Soothing Sibling Conflict - Part I

"My 20 month old daughter started to cry and when I went in, there was my 5 year old son standing there. She had a red welt on her forehead and I was convinced he'd hit her, but he denied it. I began interrogating him, and wound up accusing him of hitting her. I found out later that she'd hit her head going under a table. I felt so guilty!"

"I walked into my infant son's room where he was lying in his playpen. My 3 year old son had taken every item of clothing out of the dresser drawers and piled it on top of my four month old. I was horrified!"

Siblings. They find ingenious ways of getting parents' attention, and of torturing each other. Likewise, parents of more than one child tend to be on the alert for "sibling rivalry". Especially alert when that rivalry takes the form of physical violence. Handling these inevitable conflicts is of critical importance. Our expertise (or lack thereof) will determine how our children relate to one another, how they feel about themselves, and how we feel about them as well.

In order for parents to be able to handle sibling conflict in positive ways, it is first important for parents to recognize that not all conflicts are created equal. At first glance, the two situations related above seem similar. An older sibling is involved in a conflict with a younger sibling. For the parents involved, it appeared in both cases that the older sibling had done something against the younger. In reality, however, the two situations are very different, and require quite different handling on the part of the parent.

The main, and perhaps most important difference lies in what the parent knows about the situation, rather than what the parent assumes. In both cases, the parent did not see one child doing anything to the other. In essence, the parent had walked in AFTER the "crime" had been committed. However, in the first scenario, the parent drew conclusions about what had happened based upon her assumptions. In the past, her son had hit her daughter. Seeing them standing close together, a red welt on the younger's forehead, she assumed that her son had once again resorted to hitting. In the second scenario, while the parent hadn't actually seen the older child take the clothing out of the drawers, it's unlikely that the clothes jumped out themselves. Likewise, the four month old was too young to be involved. The parent in the second situation could easily and correctly draw the conclusion that the older had placed the clothes on top of the younger based upon the facts in front of her.

The first step in handling sibling conflict is to separate situations based upon the facts. There are four basic possibilities:

1) You're in the room and observe the conflict, so you know exactly what happened, but you believe your children are old enough to work it out themselves. ("Old enough" would be children who are verbal, usually age 3 or 4 and