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Struggling with sibling rivalry? Learn effective ways to foster harmony and connection among your children.
Episode Number:
Description: In this episode of the Whole Parent Podcast, Jon tackles the topic of sibling relationships and how to navigate common challenges. Whether it's dealing with sibling rivalry, sharing space and toys, or finding activities that all your kids can enjoy together, Jon offers practical advice and answers listener questions to help create a more peaceful and connected family dynamic.
Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction & The Challenge of Sibling Rivalry
00:43 - Overview: Parenting Siblings Better
02:23 - Ashley’s Question: Newborn and Older Sibling Dynamics
13:35 - Steven’s Question: Shared Space and Toy Conflicts
23:49 - Kimberly’s Question: Activities for Kids of Different Ages
Key Takeaways:
Links to Resources Mentioned:
What episode should you listen to next?
How to Connect:
Episode Transcript: The full transcript of this episode is available here.
Connect with Whole Parent:
For the email list and everything Whole Parent
CLICK HERE
Struggling with sibling rivalry? Learn effective ways to foster harmony and connection among your children.
Episode Number:
Description: In this episode of the Whole Parent Podcast, Jon tackles the topic of sibling relationships and how to navigate common challenges. Whether it's dealing with sibling rivalry, sharing space and toys, or finding activities that all your kids can enjoy together, Jon offers practical advice and answers listener questions to help create a more peaceful and connected family dynamic.
Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction & The Challenge of Sibling Rivalry
00:43 - Overview: Parenting Siblings Better
02:23 - Ashley’s Question: Newborn and Older Sibling Dynamics
13:35 - Steven’s Question: Shared Space and Toy Conflicts
23:49 - Kimberly’s Question: Activities for Kids of Different Ages
Key Takeaways:
Links to Resources Mentioned:
What episode should you listen to next?
How to Connect:
Episode Transcript: The full transcript of this episode is available here.
Connect with Whole Parent:
They're lobbying for connection in the same way that you would lobby for connection If your partner all of a sudden started hanging out with another person too much. You'd probably lobby that connection. I mean, if your partner came home and said, hey, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to go spend a bunch of time with this other woman and she's from work and there's nothing going on. You know I don't love you any less, I promise, but. But I'm going to spend 90% of the time that I was spending with you I'm going to spend with her now. You would do whatever you could to get that attention back and so understand that that's somewhat similar to what your child's experiencing and so give that target attention or go a really, really long way.
Jon @wholeparent:Hello and welcome to the whole parent podcast. I am your host, my name is John at whole parent on all the social media and this is your podcast. All about how you can parent more effectively kids of all ages, but especially young kids, and in this case, today's episode we're going to be talking about how we can parent siblings better. You know this is one of the questions that is most often asked, and I'm probably going to do an upcoming workshop about this sometime in the summer. So if you're not yet on the email list so that you can get more information about upcoming workshops and things like that, please go ahead and do that. It's in the show notes. It's the first link. It's my stand store, which which you can look at other things that I have on there, but, most importantly, is a link right there to the email list. You can just put your first name and your email in. It's totally free. On Thursdays I send out awesome emails, which sometimes includes some information about upcoming events, like a live workshop or a live training, and I'm definitely going to be doing one about siblings.
Jon @wholeparent:But before that, I wanted to answer on the podcast three questions from parents, as we do almost every single week three questions from parents about siblings and sibling rivalry, sibling conflict, and so, without further ado, I am just going to dive right into our questions for this morning or whatever you're listening to it. You might be listening in the afternoon or evening, I suppose, but I'm going to dive right into our questions and we're going to. The three questions this week come from Ashley, steven and Kimberly. So if you are Ashley, Steven or Kimberly, please make sure that you tune in and listen. I did have somebody let me know the other day. Hey, I almost didn't listen to the episode about my question because I didn't realize that my question was going to be asked.
Jon @wholeparent:So, yeah, make sure that you are actually listening, especially if you've submitted questions and if you're looking to submit questions. All you got to do is email those questions. You know the format, you know tell me your name and how old your kid is, and it can be a question about anything related to parenting. You just submit it to podcasts at podcast, not podcasts podcast singular at wholeparentacademycom. So podcast at wholeparentacademycom it's the easiest way that you can submit a question. You can, of course, dm me on Instagram or other places like that as well, but I'm less likely to see it. If you send it to podcast at wholeparentacademycom, I am guaranteed to see it, and then I can make sure that your question goes into the right theme and category and then I answer it live on the podcast.
Jon @wholeparent:So this first question comes from Ashley. She says she has two children Ella, who's nine weeks old, and Maya, who's six. So five year roughly, or I guess more like a six year age gap. And since then, she says since the birth of our new baby, maya has been feeling neglected and constantly competes for my attention. It's causing tension in our family. How can I address the issue of sibling rivalry and help Maya feel less neglected while ensuring I'm meeting the needs of all of my children, including the newborn? This is a question that I almost put I would have put, had I had it back then into the new baby episode, which, if you didn't know this, I have an entire episode devoted to sibling issues related to new babies, and that is one that I did several weeks ago, so you can go in and listen to that and get more information. But the real thing I really want to focus in here, ashley, on how Maya feels, and you're already identifying for us that Maya feels neglected, right, and I think that that's an important piece of this.
Jon @wholeparent:A lot of parents don't get this right away. When you bring home a new baby, there is a level of competition and rivalry that's going to exist, and this is true at five year age gaps, six year age gaps. It's even more true, typically, of smaller age gaps two years, three years which tend to be at least in my experience, a little bit more common. So what happens is you know you haven't competing force come into the family and the older child may be really into the baby initially, may have no interest in the baby initially. It can vary, it depends, but what ultimately winds up happening is that the attention paid to that older child is lessened, and this is normal and natural and it's not a bad thing for the older child. It's a good thing, in fact, it's good to learn to find new ways to connect with your parents.
Jon @wholeparent:At six years old, I'm guessing that Maya is already in school and so there's there are a lot of things here that we can really hone in on. But the first thing and the most important thing and I think I said this in the new baby episode, but I really, really want to stress it here because this is true for all sibling relationships is that one of the great cures to sibling rivalry very, very simple cures to sibling rivalry is to pay special attention to both children individually. In this case, paying special attention to the older child, the six-year-old, is going to be massively important, especially because they're going to be feeling with the nine-week-old like man everything. As soon as the nine-week-old needs something, mom drops everything and goes to them, and there is a truth to that. To be honest, like new, babies do require more immediate attention typically than six-year-olds.
Jon @wholeparent:Six-year-olds have a degree of patience, the things that they need from us, they aren't as immediate and so because of that, unless they're, you know, in some sort of imminent safety risk which is a threat which, by the way, kids will actually go out and seek those ways. They'll seek endangering activity or risky behaviors to try and get your attention. If you don't provide that attention without them going about those means, kids will also start to whine. They'll also do this thing where they kind of revert to a younger stage although that that can happen with six-year-olds anyway where they start doing like a baby talk thing or they, you know, it can look a lot of different ways, but that's the most common one that I found is that the baby talk thing was like I need help. You know things that they'd never needed help with. They've known how to put their shoes on since they were four, but now all of a sudden they need help because this new baby comes around and really these are all attention-seeking behaviors and that does not. Don't hear that as a negative. Attention-seeking is just connection-seeking at its core. Kids need that connection. We need that attention. When adults feel neglected by a spouse or a partner, we we demand their attention and we can engage in some problematic behaviors as well. So this is a normal human drive for attention and for connection, and so attention-seeking behaviors don't hear that negative or connotated, but kids who are six years old will do that Well.
Jon @wholeparent:One of the main ways that we can kind of I don't want to say eliminate, but we can curb that type of behavior is by actually providing intentional attention at the pivotal moments, and some of these pivotal moments are, you know, like first thing in the morning when you're six-year-old gets up, when Maya is awake. I understand you might be exhausted. You have a nine-week old. Probably sleep is is a thing of the past for you in some ways, although I hope that you're getting as much sleep as you can. But just try. And when Maya gets up in the morning, spend five intentional minutes if it's possible. Can you leave the baby with a partner? Can you, you know, be so distant from the baby at least a little bit distant from the baby that you're able to get up without waking them and go to Maya when she wakes up and provide this really targeted attention. The same thing is true of bedtime how can we provide targeted attention at bedtime? And the same thing is true when she gets home from school. How can we provide targeted attention when she gets home from school? By doing these three really seemingly simple things, you can go all long way In kind of eliminating some of this sibling attention seeking behavior, because now your child is feeling like, hey, I'm getting the connection that I need and I've said this so many times, I said it on the podcast with Eli, if you didn't catch that one on secure attachment, which would be a great one for you to listen to as well but but I've said this so many different ways and so many different times, but I'll just say it one more time here, if you've never heard the podcast before.
Jon @wholeparent:Your kids want all of your attention some of the time. It's much better to give them all of your attention some of the time than some of your attention all of the time. So if you're constantly engaged with the screen, if you're constantly engaged with the sibling, I understand that this is the stage of life. There is a certain level of newborn hood where you're just kind of embracing the suck of life. It's not perfect. There's a lot of you know things that go undone. You're not going to do your taxes in the nine weeks that you're after your baby is born. You're not going to probably have a very clean house. You're not going to be able to talk a lot of nutritious food, that's okay. We're just embracing this.
Jon @wholeparent:This period, I like to say the first three months are a crapshoot. You just survive them and then you get through, but that's not fair to your six year old to just let her survive. And so how do we do this? We provide that targeted attention, really really specific attention, three different times throughout the day. Like I said, those three times are going to pay much higher dividends. These are kind of the bonus times where your attention that you give them is perceived at a much higher rate. This is based on a study by Jacques Panc staff where he said that these are the kind of the three main areas of connection, or the three main times of connection for kids with their parents, again, when they wake up, when they wake up when they go to bed and when they reconnect with you after being gone at school or daycare or whatever. And so that targeted attention is going to be huge.
Jon @wholeparent:The second thing that's going to be huge is I know at nine weeks we're starting to get into the place where maybe mom's getting out, mom's going and doing things. Can we find a way to have a mom and Maya date? Can we do that? Can we find a way to say 30 minutes it doesn't have to be a big thing, but I'm going out with my six-year-old just us two we're going out in the town and be willing to go a little bit extra. Maybe you get ice cream, maybe you go to a place that you don't maybe reserve for special occasions, whatever. Try and make this a really positive experience.
Jon @wholeparent:Don't put a lot of expectations in stock in it. That might be the moment when Maya blows up because she finally feels like she has your full attention and connection and now she's going to melt down because she finally feels like I have mom's attention. So don't put a lot of stock and expectation into how that's going to go, but just show up and be conscious and be present for Maya and that mom and daughter date and really lavish some connection on her. We don't have to lavish a lot of things. Really, what our kids want most from us is our attention.
Jon @wholeparent:A lot of parents, when a new baby comes around, they try and buy the affection of their older child by giving them this or that or letting them do these extra things. There's zero judgment for that. But the reason why it doesn't typically work is because what they're looking for is not your stuff. They're looking for your attention. You've highlighted that and you've said I know that she's looking for attention. How do I provide that attention? Because, for lack of better terms, it's kind of easy. You provide that attention, but don't get in your head that you have to give 100% of your attention to Maya all the time and you need to neglect the baby. That's obviously not the truth. That's not what you need to do. You're probably still going to give 90% of your time 95% of your time to your baby, but how can we give that additional 5% to Maya in a really targeted way?
Jon @wholeparent:Another really great thing to do during those periods of connection, or if maybe dad and baby can go off or another caregiver and baby can go off for a period of time, is to sit down and do some interactive creative play. 6 years old, they're still generally into creative play. If they're not, let's try and get them back into creative play. It's really really good for development, brain development, all this other stuff, emotional regulation. Sit down and actually do that creative play. It might be so painful for you, but can you do it for 5 minutes I think you can. So sit down, actually do that targeted creative play and I think the attention thing is going to be really really, on the back end, much, much easier to handle.
Jon @wholeparent:So I've kind of answered that question before in the past, but I wanted to hit that first because a lot of people this is one of the most common questions I get in different forms on DMs and stuff New baby, my older child and again I have a whole episode on this but my older child is acting aggressively or demanding my attention, etc. All of that stuff is attention seeking and it's a natural attention seeking and it's not bad that they're doing it, it's good. They're lobbying for connection in the same way that you would lobby for connection If your partner all of a sudden started hanging out with another person too much. You'd probably lobby that connection. I mean, if your partner came home and said, hey, I'm going to go spend a bunch of time with this other woman and she's from work and there's nothing going on. I don't love you any less, I promise, but I'm going to spend 90% of the time that I was spending with you I'm going to spend with her now. You would do whatever you could to get that attention back, and so understand that that's somewhat similar to what your child's experiencing. So give that targeted attention and it'll go a really really long way.
Jon @wholeparent:Number two Steven says and this is funny because my dad was named Steven and spelled the same way I have two sons named Matt, age eight, and Kevin, age six. Well, my Matt is age seven, so I really like this question. They share a bedroom and lately it's become a battleground. They constantly argue over space and toys. It's causing a lot of tension between them. We don't have space for them to have their own rooms. How can I help my sons learn to share their space and belongings peacefully, without constant conflicts?
Jon @wholeparent:This is a really great question. I'm going to call you Steve just because that's how's my dad and I can't get it out. I can't call somebody Steven anymore. I know that that's probably bad, it's just locked in my brain forever. So, steve, this is a really really good question and it's really common of kids this age to go through this. What's mine, what's yours? It happens in toddlerhood for sure. My do, I do, mine, mine, mine, no, no, no, all of that.
Jon @wholeparent:But the actual time where this tends to really manifest and rear up is in that early grade school age six years old to eight years old and so you have a six year old and you have an eight year old, and so they're both going through this experience, but they're going through it on opposite ends of the spectrum. And this is the thing with two year age gaps. We can talk about the benefits of different age gaps. There is no perfect age gap between kids. The five year age gap can be so much easier in so many ways, but then you're also there's other complications with that.
Jon @wholeparent:And how do you build deep connection between people who are, you know, really quite different in age and different in stage of development? With the two year age gap, a lot of parents come in thinking I'm going to have a playmate for my kid and that there's a truth to that. Two to three years you can really play well. Even under two years you can play well with your sibling. However, also, developmental stages get really complicated because one kid will be. They can find themselves in kind of the same developmental stage but on different ends of that.
Jon @wholeparent:So, just remembering that both of them are in a developmental stage where sharing and understanding who's is who's and what belongs to whom, that is going to be a big thing for them, and a lot of parents do this poorly. In fact, this is one of the things that I don't know that my parents necessarily did particularly well, but a lot of parents do this really poorly, and the way that they do that is by saying everybody has to share everything. Right, everybody has to share everything, and that is a really good way to make kids feel super insecure about what belongs to them and what, what they have agency and autonomy over. And you don't share everything with your kid, right? You don't share everything with your partner. You might say, well, no, yeah, we do. We live in the same house, we live in the same bedroom, we, you know, have shared bank account. We share everything. They're going to have to learn to do that. Two things Number one you chose that person right. And if you guys could not get along? And if you guys could not share a bedroom? And if you guys could not share things and if you guys could not agree on anything, you could just have chosen to not be with that person.
Jon @wholeparent:Your childhood did not make that choice. You had two kids, adopted two kids. However, however, your family was formed blended families that come together and there's two kids of different ages or even the same age. You, as the adult, made the choice. These are going to be the age gap. Here's going to be our kids. Beyond that, your kid has no say in whether they had siblings or not. Your oldest had no say in whether you had younger siblings. Even if you say that you asked them, they were like what? Two, maybe five, maybe even 10. They had no say. You were going to make that choice on your own. They had no say. And because they had no say, you have to understand that it's going to be a slightly different thing. And beyond that, you still don't share everything with your spouse. I can guarantee you that you don't share a phone with your spouse.
Jon @wholeparent:Me and my wife share a laptop computer. We have two computers in our home. We have a desktop and a laptop. She tends to never use the desktop. I tend to use it a lot more for things like video editing and recording podcasts and stuff like that. But she also has a laptop and sometimes I have to use laptop, especially when I'm trying to half work downstairs but also keep an eye on the older kids. I can tell you right now we get into conflicts about where stuff is stored on the laptop and how that I like to store my files this way and she stores them this way. It's hard. It's hard to share things with people.
Jon @wholeparent:You probably don't, like I said, share a cell phone with your partner. You wouldn't want them going through your phone and change everything around, move anything around, and so, understanding that it is a natural human desire to have some kind of personal property that belongs to you, it's that is natural and okay to have unique, sentimental things that belong to you. And if parents don't respect that normal, natural desire for kids to have those types of personal things, then the kids will then go out seeking that stuff everywhere all the time. So if you don't allow your kid to have a certain number of things that are just theirs, that belong to just them, then they will look out in the world and try and claim anything that they can. On the contrary, if you do what I'm going to recommend here, with kids who are 6 and 8 sharing a room, if you do this effectively, you're not going to have this happen.
Jon @wholeparent:So here's what I would recommend doing, and this can look a couple different ways, it depends on how you do it, but I would say, at 6 and 8, you can have a sit down and have a conversation with both of them. You can have a sit down and have a conversation. You can have a sit down and have a conversation and you can give both of them a box or a shelf. Those are the two options A box or a shelf, and in their room, and this box is going to go somewhere. It's going to have their name on it. Whatever, you can even put a lock on it if you want to put a key on it, but you don't have to. You're going to give each of them a box or a shelf and anything that they put that they get that goes on. That box or shelf is theirs. Now we're not going to do like a draft or a free for all. This is going to relate to generally sentimental things. You have a stuffed rhino that you really like. You have a blanket from when you were born. These are the types of things that you can put on the box or the shelf.
Jon @wholeparent:Well, john, what do you do about new toys? When you bring a new toy into the home, we tend to get out most of our toys secondhand. What do you do with that? We set the expectations up front. If my kids are getting a $1 car, a hot wheels car, from the grocery store, they can claim. If they're both getting one, they can claim hey, do we want these to be something that we share or something that goes in our box? What happens when you fill the box? You've got to take stuff out of the box. That's right. We're not going to have an unlimited. You're not going to accumulate, you're not going to be smough in the dungeon or in the cave. Who accumulates all your treasure and then you don't let anybody else touch it. There's going to be a set number of things. I bet you, when they go into that box, now that they feel really secure that anything in that box will not be touched by the other sibling, now that they feel really secure in that, it'll be amazing to you how much more willingly they take stuff out of that box and allow it to go back into the general store. So then, anything that isn't in those boxes is what I call communally owned toys, which means that we've got to work out a way to share, whether that's with timers, that's a really good tool to use.
Jon @wholeparent:I have a parent who I'm friends with who just says you know, as long as you're playing with it, there's no time limit you can play with it. But when you're done, the other person gets their turn and you can't just immediately go oh, now I see what you're doing with it and I want it back. I like what you're doing and I see that. And that tends to happen with younger siblings, with older siblings, is that the younger one will be playing with something and then they get bored of it, because they tend to get bored a little bit more quickly. I mean, personality comes into factor here too, but you know, six-year-olds are more likely to get bored or something than an eight-year-old. Generally they get bored of something and then they go off and play with something else. The eight-year-old goes and picks it up and finds out something new to do with it or a new fun way to play with it, because they're a little bit, maybe a little bit more advanced. And then the six-year-old goes oh, I see that. Now I want that back. Well, in this parent's way of doing things, that was a non-factor because you could take a 20-minute turn. But as soon as you put it down, as soon as you're kind of done with it, then the older sibling, or the other sibling I should say, gets to play with it for that period of time and you can't play with all the things at once.
Jon @wholeparent:There's some dividing up of that and this does not tend to work well with screens, by the way, because of the nature of screens of being so constantly stimulating. If you have like, okay, your turn with the iPad, your turn with the iPad. They can take such long. I mean you should have limits on that and timing around that anyway, probably beyond that, and that's a whole different separate screen type of thing. But with toys and physical objects this tends to work well. So timers can be the way, but the communally shared objects are going to be much more easily and welcomed much more easily and much more effectively communally shared.
Jon @wholeparent:So just remember this. If your kids, who are siblings, are really, really struggling with a conflict, a lot of that comes from where do I end? Where is my stuff? How do I have agency? Where is my attention coming from? And the other one's feeling the same way. And so if you don't give them that agency, if you don't give them that personal responsibility of these or your things, if you don't give them that individual, targeted attention, then what's going to happen is they're going to continue to struggle. But as soon as you fulfill those basic needs, you'll notice how, on the backside much easier that is. Until you meet the basic needs of your kids, they will continue to seek having those basic needs met with problematic behavior, which includes sibling infighting. So just remember that and I think that you're going to be a lot, lot better off, steve, with your two little ones.
Jon @wholeparent:The last question I have here and I'm already realizing that we're going to have a bunch more episodes on siblings, so I'm just going to call this episode sibling part one. The last question I have here comes from Kimberly. But before we do that, I want to give you a quick PSA, which is you guys know this is coming if you're a long time listener of the podcast, so I'm going to do it really, really fast. Please, please, please. If you have not gone in and rated and reviewed the podcast. Yet what are you doing? You got to go do it. If this is your first episode, no worries. But if you've been listening to two episodes, five episodes, if you've been a subscriber from the beginning, please, I'm going to keep asking.
Jon @wholeparent:And the reason I keep asking is because this is the way the podcast grows. The way the podcast grows is by you doing two things. Number one rating and reviewing the podcast. Number two sharing it with your friends, either on social media or interpersonally. And so if you can do that, please, please, please, please, pause the episode right now. It's going to hold your place. Whatever podcast app you're listening on, it's going to hold your place.
Jon @wholeparent:Go into Apple Podcasts, go into Spotify, rate and review the episode. I know they make it more difficult than it needs to be, but find the place to do it. It's a couple of buttons. Write me a little review. I read every single review that comes into the podcast. Personally, I'm an assistant doing it. It's just me out here. I make all these, I produce all these on my own. I will read your review and your insights and you know, hey, I really like the episode on siblings. Let's do more of those. You write that in a review. I'll know this is the type of stuff I should be talking about and I should, and I'm going to continue to talk about it.
Jon @wholeparent:So last question again comes from Kimberly, and she has three kids, and so now we're getting into the more complex family dynamics. She says I have three kids, amanda, who's 10, carson, who's seven, and Allie, who is three. It's becoming increasingly challenging to find activities that they all enjoy together because of the age, of their developmental differences. Amanda feels like she's outgrown certain games. Carson and Allie feel like they can't keep up with her interests. How can I offer a more inclusive environment to help my children of varying ages find common ground in activities that they all enjoy together? Really, really, really good question, kimberly. You know I really really harp on and on about this, so I'm going to get up on my soapbox here for a moment. But what you're trying to do is so massively important. There is no.
Jon @wholeparent:We'll have an entire episode in the future, I'm sure, about sibling, conflict, fighting, how we can prevent some fighting. We already had one question that kind of gets into that with the how do we share space without tearing each other apart? We're going to have an entire episode about this in the future and what I'm going to say over and over in that episode. What I'm going to say to you right now is that there is no way to prevent all fighting between siblings. There is no way you have two unique persons living under the same roof. These people again did not agree to live with each other. They're being forced into this situation with people who they probably share some similarities and many Great personality differences.
Jon @wholeparent:Also, this is the safe place I hope for for your kids is in the home with you, which means the vulnerabilities are gonna come out. This is where Maybe I don't act out at school because I'm not super comfortable. I don't know how that's gonna be received by my friends and my teachers. We've got no problem being my worst self at home. Adults we do this to. Fighting is gonna happen, hopefully not physical violence, unless it's, you know, rough, rough housing and that's all good. I'll have a talk about that more later but fighting is going to happen and Because fighting happens, our only way to navigate that is number one we can prevent some of it, like I'll talk about in future episodes.
Jon @wholeparent:Number two we can learn how to fight fair, which again is another episode in and of itself. How do we navigate sibling conflicts? Well, and I'm sure I'll talk about that a ton in the workshop when I do that sometime this summer. But number three, we also have to balance out the other side of the equation. What do I mean by balance out the other side of the equation when the? What Dan Siegel, one of my favorite parenting experts, talks about, is that there are these studies that have been done on siblings, and? And what if he identifies the same thing that I've just identified, which is there is no way to completely Eliminate all fighting from a family? It just doesn't happen. Siblings are gonna have rivalry. They're gonna have in fighting. Yes, there's a lot we can do to prevent that, to tame it, to make it better to, you know, take the claws off at some of that fighting, but in general they're going to go at it. Sometimes they're not gonna always agree.
Jon @wholeparent:What's really predictive of future lifelong friendship between siblings has nothing to do with how much they fight. It's whether the positive experiences of childhood Associated with that other person outweigh the negative ones. So how many times did you find yourself experiencing true joy, happiness, enjoyment in the presence of your sibling? If the answer is, more times than I found myself Hating that person and hating my life while I was around them, then you're gonna wind up having a long-term friendship and relationship. If the majority of your relationship is Is negative, then later in life it's gonna be much, much harder to foster healthy, long-term, lifelong friendship between siblings. And so what you're asking, kimberly, is a great question on so many different levels, because what you're really fundamentally asking here is how can I have my kids Enjoy each other's presence right? And so I'm gonna give you three really, really quick tips for this. Number one is that we have to get the play to be more open-ended and less closed ended play. So play that has a natural Progression, like a board game, like this, is how we play the game. Here are the rules.
Jon @wholeparent:That stuff tends to be very age-dependent. Probably the easiest example of this is a puzzle. If you give a puzzle designed for it your three-year-old To your I'm sorry, I'm forgetting the ages of your kids. Now, if you give it a puzzle designed for your three-year-old to your seven-year-old, they are going to struggle Deeply to. I'm sorry, if you give a three-year-old the puzzle designed for a seven-year-old, they're gonna struggle too much to do it for it to be fun, but they're probably not gonna be able to do it unless they're very gifted in some way. If you give the same puzzle for design for your three-year-old To your seven-year-old, instead, reverse that. It's gonna be too easy and it's not gonna be fun. Now add your ten-year-old into the mix. If you give your three-year-old Puzzle to your ten-year-old, it's it's like mom, what are you giving me this for? I don't get it, I don't need this.
Jon @wholeparent:And so that's a close-ended toy. It has a developmental capacity. Here is the window of development where it makes sense and Ten-year-olds can start to get into that adult developmental stage where they can actually play games with us that are designed for adults. It might be additionally challenging for them, but they can do things that are that are developmentally kind of leveling up and so that type of close-ended play. Here's the start, here's the finish, here's how you do the puzzle or here's how you play the game or or anything like that. Video games, whatever. That stuff is really really hard to Do kind of inter I'm gonna call it intergenerational, but it's not. But interactive age barrier, you know development crossing.
Jon @wholeparent:Now take that and say you let's go build a fort in the woods, something so open-ended Something, so this can look totally different for a seven-year-old than a three-year-old, than a ten-year-old, and that type of open-ended, imaginative stuff which, by the way, your ten-year-old can still absolutely do. It's just that oftentimes ten-year-olds, because they cross into the developmental age where, all of a sudden, you know the world has so many more offerings for them, we forget that they have a capacity to do this open-ended play and then we just kind of focus. Really, every time we play with them it's Monopoly or Zari or whatever. You don't have to do that. You can actually go into their space and go hey, I want you to come along here, we're gonna do, you know, we're gonna act out a story together, doing plays, doing whatever. That type of stuff can be really, really impactful and positive.
Jon @wholeparent:And that can be this open-ended type of play or building with Legos. A three-year-old might need to use Duplos, but we can all build with Legos together. Seven-year-olds and the ten-year-old are using, you know, actual Lego size Legos. The three-year-old may be using Duplos, but everybody's building together and, by the way, the adults can too. Now we're practicing shared enjoyment, which is developmentally appropriate for each kid, without forcing them into these close-ended things.
Jon @wholeparent:And this is where I really don't want you, what I really don't want you to do. And this is tip number two Resist the urge to say you pick this time, you'll pick next time. This actually does the exact opposite of what we want with our kids. That means that the seven-year-old, who really doesn't like what we're doing because the ten-year-old picked or the three-year-old picked now resents that activity. And the opposite is true. Maybe the three-year-old's having the time of their life, but the ten-year-old and the seven-year-old are not having fun right now. And because they're not having fun, this has created the opposite experience. Now it's man, if my little sibling was not around, my life would be better.
Jon @wholeparent:Resist all types of activities that make one kid feel Now, sometimes this is going to be impossible to resist altogether. You're going to have to allow for that. Sometimes kids need to learn patience too. They're going to have to learn taking turns and sharing and all that other stuff. But when you're really trying to do these family engagement activities, resist the urge to do the. You pick the movie this night, you'll pick the movie next week. You'll pick the movie that. That creates a lot of competition and hostility. That's unnecessary.
Jon @wholeparent:So instead, look for things that are super open-ended. The other thing you can do is go to a place like a trampoline park, right, and you can say hey look, each of you are going to engage in this activity at a different level. The 10-year-old might be off here trying to do the like Ninja Warrior course, while the seven-year-old is much more content to do like the, you know, jumping into the foam pit. And the three-year-old might just be content to just bounce up and down and scream their head off Like that can. But you're all having fun in the same place at the same time and you get in the car and you go wow, that was fun. That's a great example of open-ended play that's developmentally appropriate for all kids.
Jon @wholeparent:And so you know, just start to write down a list. You don't have to be super creative. Adults require novelty, kids require predictability. You don't have to be super creative. You can do. You know. You get a membership to some place and you can do that thing every single week. That's fine. Your kids are not going to fall, true, for that you know.
Jon @wholeparent:But find those places, and I'm the evidence of this. There were places. I was the three-year-old with my seven-year-old and 10-year-old older brothers. I was that. I actually was zero years old, when my brother was 10 and my other brother was seven. And yet my parents still occasionally found places where all of us could be having fun at the same time, and when they did that, those were the moments of family fun that really, really positively impacted my life in a really unique way. And now, even to this day, I can find really positive experiences with my older brothers Not that they didn't always, you know, they fought with each other. They were closer in age. Nobody really fought with me because I was so much younger, but my brothers definitely fought with each other. But those positive experiences really outbalanced and outweighed those things. And my third tip here, with the three-age gap thing right, the first one is find open-ended activities. The second one is resist the urge to do the you, your turn, your turn, your turn thing. The third thing is really try and reduce as much as you can competition.
Jon @wholeparent:I am a big advocate for competition in general. I think competition can be a really enjoyable thing. It's very. I'm an extremely competitive person. I love competition myself. Maybe that's just like the. You know the guy in me, the kid raised in the 90s. I like to do fun stuff like that, but competition between siblings almost never winds up working out well.
Jon @wholeparent:There's just an episode of Bluey that I was watching with my kids I don't know was it this morning, I think it was this morning. We were watching an episode of Bluey where Bandit, who's their dad, plays racquetball with his little brother and he says big brothers always win. And you know, in this episode Bingo like convinces, or Bluey convinces Bandit, her dad, that he should have let his little brother win because it'll make it more fun for everybody, and Bandit like vehemently rejects this because he's just like no, what's fun is playing as hard as you can. And as adults, maybe that competition can exist, maybe when your kids are 25 and you know I'm trying to do the math here, but 25 and 22 and 19, would that be right? Or 18. Then you can play board games, whatever, and they can have it out and really go after each other.
Jon @wholeparent:But when the developmental stage is so different in childhood, when there's so many leaps and bounds physically right, you see this in youth athletics Parents who have a kid born in September versus a kid born in July, and that September baby is like the oldest kid in the class and the July baby is like one of the youngest kids in the class, that just that 10 months of development can be massively, massively different. Now compare this to your kids. They're guaranteed more than 10 months apart, right, like that's? Biology means that every kid is at least nine months apart. So when you're trying to navigate, who competes at what level? Whether it's competition with cognitive ability, like a board game, whether it's competition physical ability, like playing tag or basketball, whatever, there can be some fun in it.
Jon @wholeparent:But oftentimes the older kid is just going to dominate and that's not fun for the they may feel fun in the moment for the older kid, ultimately it's not fun for the older kid long term because it creates hostility. It's not going to be fun for your younger kids either. So reduce the competition. And so many of us are raised into a system, an economic system in the West, that says competition is good, right. Competition is good for business, competition is good for pushing people to their athletic potential, competition is good for creating jobs and competition is good for this and that. Yeah, competition not good for siblings. By and large, competition is going to lead to a lot more hostility between your children who are siblings than the alternative.
Jon @wholeparent:And so, as you're seeking out these activities where they can all play together. Resist the urge to take turns, resist the urge to allow competition to be one of those things, and then just look for those open-ended places. Now, I didn't give you any specific examples other than playing in the woods or trampoline park, but once you understand the concept of open-ended and imaginative, I think you're going to come up with so many other things. Art is another one. Everybody can do art at the same. The product may be different, but if we're not passing judgment and value and creating a competition about whose picture is better, art can be a place Building again Legos, blocks, things like that. That can be a place.
Jon @wholeparent:Going to a place where you just have, you know, parallel play, going to children's museum or something, and this person might be, this kid might be playing with something that's a little older and this kid might be playing something younger, but they're parallel playing. That can be a positive thing. Anywhere where you're open-ended, where the goal is everybody is having fun, there are no winners and losers, there is no waiting to take your turn. That are, those are going to be the places where you're going to really balance out that right side of the scale against that left side of your kids are going to fight. So your kids are going to fight. You're never going to be able to prevent 100% of that. That's just life. How do we then balance out the other side of the equation? And it's with this positive, open-ended experiences.
Jon @wholeparent:So I hope that these questions have you know, as we wrap this episode, we've had kids of completely different ages and stages. We had two kids that were two years apart. We've had kids that were up to seven years apart. We started out with the newborn question and as we go through this, I just want you to remember the main takeaway, which is any experience that your kids have positively with their siblings is going to, it's going to really benefit them long-term.
Jon @wholeparent:And if your kids are not getting their fundamental needs met by you as a parent, they are never going to get along with their sibling. And they're not going to look and I should have said this earlier in the episode but they're not going to look and complain about you when they're an adult. Well, they're going to look and complain about their sibling, and so remember that you are the stand-in for their sibling, so be willing to give them that conscious, proactive attention because ultimately, they're going to blame their sibling if they didn't get it. If you be willing to give them that opportunity to have some agency and autonomy and own certain things and have some personal effects that other people aren't allowed to touch because they're going to blame their sibling if they don't have those things, and you can do so, so much for creating that positive environment. Parallel play, though, so so important. All right, that's the episode that I have for you today about siblings.
Jon @wholeparent:I hope that you really, really enjoyed this episode. I hope that you have learned something. If you're a parent with siblings, make sure that you're on that email list so that when the workshop eventually does come out about siblings and about navigating sibling conflicts, you're going to be able to be on that live workshop or watch the replay after it comes out, because I'm going to have so, so much more than what we just talked about here. Parenting siblings is one of my most favorite things to talk about. I was a sibling, my wife was a sibling. I'm raising three kids, so you know, we got we got siblings in our home. This is so, so, so important and eventually I'm going to write a book about it. So stay on the email list for the next couple of years, and you might see that too. Take care, this has been the Whole Parent Podcast.