7 Tips Against Jealousy Between Siblings
For children, a sibling is often both a curse and a blessing at the same time: they have a new playmate, but also someone who steals their mum’s attention. 7 tips against jealousy.
When the big sister holds her little brother in her arms for the first time, she is not very enthusiastic – as her facial expression clearly shows. The parents posted the video on Facebook, where it has already received over three million hits:
https://www.facebook.com/NowThisNews/videos/392392831583366/
This of course raises the question: Does she not like her little brother? And usually the answer is: Yes, of course she likes him. Often children are just afraid of being disadvantaged by their mum and dad if a sibling suddenly appears. The lost time with the parents makes the first-born sad. And it is precisely this feeling of being disadvantaged that can arouse envy among siblings.
Promoting fraternal love instead of punishment
Most often, a kind of rivalry between siblings occurs when the age difference between them is less than three years. To find out who mum or dad takes sides, the siblings provoke each other.
Parents should only intervene at this point in an emergency. Children often solve their conflicts very well without parental help. Every conflict between siblings also has a positive long-term effect: the children gain new experiences that prepare them for the rest of their lives.
By the way, punishment for jealousy often does not work anyway when it comes to curbing this jealousy between siblings. Much more peace can be promoted by encouraging brotherly love. With these 7 tips you can fight jealousy among siblings:
1. Make no comparisons
“But your sister did it better!” or “Look how beautifully your brother can do it!” parents should definitely hold back. In the short and medium term it can stir up jealousy between siblings, in the long term it can cause feelings of inferiority in the disadvantaged child. In the worst case, the child will take revenge on the sibling to vent his or her anger and humiliation.
2. Promote the strengths of the children individually
Every child is unique – and so are its strengths and weaknesses. Parents should focus on the individual strengths of their children and highlight them. In this way, every child learns from an early age to feel unique and special. In the long term, they grow up with a healthy self-confidence and can benefit from this in later life.
3. Spend equal time with the children
Time is our most important resource – children notice and sense this from an early age. Where parents distribute their time unevenly among children, the scope for fraternal jealousy increases. However, if parents make sure that they spend the same amount of time with each child and divide their time fairly between them, they prevent possible time jealousy.
4. Emphasize commonalities among siblings
As mentioned above, promoting brotherly love is an effective means of preventing jealousy among them. And what better way to stimulate love than through common ground?
Although each child is an individual with its own personality, most siblings also have a lot in common. Do both like playing football? Do both like to help with baking? Do both like to play on the playground? It is important to emphasize and encourage these similarities.
5. Give common praise
If you praise one of your children, you should not leave the sibling unmentioned. If only one of them has just achieved something, e.g. played a song on the guitar, one should not only praise his performance, but also flatter the sibling for having listened so attentively and calmly. It is even better to praise the children for joint activities. Sentences like “You played great Lego together” or “You cleaned your room together, great!” bring the siblings together.
By the way: When praising, parents should formulate as concretely as possible – children notice when the attention is only superficial. So: Better use “The bird you painted has great feathers” instead of “Your picture is beautiful! The more precise the praise, the greater the child’s joy.
6. Treat children fairly
The characters of children differ from one another from an early age. Perhaps one child is calmer, more introverted – the other more lively, more talkative.
In this case, fair treatment does not mean that both should sing in front of the whole team at the next family party – what is great fun for one child could be a nightmare for the reserved child. He would feel unfairly treated and become jealous of his sibling – after all, he had probably mastered this performance with flying colours, while he himself had failed. Treating a child fairly always means treating it appropriately to its personality.
7. Do not push a child into a negative role
If you label your child as a “crybaby”, “sensitive” or “bully”, you force him or her into a negative role. If the child repeatedly only hears its weaknesses, it will identify with them in the long run – and strengthen these very qualities. At the same time, parents subconsciously develop a preference for the other sibling, which is neither a “crybaby” nor a “charlatan” – preferential treatment is foreseeable, as is growing jealousy among the siblings.
To avoid this, parents should always focus on the strengths of each child. Maybe the big brother is not as musical as the little sister – but maybe he is much more organized than she is.