ASK PHILIPPA

Our agony aunt tackles your issues

Q

My eight-year-old and six-year-old sons are forever fighting. They say they hate each other, which I find upsetting as I have always tried to foster a real sense of friendship and collaboration between them. When they were younger, I would try to nurture a bond between them and I had a romantic vision that they would help and support each other as they got older – the two of them against the world. But it hasn’t turned out like that and, although I have never compared them, they are horribly competitive with each other. The older one declares that his younger brother gets away with far more than he did and has more toys than he ever had, while my youngest feels hard done by because he hasn’t got the same privileges, such as a later bedtime. It’s got so bad that I have to keep them apart and arrange separate activities during school holidays and at weekends. I have tried so hard to keep things fair, and they both know that, but nothing is working.

A

It seems you are focusing on what should be, rather than listening to where they both are. It’s important to accept and validate the feelings of children, however inconvenient and uncomfortable those feelings make us. If you accept how they feel, rather than deny it, they won’t keep making their points over and over again – and they may even move on.

Next time the eldest says, ‘I never had that much Lego when I was six’, don’t argue. Try to put into words what he’s feeling: ‘It sounds as though it’s hard for you to see your brother with more toys than you had when you were six. It feels unfair to you.’

Don’t take his claims of unfairness as criticism of you, or an untruth you have to correct, stay with his feelings so he feels heard and not as alone with them. He is talking about his experience and needs you to witness this, rather than tell him he’s not feeling what he knows he is. And it’s the same for his brother. Remember what it’s like to be six years old and feel that everyone has a better time than you do and empathise with that.

Don’t be too hung up on fairness. What’s appropriate for one child may not be appropriate for another, so perhaps the older one got tired more easily when he was six and had to go to bed early, but at the same age, his younger brother doesn’t and can stay up later. Work out what’s appropriate for each child, rather than treating them the same.

Think about your relationships with your children and how you can create a connection with each of them. Spend time with each child and listen to them. Try to feel what they must be feeling and put that into words. It may be different to what you would feel in their situation. This will be good modelling behaviour for them and will eventually teach them how to listen to each other and see situations from more points of view than just their own.

The only thing that really

‘works’ is truth, authenticity, love and boundaries. There is no such thing as perfection within a family, but we get closer to it when individual members in the family feel heard and understood.

A book I can really recommend is Siblings Without Rivalry by

Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish.

But you’ve already taken the first step, which is to admit there is a problem. So many of us don’t do this and just pretend there isn’t a problem, which could lead to the winning and losing dynamic going forward into adulthood – something you really want to avoid. Good luck!