Avoid Sibling Rivalry For A Healthy Home

By Vijayalakshmi

One of the most common factors that family faces in everyday situation is sibling conflict or better known as sibling rivalry. This term is known since the time of the famous epic Mahabharatha or ever much before that. However, many parents ignore this assuming it to be normal, but it is important to note that parental interference is a must. Extra efforts and care is needed by parents to avoid small arguments among their children. It is also important to make sure that the petty fights do not get intense and turn to ugly situations.

The fights among siblings may not be materialistic or academic in nature, but it could be to get the attention from parents or
insecurity feelings towards each others. Hence, it is very important for parents to find out the reason behind the differences among their children and ensure that proper care and affection is given to them in equal manner.

Siblings

Here are a few tips for the parents to bring a healthy atmosphere at home and nurture healthy relationship between the siblings:

Respect and Understanding: One of the basic rule to follow is to avoid your children to insult one another because certain comments on their academic performance or skin colour may lead to deep damage. Thus teach your children to be kind, respect and appreciate each other.

Avoid favoritism: Recognizing and praising both your children's abilities, talents and skills are extremely important as it gives them
the confidence to achieve more heights in their talents. It can be in academic or sports, whichever field they may be good at, individual skills, strengths and accomplishments should be recognized and awarded.

Managing conflict situation: More than parents trying to settle the matters down by themselves, it is important to teach the children to manage conflict. The first rule in this situation is to encourage the children's feelings and making them express the emotions in an appropriate way. By identifying the causes for negative feeling like jealousy or selfish will help them learn how to deal with problems in the future.

Appreciate good behaviour: While most of the parents punish their children for any mistakes, it is equally important for the parents to praise and award their children when you find them playing together. Be sure each child receives adequate parental interest and quality time.

Help siblings be friends: It is common in any home for parents to be a bit partial towards children, but in a broader sense it will effect the children in a negative way. Hence, it is a good option to give equal importance to the children and also make them feel valuable to each other. Through this the children will eventually learn to respect and feel oneness. By fostering the feeling of oneness, children can learn to respect themselves and others.

Apart from following these positive traits to build up a good relation among the children, parents should also realize that just correcting their children would not help as they usually look up at the parents as their role models and idols and imitate them in every step. Thus, it is parents responsibility to set a good example for their children.

Story first published: Monday, January 28, 2013, 18:30 [IST]