Sibling Rivalry - Part 2

This is the second in a series of articles on sibling rivalry. The first article described the results of a poll taken at parent.com regarding the relationship between the siblings. Not surprisingly, one-third of the respondents reported that the relationship between their children "shifts between truce and war." These statistics hint at the inherent struggles between children within a family. Children compete for their parents' time attention, love and approval.

Looking at this situation in very simple terms, if the parents have only a certain limited amount of exclusive (one-on-one) time to give to ALL their children, it is easy to see that if there is only ONE child in that family, ALL of the parents' available time will be for that only child; if there are TWO children in the family, then each child can have HALF of the parents' time; if there are THREE children, then each child gets a THIRD; and so on. But of course, sibling rivalry is much more complex than a simple division of parental time.

A good place to begin is by identifying the feelings fueling these behaviors. The focus of this month's article is helping you, the parent, better understand and get in touch with the feelings the sibs in your family may be experiencing.

To that end, I encourage you to participate in a little exercise to help you get in touch with how your child might be feeling. I believe that good parenting requires the development of empathy. Empathic parenting requires you to strive to understand how your child might be feeling about something or someone. An excellent way to develop empathy is to imagine how you would feel in a similar situation. So let's try it.

Imagine yourself at work; choose a past or present job you have held, preferably one in which your role and function was similar to that of many other workers. If you haven't held such a job, imagine yourself as a first-time secretary in a pool of secretaries. You have been working at this job for about 6 months and while you enjoy the work, you are unsure of your competency level. You have tried to establish a good rapport with your boss but sometimes you feel unsure about the viability of your future with this company. The economy is shaky and during the last six months business has not been good.

You arrive at work as usual on Monday morning, and to your amazement, there is a new worker sharing the workspace that was previously all yours. Of course you do remember your boss casually mentioning hiring additional staff, but somehow, until the person showed up for work, it wasn't real. Your boss asks you to show him/her around and "teach him the ropes." Naturally your work suffers as much of your time is spent acclimating the new worker. Over lunch he tells you about his previous work experience and you realize that he is much more qualified than you! You begin to worry, big time, about what all of this means. After lunch, as you do your work, it's apparent that he types faster and knows much more about the computer than you. What's more, he has the nerve to offer assistance to you whenever you might need it. And to top it all off, he seems really nice. Over the next few days, your boss spends a lot of time with the new worker. They even have lunch together. The new worker asks you to join them, but you decline. Friday afternoon, you make several personal calls between work assignments and feel as though the "new guy" is watching you, that he disapproves, and may talk to the boss about it. During your weekly one-on-one meeting with your boss, you are told that you need to work more efficiently and that others have mentioned a deterioration in your attitude since the new worker came on board. Your boss's last remarks to you are, "I expect your attitude to improve or we will need to be making some changes around here. We'll talk again next week."

Stay within the experience I have described. Put down this article, close your eyes and be that secretary. Think about how the scenario of adding a new worker might have been handled differently and how that might have helped you. Try to be the first worker, put your self in his position. Imagine what would have helped. Open your eyes and return your attention to the room. Make a list of feelings you experienced. See how your list compares to the one that follows.

Camaraderie
Friendship
A sense of competence and incompetence
Fear
Anger
Resentment
Feelings of exclusion
Feeling as though you were being used, both by boss and new worker
Worry about the future
Hope that it will be ok
Competitive
Excited
Challenged (positively and negatively)

Now, make a list of the ways the boss in this exercise could have handled the very same situation in a different manner. Review my list below and if you notice actions you hadn't considered, think about adding that to your list.

Preparation
Consideration of space issues
Honest communication
Activities of inclusion and relaxed fun

How have you handled or planned on handling adding a new child to your family or dealing with sibling issues. Hopefully this experiential activity helped put you in touch with some of the thoughts and feelings that fuel sibling rivalries.