Understanding sibling rivalry
Conflict helps kids figure out what is unique and special about themselves
Sibling screaming matches may seem louder and more oppressive during a pandemic when no one is leaving the house, but according to Jeanine Vivona, a professor of psychology at the College of New Jersey who has studied sibling rivalry, “competition with siblings is just a fact of life. And we, as people with siblings and people with children, can just try to manage it as best we can.”
The book of Genesis holds what Mark Ethan Feinberg calls the “founding stories of the Western psyche.” Feinberg, an expert in sibling behavior at Penn State, points out that, among other things, it is dripping with tales of murderous and covetous siblings, such as Cain and Abel and Jacob and Esau. And these stories unfurl “themes researchers are exploring today: dastardly deeds, conflict over parental love and resources, and triangulation of children into parental conflicts.”
Sibling rivalry is so profound that hundreds of years ago, when child mortality was much higher, children under 5 with close-in-age siblings were more likely to die. These deaths were most likely “related to increased prevalence of childhood infectious disease in such households, and lower levels of maternal nutrition, and perhaps more general competition for parental attention,” said Sarah Walters, an associate professor of demography at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and an author of a study on siblings and mortality clustering in 19th-century Belgium.
Still, observational studies have shown that sibling conflicts today may happen up to eight times an hour. Other research finds that pairs of sisters tend to be the closest, and that sibling dyads that include a brother have the most conflict. “Conflict does decrease into adolescence; it sort of levels off,” Feinberg said. “Early and middle childhood are particularly difficult times for sibling aggression.”
While most siblings aren’t fighting for actual scraps, psychologically, sibling rivalry serves a developmental purpose: It helps children figure out what is unique and special about themselves, otherwise known as “differentiation.” Children want to be seen as the most special by their parents, so they’re “always going to push for preferential treatment” over their siblings, Vivona said. But they may also shape their interests and personalities around their siblings’ skills and desires.
For example, let’s say the older son is a soccer star. The younger child or children may then avoid soccer altogether, either because they are afraid they won’t be as good or because they fear they might be better — and they don’t want to take that risk either, Vivona said. Or perhaps they both end up on the soccer team, but the older one is the serious hard worker, and the younger one tries to establish himself as the team jester.
Just because sibling rivalry is to be expected does not mean there aren’t ways to mitigate it. Here are five suggestions from the experts to handle squabbling sibs.
Figure out what sets them off. “Pay attention to what tends to happen before conflict breaks out,” said Sally Beville Hunter, a clinical associate professor in child and family studies at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. If your children fight every time they play video games, for example, make sure you’re in earshot when they sit down to play. Listen for the particular words or tones of voice they are using that are combative, and try to intervene before it escalates.
Help them learn to resolve conflict. Once tempers have settled, try to sit your kids down and discuss the problem “without blaming or accusing,” Feinberg advised. Give each child a chance to talk, uninterrupted, and have them try to come up with solutions to the problem themselves. By the time kids are elementary school age, they can “evaluate which of those solutions are win-win solutions and which ones are most likely to work and satisfy each other over time,” he said. They should also learn to revisit problems when solutions are no longer working.
Praise them in public and punish them in private. If your children are being kind to each other, “praise really loudly all over the place,” Hunter said. For example, “I love that you let your sister go first!” But if you’re criticizing them, try to do it outside of the other child’s earshot, because she may use it as ammunition (“Remember, Momsaid you couldn’t jump off the couch!”).
Try to find moments where everyone can come together. Your children’s temperaments and personalities may be similar, or they may not. They may both love dance, or one loves dance and the other just wants to play chess. One might be rigid, and the other is a free spirit. “Try to find common activities that allow everyone to be flexible and to feel connected,”
Vivona said.
Don’t be afraid to choose an activity, like family movie night, that might result in an absurdly long delay as children argue over which one to watch. “The fact that it takes a long time should not take away from the fact that it’s something valuable,” she said. “You’re going to experience the rivalry — there’s no short-circuiting it.” But at the end, you can all sit together and keep each other company and eat popcorn, while your children learn valuable skills, like compromise. Even if you are watching “Toy Story” for the 15th time.
Don’t forget the pandemic is hard on children. “We are all spending more time with each other indoors, especially in the winter,” Hunter said. “I think some of these conflicts can be really solved by telling our kids to go outside and run around the house.” They may get twitchy when they’re cooped up, so throwing some physical activity into the mix — even if it’s an indoor obstacle course made with couch pillows — can change the mood.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, falling and staying asleep was never difficult for Shoshi Aronowitz, a 33-year-old nurse practitioner who lives in South Philadelphia.
“I need a lot of sleep,” she said. “I don’t really like the way I feel if I don’t sleep enough. My partner would always joke that as soon as my head hits the pillow, it’s done.”
But that changed over the last year, as Aronowitz, like so many others, dealt with increased stress from the pandemic. She began waking up in the middle of the night, fully alert. Falling back asleep became extremely difficult because her “brain was very much just chugging along, thinking about my family getting sick or my career,” Aronowitz said.
“If I ever had a bad night’s sleep before, I knew that I was going to be able to sleep well the night after,” she said. “Now, even if I don’t sleep and am tired, the next day this all happens again.”
For many people, the pandemic affected their sleep as they adjusted to significant changes in daily schedules and experienced increased stress. Some, like Aronowitz, struggled with “COVID-somnia,” while others were able to sleep more deeply or longer because they had more flexible work or school schedules. Sales for melatonin supplements, said to boost the hormones that tell the body when it’s time to sleep or wake up, increased 42.6% from 2019, according to Nielsen, a global marketing research firm.
In a September study
published in the journal Sleep Medicine, 25% of respondents reported that their sleep quality was worse, due to stressors such as caregiving, job loss, and COVID-19 symptoms.
Another study published in November in the European Journal of Public Health analyzed smartphone data and found that people in the U.S. and 16 European countries had delayed their bedtimes during the pandemic and slept longer than usual.
Jennifer Goldschmied, a clinical psychologist at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, said the combination of uncertainty and isolation has contributed to an increase in stress for most people.
Those feelings often increase physiological arousal, which makes
sleeping more difficult. Many of her patients have reported waking up in the middle of the night and experiencing stress dreams, she said.
“Despite the fact that
(the pandemic) has gone on for a long time, there’s still a lot of uncertainty,” Goldschmied said. “With vaccines rolling out, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. But people don’t know how long that tunnel is.”
To make falling and staying asleep easier, Goldschmied recommends practicing a “wind-down time” of 30 minutes to an hour before bed. During this period, the focus should be on relaxing and people should avoid news and social media, she said.
“It can be helpful to dim the lights,” she said. “Light
is a really strong cue for our bodies. So if you shut off a couple of lights, it will really help start that sleep process.”
It’s also important to consistently wake up at the same time, even on the weekends, Goldschmied said. And while the temptation to get some rest during the day after one bad night of sleep can be strong, napping can trigger a cycle of chronic insomnia, which can affect how the immune system functions, she said.
Goldschmied said to think of a nap in the same way you would a predinner snack, in that it makes you “less hungry for sleep later.”
“Even though you think you’re trying to make up for the night before, what you’re actually doing is interfering with the night after,” she said. “It all starts to contribute to worse sleep the next night.”
On the other hand, the pandemic has helped some people develop healthier sleep patterns. Kyle Cassidy, a 54-year-old photographer based in West Philadelphia, had struggled with insomnia for most of his life up until the pandemic.
“I traveled an awful lot before. I was on a plane, often twice a month, going somewhere to photograph something,” he said, which greatly affected his ability to form a sleep schedule. His doctor prescribed Lunesta to help.
But because he could control how he spent his time at home more, Cassidy was able to stop taking Lunesta two months ago. He noticed he began falling asleep faster than usual with the help of a white noise machine and audiobooks, and being more rested has boosted his productivity during the day.
“I’ve been tired at appropriate times,” he said. “The pandemic has given me a routine, which I didn’t have before.”
Jeff Roser, a 34-year-old delivery driver for UPS, has also slept better during the pandemic. Because of a big increase in deliveries in recent months, which has led to longer hours, Roser said he feels a lot more tired at the end of the day.
Before the lockdown, he often slept only five or six hours a night before “powering through the next day.” On weekends, he often socialized with friends, which meant staying out late.
But now, “since there’s not a lot to go out and do, I’m sleeping eight to nine hours now and can feel that my body is more well rested throughout the day,” he said.
“I didn’t realize how good it feels until getting a full eight hours consistently. Once you feel rested, you wonder what you’ve been doing with your life up until that moment.”
For those who are struggling with sleep persistently, Goldschmied recommended seeking out a behavioral sleep specialist. She said that treatment for insomnia, although not easy to follow, can be addressed in as little as six to eight sessions. Supplements such as melatonin, although helpful for short periods of time, can be a “get rich quick scheme,” she said, because the effects tend to decrease over longterm usage.
“Don’t suffer if you’re struggling with sleep,” Goldschmied said. “There are ways to sleep better that don’t need to be medication-based. Sleep is important and we need to invest in it.”