12 Ways To Encourage Healthy Sibling Relationships
Every mom dreams of a peaceful home where her children get along effortlessly, and life feels like rainbows and butterflies. Strong sibling relationships play a big role in creating that harmony.
Mama, no matter what you do, conflict between your children is inevitable. Every home experiences sibling disagreements from time to time—it’s completely normal and perfectly okay.
The real question is, how do you limit those conflicts? Can your children learn how to respond appropriately when in conflict? Can they learn conflict resolution? And lastly, can they learn to reconcile after conflict?
But more importantly, what can a mom do to foster those healthy sibling relationships? This post offers 12 ways to help moms do just that.
Creating a home environment where you can keep sibling disagreements to a minimum is possible. Believe it or not, there are acceptable ways to have disagreements among siblings.
It’s okay to disagree. Don’t you agree? However, what is most important is how to resolve those conflicts respectfully and lovingly.
Let’s consider these ways to help your children minimize and de-escalate conflict. Not only that, but ways to foster healthy and loving sibling relationships now and in the future?
12 Ways To Healthy Sibling Relationships
Model Respect, Kindness & Unselfishness
Modeling respect, kindness, and unselfishness begins with you. You are an example of what those qualities look like. Mama, I want to exhort you to do your best to display these qualities in front of your children, especially with your husband. This WILL have the greatest impact.
None of these qualities comes naturally. They need to be taught as well as caught. This is a lot of responsibility for moms, but your children watch everything you do.
Establish Rules, Expectations & Boundaries
This is a great place to start. Every home must have CLEAR rules, expectations, and boundaries. When rules, expectations, and boundaries are well-defined, it sets up a clear playing field.
When everyone knows the rules and understands the boundaries, it is easier to define when a rule has been broken or a boundary has been crossed.
We had what we called non-negotiables with our children. What do I mean by a non-negotiable? Any rule or boundary in your home that is not open for debate. If it is broken, there is a consequence. In other words, you mean business with these rules.
Here are the non-negotiables we had in our home. They don’t have to be yours, but can be if you want. We had four.
- No hitting.
- No calling names.
- No saying hate.
- No lying.
These were behaviors we would not tolerate in our home. Ephesians 4:29 says this:
This verse is one to memorize and refer to often with your children.
It’s not always easy to tell when a child is lying. Siblings tend to lie to avoid punishment. Emphasize and reemphasize that the truth is always better, and leniency will be considered when the truth is told.
With these boundaries in place, our children knew what behaviors were unacceptable, and they knew that there were consequences for those behaviors.
Consequences
When boundaries are crossed and rules broken, consequences must be enacted. Consequences may include time out, loss of privileges, earlier bedtimes, less play time, loss of technology, including iPads, phones, video games, TV time, loss of friend time, etc.
Getting creative with your consequences can be difficult, but you can do it. You can learn more about consequences and the difference between natural consequences and created consequences in my post 7 Attributes of a Happy Peace-Filled Home (Part 2)
What if one of your children is continually mean to one of their siblings? You could have them serve that sibling in some way. Have them make their bed or put away their laundry. There is a good chance this would cause them to consider their actions in the future.
Consequences and ensuing punishment will reinforce that you mean business when you make a rule. Consistency is key. If I could give moms one piece of advice, it would be to be consistent.
Rules without enforcement will lead to disobedience and a lack of respect. There must be consequences for poor behavior.
Provide Bonding Opportunities
Facilitate bonding opportunities for your children. Encourage your children to play together. Playing together is where they learn to share and get along. Doing activities together like crafts, LEGO, or blocks can help form a bond.
You might even encourage them to work and clean together. Give them jobs like washing the car, folding laundry, and setting the table. Find age-appropriate ways for them to work.
When Dad’s birthday is approaching, have them work together to plan a party for Dad and make a birthday banner or even shop for a gift together.
I want to interject here and emphasize that less screen time and more play time, specifically creative play, will have a profound impact on your children’s relationships.
Teach Them To Serve One Another
Provide opportunities for your children to serve one another. This begins with you showing them how to serve and teaching them to serve. You can do this on birthdays. Every child should feel special on their birthday.
Serving one another shows them how much joy they can receive from doing something for their sibling, especially when that sibling is grateful and has been encouraged to respond with gratitude.
Encourage Them To Celebrate Their Siblings
Encourage your children to celebrate loudly and proudly for their siblings. I’ve seen this often this past week while watching the Olympics. How beautiful it is when a sibling is in the stands cheering for their brother or sister?
This takes a lot of intentionality on mom’s part. By starting this at a young age you begin to form habits in your child. It also creates a strong sense of bonding and teaches genuine happiness for someone else.
Celebrate Individuality
It is important that mom and dad encourage individual interests and not show favoritism to the child who has interests similar to their own.
Embrace their unique traits and quirks. Celebrate your child’s achievements and encourage siblings to do the same. Encourage siblings to embrace differences. Being different isn’t a bad thing. By embracing their differences, they can complement one another.
Avoid Comparison
Do not compare your children at any time. It’s never a good idea. By encouraging their individuality and differences, it builds confidence in each child. You should congratulate and praise when growth/change occurs, but only compare them to their previous behavior.
Comparison can tear down sibling relationships. Instead, focus on how God has gifted every person in unique ways. Be persistent, ask questions, pursue where their interests lie, and help them discover their gifts and passions.
If your child struggles to find their passion or gift, continue to allow them possibilities until they find something they love.
One of our sons struggled to find his passion. He had two siblings who knew and excelled in their sport and were pursuing their passion. He tried many things, and we kept encouraging him to try new things until he found his.
In high school, he discovered water polo, and that became his thing. He was good at it and loved it. He is 31 now and coaches high school water polo. Don’t ever give up helping your children find their thing.
Teach Communication Skills
Teaching them to communicate can de-escalate things before they get too heated. When children are young and frustrated, fights can flare up quickly.
Learning skills like talking it out, compromising, verbalizing how they feel by saying “I” instead of “you”, counting to 10, or walking away until they cool down can all help de-escalate a fight.
Teach Conflict Resolution
Spending time on conflict resolution is vital. Teach them how to confess when they have hurt or harmed their sibling. After confession and remorse by the offender, an acknowledgment of forgiveness by the offended is important. Reconciliation by a handshake or hug is a great way to end a conflict.
Your child’s life can be impacted by learning and understanding conflict resolution. Learning to apologize, forgive, and move on can be instrumental in all future relationships.
These verses in Ephesians are pure gold. They are the cornerstone of this post. Take the time to share this with your children and have them memorize it.
Lastly, if age-appropriate, allow them opportunities to resolve conflict among themselves before stepping in. But when you need to step in make sure you listen to both sides of the story and pray for discernment.
Establish Traditions
Having traditions in your home creates a sense of belonging and strengthens bonds. They provide a sense of connection and unity among family members and foster close family relationships.
Traditions give your family an identity. When your children have a positive identity in their family, it can help prevent conflicts and create more unity.
Traditions also encourage togetherness. When there is a feeling of togetherness, there is less animosity and fewer conflicts. In my post, Chocolate Chip Cookies: A Family Tradition you can learn more about traditions and their importance in your family life.
Dig Deeper If Necessary
Sometimes, if siblings don’t get along and continually fight, it is a heart issue in one or both. If this occurs frequently in your home, it might be time to dig deeper and look for an underlying problem in one or both of your children.
The child who becomes characterized by causing the fights could have an underlying issue that has nothing to do with the issue at hand. In other words, the issue is not the issue. Dig deep to discover what that might be.
Final Words
Your home is a training ground to plant seeds and train your children how to get along with others. Use sibling squabbles to be just that …a training ground.
It sounds cliché, but remind them that family is forever. Friends will mostly come and go, but family will always be there. I am confident that by using these suggestions, your home will be more peaceful, your children will get along better, and you will have healthy sibling relationships.
Our children and their spouses while on vacation. While no family is perfect and disagreements are bound to happen, the bottom line is that they love each other and would do anything for each other.
Here’s an interesting point I want to conclude with. In a home where boundaries and rules are established and enforced, children are more confident and less anxious.
A confident child has less of a need to create conflict, and a child with less anxiety won’t escalate to a fight as quickly.
May your homes be more peaceful as you seek to be intentional about encouraging beautiful and healthy sibling relationships.
Much love,
Kim
Related Posts:
7 Attributes of a Happy Peace-Filled Home (Part 1)
7 Attributes of a Happy Peace-Filled Home (Part 2)
7 Attributes of a Happy & Peace-filled Home (Part 3)
