Those Sibling Battles May Be Lessons in Love

Right now, my 4 year old dotes on her younger sister with an affection we’ve dubbed an addiction. It is completely demanding, all consuming. Ginger often wakes up saying, “Where’s the baby? I need to touch the baby.” I once caught her pulling up her shirt to get a little closer to Kyra’s skin while she nursed. The other day, she told me the back of Kyra’s neck was her favorite part of her sister.

I get it. Completely.

I feel grateful that I only have to remind Ginger to be gentle in her overzealous love of Kyra and not outright jealousy. OK, lately, as Kyra begins to run around and assert a bit of will in the joint, there’s some of the green-eyed stuff, too. But mostly, it’s just trying to keep Ginger from loving her sister to death, literally.

For her part, Kyra giggles uproariously when her big sister even looks in her direction. Her adoration doesn't do a whole lot to discourage Ginger from doing things like testing out her sister's neck strength for somersaults.

I can’t say that I’ve done a whole lot to foster this relationship one way or another, other than being  pretty mushy with everyone in my household—the dog included. Ginger was always very into dolls and babies, though. She is, by nature, a nurturer.

Sure, much of the care and love she gives her sister is about her, satisfying her own wishes, which is very age appropriate. Looking forward, I do wonder if they will always be so close, both of them being so early on in their journey together. But it’s hard, when I see them laugh at private jokes and breathe in each other’s hair, not to feel we did a very good thing in giving Ginger a sibling to go through life with.

When you Google how to foster sibling love, much of what you get is pretty straightforward: teach children to be gentle, involve children in a new baby’s care, foster family togetherness. There are also countless books on the subject. One I read suggested parents channel a rough sibling to, “Hit the doll if you need to hit, go ahead, whack away!” My friend Jamie tried it and said it felt a little weird.

Another recent bestseller had some particularly intriguing conclusions about sibling relationships. Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman's NurtureShock asserts that the common idea parents have of having more than one child in order to teach socialization is actually misguided.
 
Unlike friends, siblings can’t choose to not socialize with you if you do something they don’t like. They’re stuck with you either way. Thus, there’s not much incentive to treat each other better. In the book, research like that done by Dr. Samantha Punch concludes, “Sibship is a relationship in which the boundaries of social interaction can be pushed to the limit. Rage and irritation need not be suppressed, whilst politeness and toleration can be neglected.” So socialization really happens more with friends outside the home.
 
Inside the household, siblings are said to clash 3.5 times per hour, on average, between the ages of three and seven. But I bet if you’re living with them, it seems like more. Take heart, your kids could actually be better off for the fighting. Laurie Kramer, associate dean at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, reports in NurtureShock that, “… siblings who simply ignored each other had less fighting, but their relationship stayed cold and distant long term.” So Kramer teaches programs to help siblings enjoy playing together.
 
Similarly, Bronson suggests focusing on ways for siblings who fight to do activities together, rather than keeping them apart to avoid tensions. He says, “When I was a child, my parents would agonize over the battles I had with my brothers...But they never forced us to play apart, to avoid conflict restarting. ...We'd sulk for an hour, sure, but usually, (maybe always), we'd be playing again before nightfall. We never got around to saying "sorry" or resolving who started it. It turned out that was okay—it was starting the games again that mattered.”
 
NurtureShock makes sense to me, as much as a parent can handle keeping their kids together when all you want is to separate them into soundproof booths sometimes. As with all parenting advice, this one should probably be taken with a grain of salt and two aspirin.
 
But I am glad to know that if the lovin’ I’m witness to now turns a little more contentious later, my girls won’t necessarily be less close because of it. Maybe they’ll even be closer. For now, I intend to absorb and enjoy every minute I can of their sibling love—so grateful for the blessed opportunity to warm myself at its glow.