Laurie Kramer is a professor of Applied Psychology at Northeastern University who studies sibling conflict. She believes that parents can always come up with something even though conflicts between siblings are unavoidable. Her long-standing research on sibling relationships suggests that there are a number of important skills and tools that parents can master to help their children resolve conflicts peacefully between one another. The research found that mothers who had negative interactions with their own siblings were likely to raise children with comparatively positive relationships. This is because mothers who consciously raise their kids to get along know that great relationships require work.
Kramer developed a program called More Fun With Sisters & Brothers in 2018. It offers free lessons in conflict management for children, specifically on how to get along with their siblings while helping the parents control their own negative emotions that might arise when mediating issues between their children. Nearly 300 parents have registered for the program so far.
With years of studying the interactions between parents and their children, and children and their siblings, Kramer has identified some skills for maintaining positive and fulfilling sibling relationships well into adulthood. Here are some:
Communication: It is important for children to effectively communicate and engage with their siblings, for example, to ask them to play with them, and to understand when a sibling doesn’t feel like playing.
Perspective-taking: Children benefit from cultivating the ability to regard the needs, interests, and desires of their siblings as being just as important as their own.
Managing negative emotions: Being able to manage some of the negative emotions that kids experience when they’re dealing with a sibling who is frustrating them can be crucial.
Learning how to manage conflicts: Children find ways to resolve their disagreements with their siblings.
Collaborative problem-solving is the best strategy for parents to manage their children’s conflicts. Here, parents ask both children for their sides of the story and what they want to see happen and then act as coaches or mediators to help their kids figure out a mutually satisfactory solution to the problem.
However, parents must avoid:
Threatening: This can take the form of making declarations such as “If you don’t stop fighting, you’ll be punished.”
Separating children or ignoring the conflict: Against the advice offered in parenting books, this is one of the least effective ways to address an issue between siblings.
Shahjadi Jemim Rahman