Don’t allow sibling rivalry to get you down

Your children have their own personalities and ways of doing things and preferences for how things should play out. When these differ in siblings it leads to what is referred to as sibling rivalry. The constant fighting and arguing is exhausting and can suck the life right out of any parent. What do you do when you children will not give you peace because they are always on each other’s throats?

Letting them solve the problem themselves

 If your children are clashing and on the verge of killing each other, step in and mediate. But sometimes, it is a good idea to let them solve the problem by themselves as it teaches them problem solving skills than to always focus on the problem. Allowing them the space to disagree gives your children an opportunity to blow off all steam. Once they are all calm, as a parent you can use their episode to explain and teach them that their points of view can differ but there’s no need to always shout to bring the point across. They need to respect each other’s views.

Remind them that saying sorry is respectful

Your children may not see eye to eye but you need to teach them that they have to apologise to each other if they have stepped out of line. They must do it from the bottom their heart than a tactic to make an argument pass.

Separate your children

There are times when no amount of intervening will help and a simple time-out in their rooms can calm a stormy situation. Time out can happen in many different forms. It can be lying on their beds, reading a book or enjoying the scenery of the coloured wall in their bedroom. Removing them from the situation allows them to evaluate their behaviour and to slowly come to their senses.

Disciplining equally

Your children need to learn that for every irrational behaviour, there will be consequences and that you will not go hard on one but both children. Do not smack the children but rather take away a privilege for a period of time. Your job is to create boundaries and theirs is to respect those boundaries. If the one child hurts the other whether emotionally or physically, they need to know that there will be music to face from your side.

Family meetings

You need to know what is happening in the life of your children and what is bothering them. The best way to find this out is to have a meeting with your children. Don’t start the meeting on a negative tone with long lectures of how bad they’ve been. Start by allowing each of them to tell you how they feel, and encouraging them to express their emotions in a calm manner and without interruption. Once all the emotions have been expressed, jump in and explain to them what the negative behaviour was, and remind them of the behaviour that is expected in your home. Always conclude this meeting with hugs and cuddles.