So I finally read a parenting book! I know, not my usual topic choice, but I want to write down what I learned so I don’t forget.

Try not to compare your children.

Maybe obvious advice from a book about sibling rivalry, but good nonetheless. The basic idea is to describe the goodness or badness of what one child does without any reference to the other child. If they do something wrong, don’t say things like “Your brother would never do that”. And if they do something good but then put themselves down saying something like “well, it’s still not as good as Michael”, say “We’re not talking about Michael, we’re talking about you. I’m proud of you!”. Make it just about them.

Similarly, when spending quality alone time with one child, make it just about them.

Don’t frame everything as “relative to your sibling” because that framing inevitably leads to competition, rivalry, and negative feelings.

Acknowledge bad feelings

Quote from the book:

Insisting upon good feelings between the children led to bad feelings.

Acknowledging bad feelings between the children led to good feelings.

Many parents found that instead of “trying to force their children to get along”, acknowledging that certain parts of having brothers or sisters is frustrating was a better strategy. This feels very related to the next section (Make it clear you understand how your child feels).

Make it clear you understand how your child feels

Vocalize/narrate their feelings for them. Say things like: “Wow, you’re really mad aren’t you? You really didn’t like when Bobby grabbed that toy.” This also allows you to:

Not necessarily take sides immediately. You’re just making observations about how each child feels.
Feel more on the child’s side (even if they were the one who did something wrong). Saying how they feel out loud is supportive vs. immediately yelling at them.

This was probably the largest recurring theme in the book. Within any given conflict resolution strategy, this seemed like the “meta strategy”. No matter what specific thing was going wrong, narrating your children’s emotions was part of the solution.

Make sure each child gets alone time with you

I strongly agree with this, although it’s hard to do in practice. But alone time with 1 kid is often so much more special and quality than trying to get through the day with all 3 (or 4)!

Family meetings?

This wasn’t a huge part of the book, but in the last chapter there were a few anecdotes about families who scheduled “official family meetings” where they “invited” each family member to attend to talk about things like

conflicts
chores (they offered the change to swap/trade chores)

and it seemed to foster good feeling about the family. This feels in-line with being open about/acknowledging feelings.

We’ve never done this, but I can see it being a good idea.

Try to avoid locking your children into “roles”

The main idea is not to put anyone in a box. Don’t, for example, say this is the serious one and this is the silly one, or this is the athletic one and this is the smart one, etc.

And don’t just not say the words - actually mean it. Have high expectations for kids who are struggling in school, for example. They will react to your expectations for them.

Just because one of your children is more studious than another one doesn’t mean the other kid isn’t studious in any absolute sense. In another family, they might be the studious one! Let every kid express every part of themselves (to the extent they want) and not feel like “well I shouldn’t even try to be _ because my brother is the _ one”.

I think this is pretty important advice for us; I can see us struggling with this.