Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too

remember my own bewilderment and rage at finding the baby with two long scratches on his back and my three-year-old standing there with an evil little grin on his face. What a mean, rotten kid! Why would he do it?

The parent can show her how to stand up for herself.

Children are also entitled to adult intervention when necessary. If one child is being abused by the other, either physically or verbally, we’ve got to step in. If there’s a problem that’s disrupting the entire household, we’ve got to step in. If there’s a problem that keeps coming up that hasn’t yielded to their solutions, we’ve got to step in.

Don’t withhold your affection or attention from your “favorite child” in order to make it up to a less favored child. Some

When parents take the stance: ‘In this house I’m the one who’s going to decide who has to share, who gets to keep; what’s reasonable, what’s unreasonable; who is right, who is wrong,’ the children end up becoming more dependent upon the parent and more hostile towards their siblings.

Dad: You think that babies have everything done for them and that being a baby is fun. Michael: Yes. Daddy would you like to be a baby or not?

“Instead of worrying about the boys becoming friends,” I explained, “I began to think about how to equip them with the attitudes and skills they’d need for all their caring relationships. There was so much for them to know. I didn’t want them hung up all their lives on who was right and who was wrong. I wanted them to be able to move past that kind

Don’t get trapped by “togetherness.”

you don’t have to take sides when kids fight.