What determines how the relationship between brothers and sisters develops? How to understand whether they will compete or support each other? Will they turn out to be close people or will they lose contact? And how will this communication affect their relationships in adulthood? Let’s figure it out with an expert.
“My parents insisted that we should love each other, but I can’t stand my sister, she is an arrogant egoist. And sneak besides. If I did something wrong, she reports everything to her mother, and she always takes her side and sets her as an example to me, ”admits 19-year-old Christina.
“My older brother and I fought a lot in childhood, this hostility persists now that we have become adults,” says 32-year-old Dmitry sadly. — I would like to be friends with him, but my brother does not care about me, he does not call, is not interested in my work, does not ask about my little son. He and I are strangers.»
We don’t decide whether we should be an only child or grow up surrounded by brothers or sisters. We have to accept the choice of parents. When we, growing up, realize that besides us, someone else claims the love and attention of mom and dad to the same extent, this cannot but cause suffering. This is especially true for older children.
No matter how proud the parents are of their first child, no matter how much they love, the birth of a second child hurts him. Even if we assume that the younger one is less desirable, he still captures part of the living space of an older brother or sister, takes away the time and strength of adults that previously belonged to only one child.
But it does not at all follow that siblings will inevitably compete for the rest of their lives. The style of relations that will develop between brothers and sisters largely depends on how sensitive, attentive to each of their children the parents will be.
acceptance and attention
“Even if the elder was not happy about the appearance of a “competitor”, but the parents love and accept both children, are emotionally close to them, can create emotional involvement of brothers and sisters with each other and are consistent in their actions, then they manage to fill the siblings with good feelings towards to each other,” explains child and family psychotherapist Albina Loktionova.
From feelings of jealousy, resentment, anger, no one is immune. But it is better that parents do not forbid children to experience negative emotions and do not oblige them to experience unconditional love for a brother or sister and do not compare them with each other, but recognize and appreciate their similarity, dissimilarity and autonomy.
“When adults show one child the other as a loving, interesting, helping person, then jealousy gradually fades away, and wonderful people grow up,” the expert believes. “And in relations with each other, and in friendly contacts, and in a work team, such people do not compete, but cooperate, take a fraternal position, are ready to share and stand up for each other, maintain close trusting relationships.”
Notice the imbalance
What prevents the convergence of siblings? First of all, such unconscious models of parental behavior as comparing and contrasting one child with another. “Nastya didn’t have a single triple in the fifth grade!” “Timka is so clumsy with us, where is his brother!”
“It happens that parents associate negative expectations with one of their children, attribute pathological roles: they make one of the children a “scapegoat”, a “nasty” boy or a “bad” girl, says Albina Loktionova. — And then what happens? Children cannot resist parents they depend on. They begin to see the bad, the guilty in their sibling or in themselves.”
The reasons for this behavior can be very different. More often than not, this split (one is good, the other is bad) helps parents regulate their own emotional stress. It happens that one of the children is more understandable, and the other differs in temperament or other features, it happens that the parents were not ready for the appearance of this particular child, they were not satisfied with his morbidity.
It happens that a mother had a difficult relationship with her parents in her childhood, and she builds relationships with her children according to a familiar pattern. Difficulties in understanding with a partner is another reason when one of the children sees the continuation of the partner, and the other one.
“When hostility, alienation grows between parents, children feel this tension. It causes them anxiety, hostility, aggression, makes them emotionally unstable, — explains the psychotherapist. — They begin to shift the blame and strongly criticize each other, stop feeling warm, sorry. If one gets sick, the second one will say that “he is pretending”, “if only he doesn’t go to school.” There is a lack of empathy and compassion in such relationships. And when we grow up with the feeling that it is not necessary to wait for support from a loved one (including a brother or sister), then we unconsciously begin to avoid him, we want to stay away from him.
Sibling parents
Sometimes parents in relation to children choose the line of behavior that reflects their own children’s sibling conflicts.
“Once they brought me a boy who began to study poorly,” says Albina Loktionova. — It became clear that the problems were connected with the appearance of a younger brother. It seems that the parents take care of the firstborn. But he still feels a terrible injustice: his mother walks all the time with the youngest in her arms, sleeps in the same bed, and all the time explains to the elder how important it is to love the younger, stopped playing with him, as if ignoring his needs and interests.
In the process of work, it turned out that the boy’s mother is a younger sister and suffered in childhood from her older brother. She felt fear and a desire to isolate herself from him, to have her own territory. And when she became a mother for the second time, her childish feeling for her older brother wedged into her relationship with her older child.
One thing is important for her now: to teach her firstborn to love her younger brother. It does not even occur to her that he himself lacks her warmth and affection. She has lost emotional sensitivity to the elder, in her world he resonates with the older brother, and in some situations regarding the younger, she seems to cease to be the mother of the elder. And the child suffers from this insanely.
In the adult world
Troubled relationships with brothers and sisters are reflected in our behavior strategies in the work team, in the company of friends in adulthood.
“Children who did not receive enough acceptance from their parents and competed with their sibling, shared territory and some benefits with him, are painful in the future to violate their boundaries,” notes Albina Loktionova. “They are sensitive to justice, equal recognition of merit, they carefully look to ensure that everyone has equal work tasks and incentives. If the team has precise rules and everyone follows them, then they calmly cooperate. But as soon as some rule is violated, sibling experiences awaken in them: they feel their exile, they feel injustice, they begin to get angry or withdraw into themselves, to defend their own.
It is difficult for them to establish friendly, trusting relationships, they rarely seek help, fearing once again to experience rejection. But if on their way they meet a person who shows sincere attention, understanding and promises patronage (which this sibling in the parental family so lacked), he actively tries to be necessary to this person — in the hope of reciprocal support and protection.
It is very difficult to correct sibling relationships in adulthood: conscious efforts of the parties are required.
“This is a real psychological work, the essence of which is the recognition that each of the siblings carries the fate of the family and generations of the family further, and this makes these people special for each other,” comments Albina Loktionova. — For one of the siblings, some difficult period in the family could coincide with a particularly sensitive and lonely period of childhood, while for the other, these difficult moments turned out to be somehow compensated.
It must be admitted that the emotional legacy turned out to be different, but it does not determine the difference and divergence. Determining all the same — choice and decision. One has to see the whole situation, along with the possible mistakes of the apparently trying to love parents, and be sure to also see the different choices the siblings have made.
You can’t roll back the years. But you can expand your understanding of the situation by becoming aware of the experiences of the other side. Accept them and find new solutions.”