Parenting tips: What to do and what to avoid for healthy sibling relationships

Parenting can be tricky. While we ensure to give the best to our children, we are equally invested in making them learn the values and skills needed to navigate through life when they grow up. One of the things that they need to learn is how to develop healthy relationships with their siblings. Healthy siblings teach the idea of sharing and love to each other and grow up to be each other’s best partner. It is the responsibility of the parents to ensure that the children grow up with a healthy relationship with their siblings. “Nothing ruins sibling relationships like a lack of safety. Competition and favoritism are sure-fire ways to create insecurity and tension,” wrote Psychotherapist Emily H Sanders as she explained the things that a parent need to do and also the things that they should avoid doing to promote healthy sibling relationships.

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Things to do:

Celebrate and respect differences: Every child is different, and it is important to embrace the differences rather than asking them to fit into a set stereotype. We should ensure that the children celebrate the differences between each other and earn to respect them.

Create tasks for children: We should create fun tasks for each other where they learn to tackle each other and enjoy doing things together.

Facilitate their nurturing towards each other: We should teach the children how to be nurturing to each other and learn to show care and affection.

Intervene when things get cruel: Minor spats can be avoided and we should let the children figure out things – however, when things start to get intense, we must intervene.

Activities that release oxytocin: We should encourage fun activities that help them become happy. This way, they will feel more connected with each other.

Things to avoid:

Showing favouritism: We should never pick a favourite child and let the other child feel left out. That way, they will start seeing their sibling as an enemy.

Creating competition: We should not create competition among children – instead, we should teach them to embrace each other and be together at all times.

Caretaking roles: While we should teach them to take care of each other, we should not force a sibling into a caretaking role for the other.

Turning a blind eye to abuse: When the sibling relationship starts to become abusive, we should not turn a blind eye.