How Can We Encourage Strong Sibling Relationships?
We all have ever-changing relationships and dynamics, and the bond between siblings remains constant and influential throughout our lives. Strong relationships with siblings are not only a matter of familial love but take a little bit of effort all the time, and then a lot of effort some of the time (particularly when you get to adulthood!). They are some of the relationships in life though, that are very key in making us who we are and if we get them right can help us maintain stability and peace way into adulthood. When it comes to these relationships, we think that Jesus has left us some pretty superb wisdom on how to cultivate and nurture them in a foundation rooted in faith, love, and compassion.
Having said that, as someone who once threw a Recorder (as in the instrument!) down the hallway at their sister, I feel somewhat unqualified to talk about being forgiving or patient with siblings, so I’ll rely a bit more on the input from Jesus otherwise I’m to scared to have a go!
Love Your Neighbour Roommate
One of the fundamental principles of Jesus' outlook was the idea of: loving our neighbours as ourselves. So perhaps obviously this commandment extends to our siblings, although it doesn’t always feel ‘as easy as all that’. They are in many respects the closest neighbours we have within our family, especially if they actually live in our room or the room next door to us! Jesus highlighted loving your neighbour as well as loving God and then said “There is no commandment greater than these." This puts a nice thick, red underline on the importance of treating our siblings with the same love and respect that we would expect for ourselves! (or I guess Jesus is talking about anyone but we’re focused on siblings right now.)
If we are going to help kids maintain good sibling relationships, we must try to teach them to approach their brothers and/or sisters with love and empathy. This means encouraging them to show kindness, forgiveness, and understanding in their interactions. This is especially true when disagreements or conflicts arise. We all know what kids are like, and they’ll probably a lot of help with this but if they can learn to empathise and remember that they’re on the same team, then this can go a long way in keeping the peace.
“Bear with”
There’s another place in the bible where it says: "Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a complaint against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you." This reminds us that forgiveness and patience are essential in maintaining healthy relationships and our siblings are no different. The wisdom in this advice though, in my opinion, is in the phrase “bear with each other”, because that’s pretty much a reminder that we need to give each other time. We might remind our outraged child, whose brother has just been unnecessarily irrational about something, that their sibling is working on [insert very normal issue here] and whilst they may face some kind of sanction for their behaviour, you also need everyone to remember that they’re a work in progress, not the perfect article. As much as it’s your responsibility as a parent to teach children that they need to be patient, it's also their responsibility to learn it!
When misunderstandings or conflicts occur, instead of being consistently frustrated and holding grudges we want to try to get kids to see where their siblings struggling, and if they can, to get on board with wanting them to succeed at change.
Values, not rules
Let me say first off that rules are very helpful and I'm not saying don’t have rules. This is more about the types of rules we set or the language we use when we set them!
Imagine for a second that we can hear the siblings rowing, we go to them to discover X is annoyed because Y has been bashing their toy on the wall and Y says they’ve only been doing it because X started by stepping on their thing first. We might be tempted to say something along the lines of “NoFrom more touching each other’s toys” or “I’m taking away all the toys because you can’t play nicely”. Now for the record, neither of these are terrible options, but a more helpful option would be something more positive and what I'm calling ‘value driven’. Like perhaps, “from now on we’re going to respect everyone's toys as a rule in this house”. Rules that tell us to do something rather than not do something are always more palatable. The idea of ‘respecting something’ is also quite helpful and flexible and you see this type of rule setting in schools where they have rules like ‘Kind hands’. Whereas the rule “don’t touch each other's toys” might work for a while, but when you want them to tidy up their room may suddenly cause more problems.
Same Team!
Jesus once said "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God" (Matt 5:9). As a family, we all have a part to play in helping to maintain peace within our family units; just like a player has a role to play as part of a team. We can all be helpful in mediating disputes, offering listening ears, and promoting reconciliation when conflicts arise. We all also need reminding sometimes that our family members probably don’t want us to be having a miserable time, even though they make us cross and grumpy (maybe even on purpose!). A conversation or a reminder that we’re all on the same team, even might I say for us adults, can be really helpful!
Shared experiences and doing things together, even small things goes a long way to building up that team mentality.
Summing Up
Fostering good, strong sibling relationships with values deeply rooted in love, forgiveness, patience, and unity is really, really hard; especially when children are small. Hopefully some of what Jesus said about life and how to treat other people can give us some tools to help guide our kids to be great siblings and to look out for their brothers and sisters. If we can remember these ideas too we can strengthen our bonds with our siblings within our families (which ive found a useful challenge for me at least!).
God Bless