind of personalities, they have different developmental structures. You might have one kid who's explosive. And when we talk about explosive kids, oftentimes what we're talking about is a lagging developmental skill for emotional regulation. And so when you could have neurodivergence in this, and you didn't mention that, but there could be, you know, that compli added complication. And so when you combine all of these different factors and the the with the fact that your kids are still underdeveloped, it's not surprising that they will be in an imaginary world together and then suddenly be screaming at one another because, you know, hey, he did that or she did that, and you know, they're going back and forth. And you didn't mention gender here, which is fine, because actually, I think almost too much stock is placed into, well, it's a boy and a girl, and they're so different. Um, no, in in relationships with one another, kids can kind of fall into a variety of categories. It's us who wind up pushing them into those more typical gender norms as their parents. We say, well, you shouldn't behave like this, or or boys are gonna just do this, or girls are just gonna do that. Um we don't need to go there. So you're framing this, Megan, around what you can do. And that was a long thing, uh, which is important to say everything that I just said about siblings in general. But what you're framing this around is what you can do. How can you, in the midst of that chaos, not become escalated? And I think the first tip here is to say that what Megan is asking is the right question. We, if we're ever going to interact with our kids effectively, we have to first regulate ourselves. There's really only been, in my at least from what I've been able to find, there are chapters of good parenting books about siblings. There are really only two good parenting books that are specifically about siblings that I've been able to find. If you have more, please uh send them to me. I would love to read more about this. Uh, but I've spent some good a good amount of time trying to research siblings, and one of them is Peaceful Parent, Happy Siblings, which is the sequel to the book Peaceful Parents Happy Child or something like that, or Peaceful Parent Regulated Child. I don't remember what it is. But the author of that book uh frames her entire premise around the idea that before we interact with our sibling set, our kids who are dysregulated with one another, we first have to regulate ourselves. And so, Megan, the first piece of advice that I would have for you, since you are already asking the right question, and that's usually my first piece of advice, is start asking the right question rather than uh framing the wrong question. If we don't start with the end in mind, we're gonna wind up going down the wrong path. But because you're already asking the right question, I would say, what are those cognitive behavioral therapy tools? What are those emotional regulation tools that you can do in that moment? Because more likely, more than likely, you don't have to jump in in the moment to fix that problem. You said it can I react like it's an emergency instead of that it's understanding that it's just development. Well, what can we tell ourselves in those moments that we won't dive in? Because here's something that I can promise you. If you bring more aggression, more fear, more anxiety into a situation with two kids who are already bickering, fighting, um, just you know, dysregulated with one another, that is only going to add to that. So, what I mean by that is that when two kids are dysregulated, they're kind of feeding off of one another's dysregulation. One thing that we know about human beings is that our emotions are easily like contagious. They're caught. And so when you walk into a room and everybody's anxious, you are more likely, we know, to be anxious. Even if you don't know cognitively that the people in the room are anxious or sad or whatever, you can feel it palpably in the body language. We say something like 75% of all communication is nonverbal. Some people say it's up to 80% or even 85% of communication is nonverbal. The communication that we bring into a scenario with our kids is always going to be based on our actual lived experience. And so you cannot fake it. If you're feeling dysregulated and anxious and feeling like it's just like the end of the world that your kids are fighting, you are going to bring that energy in. And what's going to happen when you bring that energy in is that it's going to become their reality. We call this a self-fulfilling prophecy. What a self-fulfilling prophecy is, is it's when we make a prophecy of what is going to happen, like this is going to be the end of the world, this is going to be so bad. We actually wind up acting in ways that force that to be true. And so what we do in those cases is our kids start fighting over the Lego shifting one inch. We come in going, oh my gosh, you guys have to calm down right now. This is so anxiety-producing, and you everybody needs to be quiet. And our kids feel that and they go, Oh, this is a much bigger deal than I thought it was. Chances are your kids are probably not feeling like this is the end of the world in that moment, even if they're reacting in such a way where they're really trying to make their needs met and felt, which is probably what's happening in this case, even if they are reacting or overreacting so that they can make clear to their sibling that they are not pleased about, you know, either the Lego moving or how they the other sibling reacted to the Lego moving, even if they bring that in, they probably aren't deeply dysregulated yet. Now, here comes a parent that goes, All right, you need to stop fighting right now. And what happens is the kids go, oh, this is actually more of an anxiety-producing scenario. This is actually more of a problem than I think. And so the best thing that we can do in those moments is actually first, nothing at all. Now, if your kids are, you know, about to pick up, I call this the the hammer or you know, the the the you know, first do no harm. The the if your kid's like picking up a hammer to swing at their their sibling or something, you have to intervene and you have to stop that really bad scenario from happening. But most likely that's not what's going on. Even if they're just pulling back their fist to give their sibling a knuckle sandwich or pushing them to the ground, those are not things that are going to cause either child to be hurt in any way that is not the the normal bumps and bruises of everyday life. Am I saying that you should let your kids beat up on each other? Absolutely not. But you that is still not an emergency. The emergency is your kid picks up a hammer and starts swinging at the other kid. Your pick kid picks up a brick. Well, I don't know why you have a brick laying around your house, but occasionally I do because my kids will, I don't know, bring a big rock in from outside that they thought was cool. And they start swinging it at their sibling. Okay, now that's an emergency. You can intervene before you're regulated. But by and large, 90% of scenarios, maybe more, 95% of scenarios, whatever that's happening, you can regulate yourself first. So first thing that you're gonna do, absolutely nothing. This is effective in two ways. One, they may work it out in that moment, which is good problem solving. I'm not saying that they will, they may not. In fact, uh if they're only five and seven, the chances are that they completely work it out on their own every time is basically zero. But sometimes, you know, 10%, 15% of the time, maybe even 25% of the time. And by the way, the more you do this, the the more frequent it'll become. In those moments, they're just gonna work it out. Okay, fine, you take that, I'm gonna go over here. The separate, whatever. In that case, you didn't have to do anything simply by allowing them to navigate the conflict and then processing with them later, you've done the most effective parenting of all. But in other cases, they're not gonna be able to work it out, but it's not life or death. So they're still gonna be fighting. 20 seconds later, when you say to yourself, This is not an emergency, I'm gonna take three really deep breaths before I engage. I'm going to, and I'm just giving you examples here, you can do whichever one you want. I'm gonna find something that I can see, something that I can hear, something I can smell, taste, touch. I'm going to listen as carefully as I can for a quiet noise off in the distance. I'm going to count backwards in the uh with the alphabet, Z, Y, X, W, all the way to A. Whatever you're going to do, whatever cognitive behavioral therapy technique that you want to do in those moments, I'm going to do some tapping, right? This is another one that people can do. I'm not going to give you all of them, but I'm just giving you some. Whatever those things that you're going to do in that moment to regulate yourself, the amount of time that that takes you should be no more than, let's say, 20 seconds, 30 seconds, 40 seconds. And what you're doing in that moment is you're interrupting your own stress cycle. What happens in those moments when you get triggered is that immediately your body goes, There is something at risk. This is an emergency. This is a danger. This is a survival situation for me or my child. What you need to do is any grounding or emotional regulation exercise so that in the next 30 seconds, that sympathetic response, that's what it's called when your body goes into fight or flight, the sympathetic nervous response shifts and either is not fulfilled in that it it or not it's not escalated in that you don't say, yes, this is a scenario where I should be afraid, and you let it dissipate, or you actually do some sort of, you know, vagal simulation, which is what I'm saying with that is there's a nerve, a the tenth cranial nerve is called the vagus nerve, it's the largest cranial nerve in the body, and and deep breathing and things like that will activate that, which then in turn activates your parasympathetic nervous response, which is the antidote to the all of those stress hormones. So your sympathetic nervous response, your kids start fighting, you get flooded with cortisol, you get flooded with adrenaline, then you take some deep breaths, your parasympathetic nervous system kicks in, quiets down all those hormones, and in the span of 30 seconds, instead of jumping into the scenario, you've actually just become the regulating force. Now, we already said at the beginning that whatever we bring into that scenario, if we're bringing in stress and anxiety and fear and just being overwhelmed over stimulation, if we bring that in, our kids are going to feel like, oh my gosh, this is a big deal. I need to worry about this. The same is true if we bring in calm energy, what my wife calls green energy, where we just enter that scenario and go, hey guys, what's going on? Let's let's fix this. Oh, that really hurts. I'm sorry, I'm sorry that that happened. Oh, that's so disappointing that that Lego got moved. Then we can physically impose ourselves, not in an aggressive way, but in a non-aggressive way, to stand between our siblings set so that things don't come to blows if they haven't already. Separate them out and react or uh choose to respond rather than react. And then, once we get our nervous system under control, then, as you said, we can actually coach them through. But if we are panicking, we cannot coach them through. So just remember my long, long, long, long, long-winded answer here is you can do some grounding exercises, you can do some cognitive behavioral therapy techniques, you can do some deep breathing, you can just pause for 30 seconds, 40 seconds. You can say out loud to yourself, I'm safe, my kids are safe. You can say out loud to yourself, this is not an emergency. Any and all of those things that you're doing are helping you to regulate yourself down so that when you enter into that scenario with them, they will regulate themselves down. And even more importantly, you will be able to navigate that conflict without adding to the chaos. So that's how I would enter the scenario first. And then we can do whatever the next questions are. If that makes sense. Okay, I'm gonna take a quick break, and then we're gonna go on to caller or emailer or whatever you want to call it, number two. Alright. Question number two comes from Dan. Dan says, Hey John, my kids are total opposites. One is sensitive and easily overwhelmed, the other is loud and impulsive. Most fights feel like they're really about temperament. I don't want to keep separating them, but they seem to set each other off constantly. How do I help the two completely different kids find a rhythm together? Dan, I love how you're framing this. You have two kids who react in opposite ways. The first piece of advice that I would have for you is it is one thing to describe your kids, which is what I hear you doing here. You are describing their temperaments. You are describing their uh way of going through the world, their personalities, perhaps. Don't allow that to become prescribing. Allow it to maintain and remain describing. You might have one kid who is impulsive and loud, another who is sensitive and quiet. You can know that about your kids without constantly reinforcing that that is their experience. My guess is as your kids grow, one is going to remain more sensitive, more easily overwhelmed, one is going to remain more sensory-seeking. So one's gonna remain more sensory averse, one's gonna remain more sensory-seeking. But my guess is in certain environments, the one who is sensory averse might find that they are very sensory-seeking, and in other environments, the one who is sensory seeking may need a break, may need to step away, may need to go to a calm-down corner or whatever. Don't allow your descriptions of them to become prescriptive. Because when we start to cast kids into roles, we do the whole competition thing much more. The best thing that we can do for our kids is just not compare them to each other, right? So don't compare your kids to each other. It's almost never helpful. Oftentimes we think that it's going to be helpful because it'll be encouraging to the older kid, the younger kid, whatever. Oh, you're this way, you're that way. Oh, you you're doing a really good job at this. Oh, you're doing another good job at this. You're just like your older brother, you're just like your younger sister, whatever. Almost always comparison is the thief of joy, as we say in the therapy world. Um, for kids, comparison is immediately competition. So I love that you're identifying how they are. Let's continue to allow that to be descriptive and not prescriptive. That said, the fact that you're identifying that most of their fights seem to be about temperament, rather than one kid trying to uh impose physically over the other or one kid bullying the other, I think that's helpful because it frames this around development and temperament. Nobody is misbehaving, nobody's being bad, everybody's just kind of doing things to get their needs met, and sometimes the thing that one child is doing to get their needs met is coming in direct conflict with the other child trying to get their needs met. The best thing that we can do in this scenario is to appreciate the differences in our kids without comparing them, and then try and find ways and avenues and positive associations for the relationship. So rather than trying to constantly navigate their fights and be the referee and kind of do everything that we just talked about in the first one, instead, what I would be doing if I were you, and by the way, this goes for Megan and this goes for who's my next person? Lindsay as well, who's gonna come up with her kids later. Whatever you're doing, you're going to need to associate the relationship with positive experiences. So when we talk about the fact that kids are going to fight because they didn't choose to live with each other, because they have underdeveloped brains, because they're thrust into this relationship, whether they like it or not. When all of that may be true and may continue to be true, what we understand is that fighting is going to occur. There's nothing that we can do to prevent all fighting. There's not we can help our kids navigate that fighting, we can help them navigate conflict. And you know what? We should probably have another episode in the future where we just talk about how to deal with these different types of sibling conflict. What do you do when your kids start fighting beyond just regulating yourself? What do you do when your kids can't share? What do you do when your kids argue over this, that, or the other? Your kids don't have trouble taking turns, or your kids, you know, one kid is always getting something that the other kid wants, whatever. The better thing to talk about now, though, rather than trying to play whack-a-mole with all of those different scenarios, is to just say, how often do your kids have positive association and experience in the presence of one another? This can be through parallel play, this can be through family game night, as long as that family game night doesn't become hyper competitive. This can even be through watching movies together or uh sharing in other media together, assuming, again, that that doesn't become a place where one kid always picks the movie, or one kid has to sit through some, you know, movie or audiobook or something that they don't enjoy. So right now, my kids were reading out loud a lot. That's what we've been doing as the weather has turned cold. We've just been narrating a lot. And we have picked certain books that all of the kids like. Now, is it everybody's favorite book? Of course not. But it's something that both of the kids can enjoy while simultaneously being in one another's presence. We have certain games that we can play. We have a Nintendo Switch 1 that we've had for a long time, and my kids almost never play it, but occasionally we'll pull out Mario Kart or something like that. And we like to try and find, it's probably a bad example because that's a competitive game, although my kids don't compete with it because um they tend to do like team races. We will find ways where they can achieve together. And if there's going to be competition, if there's going to be winning and losing, I always try and frame that around them winning and or losing together. So they're winning or losing against mom and dad. They're winning or losing against dad. They're wrestling with me, but they're on the same team. They're not fighting with each other. And every time our kids have a positive association experience with their sibling, a neural pathway is reinforced in their brain between, wow, I had a really fun time, and in the case of my kids, you didn't name your kids, Matt, my the oldest, was there, if it was Ollie talking, or Matt might say, I had a really positive experience. And Liam and Margot, the two younger kids, were there. And I cannot express how important it is to just say that in the case of many siblings, almost all of the interactions that they have are negative. They never hang out with their sibling in a positive way. Every single interaction is about who gets this and who's getting that and who's right and who's wrong. And the more times our kids come to negatively associate with the uh the experience of living with their sibling, the more time that they're going to find negative things about their sibling that they don't like. And this is uh just part of the nature of the way that our life is set up is that our kids have a lot of experiences together. They spend a ton of time together. And a lot of people think, well, that's just gonna lead to a ton of fighting. Actually, often kids need to spend more time together, not less time together, more time figuring out how to fund together. Because, as I said, some degree of fighting is going to occur. So, do my kids fight with each other? Absolutely, but the majority, 51% at least, is my goal. 51% of their interactions are in some way positive. Even if those interactions are not directly with one another, they may not even be with one another, but they may be together at a bowling alley and they may not be competing with one another, or they may be together. That was a bad example. We've like never done that, but they might be together at the library doing totally separate things with one than one another, but Hey, my sibling was there and I had a good time. And that's that repeated experience. My sibling was there and I had a good time. My sibling was there and I had a good time. As long as that outweighs my sibling was there and we were fighting the whole time. My sibling was there, and every single time they show up, they're just such a nasty little bum-blah blah blah blah and I hate them. The more time that we have the positive experiences, the more time we can benefit outweigh those negative experiences. So, Dan, the challenge for you is going to be what are experiences that these, as you've said, opposites, the sensitive one and the impulsive one, the loud one and the sensory-seeking one and the sensory averse one, what are those experiences that can feel good for both kids? That's the challenge. And what I would encourage you to do is go sit down with a paper, paper, and pencil. And I would literally write down, okay, what are the places where my kids have had fun together in the past? What are those experiences like? You might not be able to find many of them. Okay, go back to your childhood. What are some things that I like to do when I was growing up? For my kids, yesterday it was playing in the snow, right? They just went outside with my wife, my oldest and my um second youngest, the the second oldest, Oliver, he's sick right now. He's downstairs with my in-laws. He's sick right now, he's home from sick from school. He didn't feel like going outside. We didn't push it, we didn't press it. You have to go outside, right? We just said, okay, go outside. And one of the things that my oldest, my nine-year-old, kept repeating to my wife over and over while she was playing outside with uh his three-year-old little brother and him, was he just kept saying, Wow, mom, this is so fun. Well, every time he does that, he is building a neural pathway in his brain. Liam was there and it was so fun. And now let me tell you, sometimes Liam being there makes things not fun for Matt. Sometimes Matt being there makes things not fun for Liam. Although this is less common because as the older sibling, the younger sibling tends to want to be around him more. But he just said, kept saying over and over, wow, this is so fun, Mom. And that's an example of a time when they're just building that positive association. So, Dan, that's your challenge. Your challenge this week or today, right now, is to sit down with that paper and pencil and write down the experiences that they can have. Some of those experiences, you're gonna be wrong. They're gonna you're gonna sit down with them, they're gonna try and do this thing, and it's gonna devolve and they're gonna be fighting. And then you just cross that one off the list and go, we don't have to do that again. Right? You don't have to make a big deal about it, but we don't have to do that again. Let's find something else. You might find that your kids really, really like doing one thing or another thing. Let me just say one thing before I'm done with this question and move on to the next one. They're the things that are often billed as family bonding, like I think the the greatest example of this is the game sorry from my childhood. A lot of times they're billed, is like you watch the the ad for that, or you see the the on the box on the cover of the box, there's this family and they're all laughing and playing this sorry game together. Kids don't do well with games like sorry, which are fundamentally about kind of screwing over the other person, which I'm sorry to use that type of language, but you know, just just getting one over on the other person. Kids are not gonna do well with that because that's gonna be very dysregulating for them. So the challenge is find things that aren't just cut constantly grounded around how can I, you know, beat my sibling. Find things that are more fun. Again, they can just be parallel play, they can be playing with Legos, but in the same room, whatever that looks like. And I promise you, you're gonna find so much good that comes from that. This is not a short-term solution, Dan. This is a long-term solution for anybody listening. This is the type of stuff that I tell people to do when they want siblings who are gonna be together for life. It's this is not like a quick fix, oh, you just do this, and like the next time they fight, they'll never fight again. Again, kids are gonna fight, but this is how we build long-term association in their brain that can lead to positive change. All right, last question here, and it is about sharing, according to my wife. That's the note that I have. Let me get into that after a quick break. This one comes from Lindsay. The question is this She says, Hey John, my six-year-old and my four-year-old turn sharing into a competitive sport. Even if they have the same toy, if one sibling is holding it, it becomes priceless. I spend half my day breaking up battles over things that no one cared about five minutes earlier. How do I teach them to share without losing my mind over these dramatic and ridiculous fights? Okay, Lindsay, I probably should have an entire episode devoted to sharing, but I'm gonna give you a quick hit tip for sharing that really can put a positive spin on sharing in general. First thing that I would say is if you can pay close attention and play hard with the kid who is not getting the turn, you can flip sharing on its head. Why? Because kids would rather our presence and our attention than that toy. Even if they don't think in the moment that that's how they feel. I promise you, if you start playing hard with whatever toy your kid has in, you know, in associate, you know, in instead of that toy that they want, that their sibling is playing with. Whatever your presence, your attention is more valuable than that toy. And so very quickly, you can reduce the amount of sharing fights almost instantly by just paying attention and giving a lot of credence and relationship and attention to that one kid who is not getting that sharing. Now, you're not always going to be able to do that, but that's a really quick and easy way to really turn sharing on its head. Because all of a sudden that toy will be cast aside and your the other kid who had the toy wants to play with you as well. And that's okay, right? They throw the toy to the side. You can then redirect your other kid, hey, do you want to turn with that while I play with them? And all of a sudden, you can just really kind of flip that. And if this is a common thing that happens all the time, we're gonna need to set up a better permanent solution. But if you're just having a really quick, okay, we're out at the library or we're out at the wherever, and we're having a family gathering around the holidays, and they're both fighting over one toy, and you want to just quickly navigate that, that's probably the easiest way to do it. The next thing is to set down some sort of rules. And maybe I should just have an episode called Rules for Living, uh, rules in a in a multi-sibling household. But one of the rules that I think that you should set down for sharing is actually what objects do not have to be shared first. Why do I say this? Because with a six-year-old and a four-year-old, they're at this time, this formational time, when they are finally experiencing the true autonomy, what it is, you know, starting school, starting preschool, whatever, to be their own individual person with their own desires and likes and needs and wants. Now, this has to occur before they can become empathetic people who can perspective take and say, oh, well, this is what I want and need and would like, and now here's this other person who's come along and maybe they don't want the same thing as me. But they first have to understand what's what they how they exist in the world. And part of understanding how they exist in the world is understanding what belongs to them and what does not belong to them, what is shared. And this is something that many adults never learned. And as a result, adults get greedy. They want everything for themselves because they can't imagine having something that is shared. They can imagine having something that is just collectively owned. But in your home, you get to build whatever type of socialist utopia that you want to. Because guess what? You're the one funding it. So what I would say, and what I have done personally, and it's been massively effective, is that every single kid has a box or a drawer in their room that is their stuff. And by when I say it's their stuff, I mean this is non-sharing items, no negotiation over this. If they have an item in that box and uh their sibling really desperately wants it, I'll buy two of them. Now you can see how expensive this could get in a hurry, except that their box is actually not very big. So this is one of the top dresser drawers. This isn't a big wide dresser drawer. This is, you know, a small, let's say, nine by nine dresser drawer that maybe fits a little bit more than a shoebox, and like a you know, a medium-sized box. I'm not talking about medium-sized from the hardware store. Those are huge. I'm talking, you know, a small box, something, you know, a little bit bigger than a shoebox. And anything that can fit within that box, that is their toy. Now, it's some, and they can they don't have to share that toy. If they want to play with that toy for 100% of the day and never give it to their sibling, that is their right. And you might have to buy two of them, but again, they're small. There are certain things that aren't allowed to go in that box. Like, like I said, we in our house we have a Nintendo Switch. The switch cannot go in somebody's box. That's not fair. But you know, a new toy that they got for their birthday or for Christmas or something that they saved up their own money for or something like that, those things can go in that box. They also all have one stuffed animal that is just theirs. It doesn't have to fit in the box, but it's just theirs. Why do I say that it's important to give them things that are just theirs before they understand sharing? Because until a child understands what is only theirs, that they do not have to share. And by the way, before you say, well, you know, me and my partner share the toaster, and me and my partner share the uh TV, and me and my partner navigate differences uh and and share everything in our house. We share everything. Everything belongs to all of us. Um no, it doesn't. No, it doesn't. Uh you don't let your partner share with your phone. Now maybe they need to use your phone for this, that, or the other occasionally. Maybe your kids want to use your phone for this, that, and the other occasionally. But by and large, if you're using your phone, if you're on a phone call, your partner can't just walk up to you and take it out of your hands and say, it's my turn now, the timer went off. You have stuff that belongs to you that you don't let other people touch either. Right? That's just part of life. So don't think that this is that you're much better than your kids in this way. Uh your kids need to understand that there are certain things that belong to them that other people can't just take without their consent. Now, once they understand this principle that other people cannot just take their stuff without their consent, now everything that doesn't fit in the box becomes something that is shared. In order to understand what is not theirs, they first have to understand what is theirs. You see what I'm saying? So giving them things that they don't have to share simultaneously makes it very clear what is theirs and also what is not theirs. What is a sharing toy? And my kids will fight with each other over this sometimes when they say, that's out of your box, that's a sharing toy. Now, when it comes to who gets to use what when, this is a matter of debate. And I'm writing a book, I'm trying to write the proposal for a book about siblings right now, and there are different phrase frameworks for this. Can do we have terms, turns that are a timer that's set and everybody can abide by the timer? Are there turns that are unlimited in length, but they reset after the end of the day? There are different authors who have different ideas about how to do the sharing of the shared stuff, but I promise you, the first step is not actually any of that. It's not to create a timer schedule or a sticker chart about who's good sharing. The first step, by and large, is to just give them things that they don't have to share and then allow everything else to fall into that category of sharing things. And overnight, almost, especially for the four-year-old, but I would think for the six-year-old as well, overnight you're gonna see a lot of the frivolous sharing just fall off. Because really what kids are doing when they're not wanting to share is that they're saying, if I give this thing up and I don't share it, I'm never gonna get it back. So that's their feeling, right? That's that's their emotion, that's their fear. They're experiencing what we call loss aversion, which is the tendency for the human mind to greatly overinflate the value of losing something rather than the value of gaining something. This is why if I told you, hey, if you uh go shoot that basket over there, and it's a really easy basket, right? I'll give you$5, every single person would do that. But if I said, but if you miss, I'm gonna take$5 from you, all of a sudden, a lot of people would not do it anymore. Even though the value of it is like, well, is it a 50-50 shot to make it? Probably better odds that I'm gonna make it. It's probably more worth my time to uh to try it, at least, even if I fail. That's okay. That's not how our brains work. Overvalue losing something more than gaining something else. So uh the best advice that I have for you is to understand that that's what's going on in their brain, and then give them things that they don't have to share. It's gonna make your life so much easier than constantly trying to have battles over every single thing. Have the non-sharing items and then have the sharing items. That'll be a huge thing. And then the last piece of advice here, and I'm not gonna give you the timer scenario or the turns, and I'll do that in a later episode, maybe one specifically devoted to sharing where I give you these different options of ways to do sharing. The last thing that I'll say is the best thing in the world for you to do after you've developed this, these rules about sharing and understanding why kids don't want to share, is to speak in that self-fulfilling prophecy that we talked about in the last question, to self-fulfilling prophecy sharing, to say, you know what, you're such a good sharer to both of your kids. Oh man, you're such a good sharer. Not just when they're sharing, even when they're not sharing, even when it has nothing to do with sharing. You say, you know what I was just thinking about the other day? You're so good at sharing. When when your little brother, your little sister wants something, or when your big brother or your big sister wants something, you always think about what they're what they want and you often will give it to them. Now, this may feel like manipulation, but really what it is is that you're just manifesting in them the permission to be that person. And understand what your kids, what you say to your kids becomes their inner voice. And so if you say all the time, you're great sharer, I know sometimes it's hard, but really, by and large, you are a great sharer, kid. They're gonna come to associate great sharing with me and what I am, and I think about others, and I'm a caring person. And so understanding that allows you to kind of speak that into your kids' life. And I promise you, along with everything else we've talked about today, that is going to be one of the most beneficial things you can do. Whatever you want your kid to internalize about themselves is the things that you're going to tell them. If you constantly tell your kids, you're so bad, you're so wild, I can never control you, you never listen, they won't. Oh, you're always hurting your brother. Why can't you just get along? Why are you so mean? They will be. You're a great sharer. I know it's hard sometimes. I know patience can be really challenging for you, but you have just as much a capacity to share as everybody else. And I believe in you. It too will become true. Okay. That's what I have about siblings today. We've reached the end of our time. But uh, as always, I just want you to all know that I think if you're already listening to this, if you've made it through 45 minutes of this episode already, I promise you, I think you're a great parent already. And so if you have kids who fight, if you have siblings who don't get along all the time, if you have siblings who struggle to share, if you have kids who have personalities that just don't mesh, if you have kids who just fight like cats and dogs, I still think you're a great parent. And over time, if you do this stuff, it's going to come to fruition. Remember, we're thinking long-term here, right? We're not just preventing fights when they're in middle school or grade school or when they're toddlers. That's a nice thing to have happen. And I hope that this advice helps you to prevent many fights in your home. But really remember that the goal here is how your kids interact with one another from the ages of 30 to 90 years old. Two-thirds of their life is going to be dictated by how they view one another, not over who gets that toy right now. And so I want you to parent in that way, understanding that excellent parenting leads to kids who can be lifelong friends, even if they can't be friends right now, in this moment. It can still be positive. Okay, I'll see you in the next one. Do all the things. Take care, everybody. Thank you again for listening to this episode of the Whole Parent Podcast. If you are listening to this right now, yes, you in your car driving somewhere on a walk with your kids, perhaps your kids are melting down and you're listening to this on your headphones with the noise cancellation turned on. Whatever you're doing while you're listening, doing the dishes at night after your kids go to bed, I don't know. That would just be me if I was listening. Stop right now. I have three quick favors to ask you. I promise they're not going to take you very long. The first one, very, very easy. Go in to wherever you're listening to this podcast and rate it five stars. That's one, two, three, four, five stars. The more five star reviews that our podcast gets as we accumulate episodes, the more likely it is to be pushed out to more parents who are searching for parenting podcasts to solve their problems. Whatever you got out of this episode, whether it was something that to try with your kids, whether it was a new way to think about parenting, maybe this episode was not specifically about a problem that you're having, but you're somebody in your life who's having this problem. Go in and rate it five stars. And if you have an additional 30 seconds, that first one only takes you 10 seconds. If you have an additional 30 seconds, just type a few words for me to read. I'd love to read, I'd love to read the reviews. If there's something specific that's helped you, write it out. It helps me to know what we should keep doing here on the podcast, week in and week out. The second question that I have for you, or request that I have for you, favor, let's call it, is to share this episode with somebody in your life who you think could use it. Uh, it might be a parent, another parent in your kid's class. It might be a sibling who has young kids, maybe it's your kid's teacher or a faith leader in your life, whomever it is that you think should have this episode of the podcast or any episode of the podcast, send it directly to them. I know it's vulnerable to share podcasts with people who you might not have that close of a relationship with, or even more vulnerable if you do have a close relationship with them. But I promise you, so many of the people who listen to this podcast listened not because they followed me on social media, but because they got a personal recommendation from somebody in their life who said, Hey, this guy has a way of talking about parenting that just works for me. You don't know if they listen to it or not, they might never reply, but maybe, just maybe, they'll love the episode so much that they become your new parenting partner out there in the world, doing things the same way that you are, and you might have just made your new parenting bestie. The last thing that you can do is definitely the biggest ask for me, but it is to go over to Substack. That link is down below in the bio, and to subscribe so that these episodes can keep coming to you. Paid subscriptions on Substack is the only way currently that I am being funded here on the Whole Parent Podcast. That is the only money that I receive. It is$5 a month. I think that this podcast is worth the price of a coffee for you. If it's not worth the price of a coffee for you, obviously don't do it. But if you're extra cheap like me, you can just subscribe annually. I know that you're gonna listen for the rest of the year. If you know that you're gonna listen for the rest of the year, just give me 50 bucks up front, and then you don't have to think about it coming out of your credit card every single month. Those are the ways that you can support me. And as always, I think that you're a great parent already. But I do hope this episode gave you something to make you a little bit better. Take care.
