All children compete with each other, recalls psychotherapist Margarita Zhamkochyan. We should not strive to equalize them in everything: we need to help each child learn to understand their desires and feelings, express them in words and respect the boundaries of what is permitted.
In a family with two or more children, competition is inevitable: each child unconsciously wants to take the lead, receive more parental love and attention than a brother or sister. Children compete more often if their age difference is small (1-4 years) – it seems to them that they grow closely together. One may feel jealous if the other parents do more (for example, a brother is sick a lot; a gifted sister is taken to classes …). Most often, rivalry manifests itself in loud quarrels and even fights that spoil everyone’s mood. Many parents, having lost patience, simply forbid their children to quarrel, to show their anger. And those as a result, experiencing difficult feelings for their brothers and sisters, create only the appearance of friendliness and splash out their anger on the sly. Or they save up in themselves in order to discover it sometimes after many years, for example, at the time of the division of the inheritance.
It can be difficult for children who grow up in the same family to avoid quarrels because they are not one. It can be said that siblings are not a single continent, but rather the islands of an archipelago: they are interesting because they are different (in character, views, values).
That is why those parents who are trying with all their might to provide their children with formal equality, to provide the same conditions (in games, nutrition, requirements), make a mistake. Equality is impossible in principle, and the desire to equalize children only increases their rivalry. Therefore, try to take into account the sympathies and priorities of everyone and pay more attention to those who need it most urgently today. In such conditions, relationships develop when close people see and hear each other.
Allow children to conflict and express their feelings – clearly defining the boundaries of what is permitted. Each family has its own rules (in one it is strictly forbidden to fight, in the other – even to raise your voice), but the task of parents is to enforce them. Children will not stop quarreling, but their rivalry will take on more civilized forms.
Margarita Zhamkochyan, social psychologist, specialist in the field of personality psychology.
About it
The French psychologist Marcel Rufo tells about jealousy, quarrels and envy of brothers and sisters and about many delusions of their parents in the book “Brothers and Sisters, the Disease of Love” (U-Factoria, 2006). For practical advice, it is better to turn to the bestseller by American writers Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish, Brothers and Sisters. How to help your children live together” (Eksmo, 2011).