No one squabbles as hard, as long and as often as brothers and sisters \u2013 over toys, clothes, music, who is most loved, who has the best life \u2026 But there are ways to detoxify almost any relationship
T<\/span>he other day I was casually denigrating an only child in front of a friend who I didn\u2019t realise was also an only child. I probably said something like, \u201cI love her, but she\u2019s a bit of an only child,\u201d meaning, well, whatever nonsense I meant. I\u2019ve got a whole bunch of siblings and step-siblings, as well as more than one kid, so I clearly wasn\u2019t talking about my own lived experience. It opened up a conversation that we don\u2019t normally have in front of one another \u2013 people with siblings, people without \u2013 because we\u2019re too polite.
My friend said he understood everything: how to share, how to negotiate, how to think of others, how to look at things from another\u2019s perspective, how to resolve conflict, how to have conflict in the first place \u2013 all the things only children were supposed not to get, he got. \u201cBut I do not get siblings. I just don\u2019t understand why you put yourselves through it.\u201d
Ah, the elemental question, which many of us never ask ourselves because we\u2019ve been doing it since the day we were born: why do we put ourselves through it? \u201cIt\u2019s the longest relationship of your life,\u201d says Guardian agony aunt Annalisa Barbieri<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s really, really influential.\u201d Even if you\u2019re estranged, this remains true: you may not see them, but that doesn\u2019t mean you have no relationship with them. However good this incredibly long relationship is, you\u2019ll spend at least a portion of it driving each other crazy: the years nought to five, fighting over the same toy; the years five to 10, wanting to do exactly the opposite thing from one another, so that no one can do anything; teenage years being monstrous to each other; and on into adulthood, where we continue to fight over who\u2019s the keeper of the memories, the arbiter of what really happened; who\u2019s responsible for elderly parents; who\u2019s best played the hand they were dealt; who\u2019s the better person; and who\u2019s got power of attorney.
Barbieri gets letters asking for advice from the parents of bickering children, but \u201cfar, far more from adult siblings who still can\u2019t get on\u201d, she says. \u201cI think if more people worried about it as parents, there would be fewer people worrying about their siblings in adulthood. They say: \u2018They fuck you up, your mum and dad,\u2019 but actually your siblings can really<\/em> fuck you up.\u201d
So what goes wrong?
First, there is the dethronement of the eldest. It\u2019s painful enough, going from being the golden child around whom everyone\u2019s world revolves to suddenly being the less urgent noise in a cacophony of chaos. But parents make it worse by poorly managing the older child\u2019s expectations. The new baby is not going to be fun. It\u2019s going to be trouble, for ages. We try all these useless tactics, like arriving home with a new baby and a Thomas the Tank Engine, which we pretend is from <\/em>the new baby \u2013 when what we should do, says Anita Cleare, author of The Working Parents\u2019 Survival Guide, with a background in developmental psychology and social work, is \u201cstand in that child\u2019s shoes. There\u2019s no way of selling a baby to them as a positive. Babies monopolise the parents, they cry, you can\u2019t play with them.\u201d Instead of flat-out lying, she says, \u201cwe just have to be kind and consistent. Try to keep their life as normal, as the same, as it was before. So they don\u2019t feel like they\u2019ve lost everything.\u201d
And now there are two, or more, and it is existentially important that you treat them both the same. Except that isn\u2019t possible, because you are a person, and your partner (if you have one) is a person, and each child is a different person, and you\u2019re at a different point in your life, and a different point in your life cycle as a parent. I think of the acres of time I just laid at my son\u2019s tiny feet, no plans, no bustling, arrangements cancelled on a dime because the thought of waking him up or even rearranging any of my limbs was intolerable. If I\u2019d acted like that after my daughter was born a couple of years later, my son would have had a thing or two to say.
This is the blessing and the curse of the firstborn, what psychotherapist Nicole Addis calls the \u201cheir apparent fallacy\u201d. She says: \u201cThere\u2019s often a huge narrative behind the first child that the parents develop consciously and unconsciously, the hopes and aspirations within the relationship and outside it. There\u2019s a lot that goes into that first child that the poor child ends up carrying. And I don\u2019t think we ever do that quite the same way with the children that come after.\u201d
This can look like favouritism to the second (or later) child, or maybe it looks like favouritism from one parent and anti-favouritism from the other. But however it looks, if the children experience it as differential treatment, they will take that out on each other. \u201cSibling rivalry is about perceived or real injustice,\u201d Barbieri says. \u201cThat\u2019s the conclusion I\u2019ve come to after 15 years of writing an advice column. It all comes down to that. Children are quite powerless: they\u2019re not going to take their feelings out on the parents \u2013 they\u2019re going to take them out on the weakest member. I don\u2019t think parents are taught how much power they have, and how much is their responsibility.\u201d
Addis describes some other factors that might lead parents to favour one child: \u201creproductive narcissism, the child that is in some ways the vision of our own unfulfilled hopes and wishes and dreams. We might get into a narcissistic bubble, where we bask in the glory of each other. Or it could be just on a very basic level: you enjoy the same things as each other, so there\u2019s an easy connection, as opposed to the child that if you say \u2018white\u2019 is likely to say \u2018black\u2019.\u201d
Or maybe you\u2019ll make that mini-you the repository of your own doubt and self-hatred, and that won\u2019t feel like favouritism at all. Either way, all you have to do is supply an imbalance, and your kids will fill in the blanks with fighting. Endless, endless fighting.
The narcissism issue may become more pronounced or problematic if there is conflict in the parents\u2019 relationship, as the adults mediate criticism of one another through the more-similar child. \u201cOne parent may try to harness one child; the other parent will try to get hold of the other,\u201d Addis says. \u201cThis is terribly upsetting for the children, but it also creates a projection of the parents\u2019 conflict.\u201d It won\u2019t necessarily help if you split up, as separated parents are more than capable of expressing their disappointment and loss through the child that they perceive as most similar to their ex. It\u2019s seriously a nightmare, having a family, when you really think about it.
Sure, self-examine if your children are bickering, but don\u2019t wallow: they weren\u2019t born knowing how to get on, and they could easily be very different people. Now you need to know what to do. Be patient, Cleare says: \u201cUnder the age of four, children haven\u2019t got that ability to see things from another perspective. We can help them learn to do kind behaviour and take turns, but collaboration, negotiation, thinking about somebody else \u2013 those things take time.\u201d
At any age, she says: \u201cThe biggest trap parents fall into is directing too much attention to when children get it wrong rather than when they get it right. We fall into the habit of giving them attention when things are getting out of hand, and they tend to repeat the behaviour that gets them attention.\u201d Children often say \u201cIt\u2019s not fair\u201d when what they actually mean is \u201cI didn\u2019t get the best out of that situation\u201d, but then sometimes it isn\u2019t fair, and sometimes you\u2019re tired and you can\u2019t remember how it started or what you promised or how it could be humanly possible to go to a swimming pool and not go to a swimming pool at the same time.
\u201cDon\u2019t get into the \u2018it\u2019s not fair\u2019 game,\u201d Cleare says. \u201cYou don\u2019t adjudicate with competing demands: you teach them problem-solving skills. If they\u2019re fighting over a toy that they both want, ask them what\u2019s the problem. OK, so you both want to play with the same toy. Who\u2019s got an idea what you could do about that? They might be a bit reluctant at first, but the idea is to teach them how to problem-solve collaboratively. If they can\u2019t agree, you take that toy away for five minutes, and say: \u2018We\u2019ll try again in a bit.\u2019\u201d
Whoosh, now they\u2019re teenagers (it really does go fast) and they don\u2019t want a toy \u2013 they want to be unbelievably vicious to one another. I remember how once my sister, in an argument about who would wear which school dress, ripped one down the seam and walked off in the other, so I couldn\u2019t go to school at all. I mean, seriously.
There is evidence that same-sex siblings fare worse in adolescence<\/a>. There\u2019s also evidence that the closer teens are in age, the more they\u2019ll fight. But Addis takes that with a pinch of salt: \u201cI used to work in a fertility clinic, and expectant parents would always be asking: \u2018When should I plan for the next one?\u2019 There\u2019s arguments for and against almost any age and stage. The second is always a threat to the first; the third is a threat to the second.\u201d There tends to be less overt conflict with an age gap of more than two and a half years, which is when children start to separate from the parents, develop a theory of mind and an independent social world. But siblings with a smaller gap can be thick as thieves in adolescence, because there is more overlap in their friendship circles and development. For the record, my sister is two years older than me.
Why are some teenage siblings so horrible to each other? \u201cTeenagers are inherently alert to social threat,\u201d Cleare says. \u201cThe developmental stage they\u2019re going through is that they\u2019re hypersensitive to any social threat, exclusion, not being liked. That can come into play with two teens together.\u201d Alternatively, it could be about identity: \u201cYou\u2019re striving for significance as a teenager,\u201d she continues, \u201cstaking your claim to likes and dislikes and personhood. And sometimes you do that by being different from another person, and a sibling is a natural choice. \u2018I\u2019m not like them \u2013 they must be rubbish.\u2019\u201d Again, what you don\u2019t want to do as a parent is get into the fray, because that just means three (or more) people fighting. \u201cThis is about modelling. We speak kindly to each other as adults; we speak kindly to our children.\u201d
Once you are into adulthood, whatever your parents did or didn\u2019t do to make you feel equal, or empowered, or secure, or confident negotiating conflict, you have to sort things out for yourself. Or you don\u2019t, necessarily. It\u2019s not shameful for this relationship to fracture \u2013 it\u2019s just not easy, either. I was always fascinated by the rivalry (hatred) between the sister novelists AS Byatt and Margaret Drabble: Byatt, who died last week, was considered the more literary, Drabble the more readable. They were pretty open about their rift, to the point of constructing whole novels about having an awful sister. Byatt lost her son when he was 11, and they still <\/em>didn\u2019t make up, not even close. I remember reading about that estrangement and thinking, whatever it is, nobody has walked into the sunset, whistling.
A huge amount of tension comes from the necessity of tolerating one another\u2019s different perspectives: it is incredibly difficult for siblings to accept that there isn\u2019t a single truth they all sign up to. \u201cEvery sibling you speak to will have a different version of their upbringing,\u201d Barbieri says, \u201cand they all need to be tolerated. The older sibling will think they\u2019re the holder of the truth, and they can tell the younger ones how it was. That can be really difficult, especially if one child was treated worse than the other.\u201d This is part of the uniqueness of siblings, too: that there isn\u2019t any other relationship you\u2019ll ever have, however deep the love or friendship, where their diverting from your version of the past puts your credibility, your essence, at risk. You can\u2019t give it up: which of us would be prepared to say: \u201cWell, that\u2019s the furnace in which I think I was forged \u2013 but who knows, I might be wrong?\u201d But you do also kind of have to give it up.
Addis also talks about what you could call the Succession conundrum: \u201cfamilies where siblings are quite symbiotic, where there\u2019s a little bit too much investment in each other\u2019s lives. That can be because there\u2019s an insecure attachment to the parents, which is subtle or hasn\u2019t been aired, and the siblings will cling together a bit too much. But when a sibling relationship is working and working well, it\u2019s not symbiotic \u2013 it\u2019s adult-to-adult. You\u2019ve got a friend for life, you\u2019ve got a support for life, you\u2019ve got somebody who knows you inside out.\u201d
\u201cLike all human relationships,\u201d Barbieri says, \u201cit\u2019s not about the rupture, it\u2019s about the repair.\u201d
I have one full sister, two half-sisters, one half-brother, a stepbrother and another half-brother whose favourite film, from the moment it came out when he was 19, has been Punch-Drunk Love, about a man sent crazy by multiple domineering sisters. Apart from my stepbrother, who is a honey, they are all impossible, and the only thing more impossible than them would be not-them.<\/p>\n