[HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Sibling rivalry

[Laura Ingalls Huntley]

Anna:
> Well, I try to think that I don't consciously favor one over the
> other but I know I probably do: my youngest. And probably because I
> know he's my last.  His personality is also overwhelming.  He's a
> born politician; I can see him being class president, captian of the
> football team, valedictorian, yada, yada, yada.  SOOO different than
> the other two, and perhaps they see it too.  But he's also the
> instigator.  He LOVES to tease his sister, or egging his older
> brother on.  He has always wanted to be like them; wanting to do
> homework and projects when they had to.
> But they just think he's a pain in the neck (I'll keep this G rated).
> The older two just don't want him around.

Well, the way you've described it, if I were any of your other 
children, I'd hate him with a fiery passion, too!

I'm going to give you advice based on my personal experience, and I 
don't think it would level with whatever the Ph. D.'s are saying right 
now, and I *know* it's going to sound counterintuitive to you, but here 
it is.

Ignore it.

Yes, I know it's pretty impossible, but if your family is anything like 
mine, it's the best you can do.

At the very least, for the love of God, *don't* try to mediate these 
things.  You will *always* come off as favoring one or the other, and 
this will make and anger/hatred/jealously that exists between your kids 
even greater.  I know my brother and I didn't cut each other a break 
until my younger sister came along - nine years after my brother was 
born - and my mother made it an "us against her" situation.  I really 
felt badly for my brother at this juncture, actually.  He was born when 
I was two and a half, and therefore I don't really remember what life 
was like without  him.  Poor Jason, though.  Nine years of being the 
Baby, and suddenly he's bumped into the role of an older sibling.  I 
just don't understand it.  Rationally, I can understand why a mother 
might automatically take the side of a two year old rather than a 11 
year old, but what is this sentiment about "the last one"?  What's so 
much more important about them?  Aren't *all* kids equally their 
mother's babies?

Anyway, back to the topic.  Some siblings get along great, some have 
calm arguments, some fight bitterly.  If yours are the fighting 
bitterly type, I really don't think there is anything you can do to 
stop it and several things you can do to make it worse.  I mean, I'm 
sure the situation is much more complicated than what you've described, 
but don't you think your kids can sense everything you told us?  What 
sort of pressures do you think that puts on all of them?  Will the 
older ones feel like there's no point in striving, since you don't 
expect as much of them anyway?  Will the younger one feel so pressured 
to succeed that he'll fear really trying for risk of failing anyway?

I don't really know the answers to these questions, and I probably 
still wouldn't even if I knew every nuance of your family's situation.  
  However, in my experience (and I will tell you right now that it is a 
very limited experience), trivial fighting over teasing/toys/etc. 
between siblings is actually much less worse than it seems to be to a 
parent.  The bitterest feelings are often the result of parental 
intervention and pressures.

So, I guess what all of this works up to is that, IMHO, you should just 
let them work it out on their own.  I don't really know if it's good 
advice, but it's what I wish my mother would have done for me.

Actually, maybe you should ask them what they think.  At the very 
least, a heartfelt plea for peace and an earnest discussion about how 
you could help them get along might guilt trip them into taking their 
fights to a slightly lower decibel/violence rating.  For a couple days, 
at any rate.

Laura (who is never going to have children, because they seem like 
horribly sensitive, delicate, and complicated little monsters, and 
she'd probably mess them all up so spectacularly that it would take 
*decades* of therapy to sort them out.)