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Supporting Sibling Friendships
by Patty Wipfler
Some overall assumptions:
- Children are naturally deeply interested in other children, and are
drawn to each other. They want to love and be loved by each other.
- Children have giant-sized needs for warm, relaxed attention from
adults. They legitimately need our availability, our direct attention,
and our ability to think about their needs.
- When children don't get the attention they require, it creates an
emotional hurt. Every child has been hurt in this way--we don't have
enough resource around young children to prevent them from feeling disappointed
and rebuffed.
- Often, children store these feelings up, because there's no one available
to listen to how they feel.
- Then, when a parent pays obvious attention to a sibling, another adult,
or on the telephone, the child with stored hurts notices the attention
going to someone other than him. This restimulates his feelings
of need, which feel urgent even if he has had lots of attention. The
feeling of need is "frozen" into the child because the stored hurt hasn't
yet been released.
- The way children naturally (but highly inconveniently) release their
feelings of hurt and regain their sense of satisfaction with their lives
is through laughter, crying, tantrums, raging, perspiring, and trembling.
When they are upset, they gravitate toward showing feelings, either
directly, or by pursuing behavior that you must stop, creating a trigger,
or pretext, that opens their feelings up with you close by.
- Listening to a child's feelings without judgment, lecture, or
blame is a great way to help your child recover from his upset with
you or with a sibling. At the end of a good cry, a child has much
more room for love and cooperation, because his upset has been heard
and dissolved.
- Our children's squabbles restimulate lots of old feelings in us,
so that it's often hard for us to intervene without causing more hurt.
We need listening time to help us work through our frustrations and
our fears about their upsets they have. We need a chance to release
the feelings that rise in us when the fighting starts.
Some reassurances:
- Every child has feelings of jealousy and anger toward siblings.
- These are never the only feelings a child has, although they
are often the major feelings we, the parents, notice.
- Most children spend lots of time loving and cooperating with their
siblings and the needs of their siblings. We parents tend not to
notice this. When the children are getting along fine, we often have
our attention directed on other tasks--cleaning, cooking, doing laundry,
working all day.
Practices that will help keep you in good contact with
each child:
- Regular "Special Time" with each child helps keep children's sense
of your caring for them intact. When times get hard, they are able to
work through their feelings more easily, because you've "been there"
for them recently.
- Intervene with your attention, or with 5 minutes of "special time"
at the first hint that one child is going "off track." Catching a difficulty
early gives you a chance to connect with your child before your
upsets have brewed, and before someone has been hurt or insulted. It's
always easier to connect with a child before any upsets have been acted
out at a sibling.
- Apologize when you didn't get there in time to prevent a fight.
"I'm sorry I didn't notice how upset you were! I didn't get here in
time to keep hard things from happening! Tell me what went on." Your
children will be able to like each other more easily after the fight
if neither is blamed for the upset. They also well be better able to
release their feelings of hurt if you take responsibility for keeping
things safe in the family.
- When you've arrived at a fight scene, keep the children from hurting
each other. Allow all the crying and raging you can stand.
Try to have gentle physical contact with both children (or firm contact,
if you're keeping them from hurting each other), and take it slow. Ask
them in turn what the matter is, and listen back and forth. The release
of feelings is the most important thing. Give the situation time--a
hurried solution won't stick well.
- You will have many times when one child has hurt another and run
away. Vary your response, sometimes spending only a minute with
the victim, and going to pay attention to the aggressor, other times,
spending time with the victim first. Both children need your help. Usually,
the agressor child feels guilty, and looks like he couldn't care less
about his sibling. Don't be fooled. This child has "gone remote" and
can't show feelings, but he didn't want to get lost in upset, and needs
your love to get back to himself again.
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