Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Praise
Title Page
Epigraphs
Introduction
If You’re Welcoming a New Baby
If Your Children Are Constantly Fighting
PART ONE: CALM PARENTING 101
1. How You Can Be a Calm Parent
The Parenting Skills That Help You Become Calmer as a Parent
2. How Calm Discipline Supports the Sibling Relationship
Why Punishment and Permissiveness Cause More Sibling Fighting
Rethinking Discipline
Setting Empathic Limits
Rethinking Time-outs
Rethinking Rewards
The Difference Between Consequences and Limits
What If Empathy Doesn’t Work?
Preventive Maintenance
When Your Child Is Acting Out: Time-in
Helping Kids with Big Emotions: Scheduled Meltdowns
How to Help Each Child with Big Emotions When You Have More Than One Upset Child
3. What Causes Sibling Rivalry – And How Parents Can Make It Better
Your Child’s Point of View: That’s Not a Friend, It’s a Replacement
Factors That Can Exacerbate Rivalry
The Power of Parents to Foster a Super Sibling Relationship
PART TWO: TEACHING CALM
4. Coaching Kids to Communicate Feelings and Problem-solve
Coaching Essential Emotional Intelligence Skills
Your New Role: Interpreter
Coaching Kids to Identify and Communicate Their Needs and Feelings
Coaching Kids to Set Limits with Each Other
Coaching Kids to Listen to Each Other
Coaching Kids to Problem-solve
Basic Negotiation Tools to Teach Kids
5. When Problem-solving Fails: Teaching Conflict Resolution
What About ‘We Get Along’ Shirts?
Why Fighting Is Essential to Teach Children Relationship Skills
How to Help Children Learn to Work It Out Themselves
Empowering Kids to Stand Up to Teasing
Mean Words
When Your Child Says He Hates His Sibling
Intervening in a Sibling Fight: The Basics
Should You Punish Your Child for Aggression?
When Your Toddler Is the Aggressor Against Your Older Child
Coaching Kids to Handle Aggression from Younger Siblings
How to Stop Repeated Aggression
Teaching Skills: Intervening in a Sibling Fight
Helping Kids Make Repairs After a Fight, Instead of Forced Apologies
6. Why Can’t They Just Share? Why Kids Fight Over Possessions
Rethinking Sharing: A Radical Solution
Self-regulated Turns: What Children Learn
Coaching Kids as They Wait for Their Turn
7. Easing the Competition
‘It’s Not Fair!’
Never Compare
Resist Labelling
How to Celebrate Each Child Without Fuelling Competition
Who Gets to Push the Lift Button?
How to Ensure You Don’t Unwittingly Foster Competition
Helping Kids with Competitive Feelings
Birth Order and Competition
What If You Prefer One Child?
8. Tools to Prevent Rivalry and Nurture Bonding
Expect Your Children to Value Each Other
Family Routines That Foster Sibling Bonding
Family Rules and Mottos That Support Sibling Closeness
How to Create More Positive Interactions Between Your Children
Strategies to Create a Sibling Team
Shifting Alliances: How to Keep Kids from Ganging Up on Each Other
Why Rough and Tumble Reduces Sibling Rivalry
Why Not Tickling?
When Kids Share a Room
When One Child Has a Friend Over
Family Meetings: The Resource You’ll Be So Glad You Discovered
PART THREE: BEFORE THE NEW BABY AND THROUGH THE FIRST YEAR
9. Before the Baby Arrives: Creating a Warm Welcome
Telling Your Child About the New Sibling
Twelve Ways to Help Your Kids Begin Bonding During Your Pregnancy
Be Sure Your Child Can Rely on Both Parents
Ten Tips to Support Your Child Emotionally as He Moves Towards Becoming a Big Sibling
Weaning Versus Tandem Nursing
Preparing Your Child for the Separation During the Upcoming Birth
If You’re Planning to Have Your Child at the Birth
Creating a Transition Book for Your Child
Making an Activity Box for Your Child
Work Through Your Own Emotions About Having a Second Child
Loving Each Child Best
10. Getting Off to a Good Start: Birth and the First Few Months
Introducing Your Child to the New Baby
The First Week: Settling In as a Family
How to Keep Your Child Occupied While You Feed the Baby
Helping Your Child with Her Mixed Emotions About the Baby
What About Those Overzealous Hugs?
Regression: When Your Child Goes Backwards
Managing Naptime and Bedtime with More Than One Child
The Early Months: The New Normal
When Your Child Has a Hard Time Adjusting
Daily Practices to Stay Connected to Your Child Now That He Has to Share You
Using Games to Help Your Child with Jealousy
Reading Books to Your Child About Becoming a Big Sib
Nine Tips to Foster a Great Relationship Between Your Children Right from the Start
11. Building a Positive Foundation When the Baby Begins to Crawl
Ten Tips to Maintain a Peaceful Home as Baby Moves Towards Toddlerhood
Dividing Your Time
How to Help Your Older Child Solve His Problems with the Little One
What to Say When Your Child Is Jealous of the Baby
What to Do About Toy Grabbing
When Your Child Is Aggressive Towards the Baby
What If the Aggressor Is Too Young to Understand?
What If It’s the Baby Who’s Aggressive?
Games to Help Your Children Bond with the Baby
Final Note: Choose Love
Notes
Index
Acknowledgements
Copyright
‘This book delivers hope and help. Laura Markham brilliantly applies her respectful, attuned, limit-setting approach to sibling dynamics. Full of realistic scenarios and scripts for how parents can turn conflict into opportunities to build skills, and turn parental dread into meaningful intervention, Calm Parents, Happy Siblings masterfully coaches parents on how to honor each child’s experience, set limits, reduce conflict, and build skills for life.’
– Tina Payne Bryson, PhD, co-author of The Whole-Brain Child and No-Drama Discipline
‘Parents need all the help they can get to be the kind of parents they want to be, and to use parenting skills that influence their children to be good citizens of the world. Dr Laura’s book is filled with this kind of help – practical, inspiring, and encouraging through real-life examples. It would have helped me a lot when I was raising my children.’
– Dr Jane Nelsen, author and co-author of the Positive Discipline series
‘Finally, a book that answers your questions around sibling rivalry! In this insightful book, Dr Markham draws on scientific research to craft smart strategies that any parent can use to help their children resolve their conflicts with empathy, mindfulness, and peace. A must-read for every parent.’
– Dr Shefali Tsabary, author of The Conscious Parent and Out of Control
‘Adding a child to the family creates a cascade of challenges. Dr Laura Markham shows parents how to avoid common sibling difficulties, and how to convey their love, even in stressful situations, so children truly feel supported. Open this book, and you’ll find clarity, wisdom, workable ideas, and generous helpings of respect for parents and children.’
– Patty Wipfler, founder of Hand in Hand Parenting
‘Refreshingly positive and respectful in its tone, Calm Parents, Happy Siblings lovingly guides parents by using scripts and practical examples, essential tools for any parent with more than one child. Dr Laura’s compassionate approach is empowering for parents, and liberating for children.’
– Lysa Parker and Barbara Nicholson, founders of Attachment Parenting International and authors of Attached at the Heart
‘Brothers and sisters, rejoice! Here’s a family roadmap to transform bickering kids into a connected sibling team. One third of kids have a warm caring relationship with their siblings. Read this book and your family can join the ranks.’
– Heather Shumaker, author of It’s Okay Not to Share
‘A phenomenal book for parents with multiple children! Dr Markham addresses all of the common sibling issues with sensible solutions to bring peace and foster healthy relationships between siblings. This book will be my constant companion for years to come.’
– Rebecca Eanes, author of Lasting Bonds: Building Connected Families Through Positive Parenting
‘Whether you are just beginning to contemplate having a second child or you are already frustrated by non-stop sibling fighting, this book is for you. I marvelled at the amount of wisdom, compassion, and practical ideas packed into its pages. The wisdom begins with her gentle reminder that we have to start with ourselves if we want to make meaningful changes in our children’s relationships with each other. The compassion is in Dr Laura’s empathy for everyone in the mix – including angry and worried parents. And the ideas aren’t just practical and usable – many of them are downright fun. You’ll laugh out loud just reading them, and everyone will laugh when you try them out. Wouldn’t that be a nice change from bickering and clobbering?’
– Lawrence J. Cohen, PhD, author of Playful Parenting
‘As a parenting coach, I know that sibling struggles can be heart-wrenching for parents. Dr Laura’s strategies are right on the money to help today’s parents create more peaceful homes – and stronger sibling relationships. Great work!’
– Amy McCready, founder of Positive Parenting Solutions and author of If I Have to Tell You One More Time and The ‘Me, Me, Me’ Epidemic
‘This book walks parents through sibling scenarios – even ones for very intense children – and breaks down the specifics of how to approach common struggles, without making parents feel guilty or overwhelmed. It is a wonderful resource that gives parents the tools to not only help our children while in the midst of conflict, but also helps us teach our children how to be the loving, kind, and respectful brothers and sisters we know they can be.’
– Gina Osher, The Twin Coach
‘If you are the parent of more than one child, this is the book for you. Laura Markham begins at the beginning – the how and when to tell your child that they are about to become a big brother or sister – and then offers concrete suggestions to help you lay down the foundation for a healthy sibling relationship throughout your children’s lives. I know that I will highly recommend this book to all my clients.’
– Rev. Susan Nason, parent educator
‘Dr Laura’s examples and coaching-based methodology make parenting siblings far less daunting. . . . Her book reassures us that doing our best with the right tools, including self-regulation, connection, and coaching, can build a much happier and more peaceful family.’
– Nancy Peplinsky, founder and executive director of Holistic Moms Network
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781473528109
www.randomhouse.co.uk
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Vermilion, an imprint of Ebury Publishing,
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London SW1V 2SA
Vermilion is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
Copyright © 2015 by Dr Laura Markham
Dr Laura Markham has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published in the United Kingdom by Vermilion in 2015 First published in the United States as Peaceful Parent, Happy Siblings in 2015
Published by arrangement with Perigree, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC
www.eburypublishing.co.uk
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9781785040252
When you have one child, you’re a parent. When you have two, you’re a referee.
– DAVID FROST
Before you can teach your kids to listen, identify the problem, express their feelings, generate solutions, and find common ground, you have to learn those problem-solving skills yourself.
– LAURA DAVIS AND JANIS KEYSER, BECOMING THE PARENT YOU WANT TO BE
You mean the baby could be a boy? But I’m your boy. I guess it’s okay … We can always send him back, right?
– THE AUTHOR’S SON, AGE THREE
I wasn’t prepared for my son’s reaction when his little sister was born. At four, he’d had only a few tantrums in his entire life. But when the baby appeared, he seemed to panic. He was clingy, he was angry, he was scared. I was trained as a psychologist, but I was out of my league.
Like me, most parents look forward to the awe on our older child’s face as he or she gazes for the first time at our newborn. We imagine the baby laughing as her big brother entertains her with funny faces. When one child gets hurt, the other will replay the care he’s received from us, offering his sibling a hug and a blankie. Over time, romping through the sprinkler will give way to bike rides and camping out, which will give way to arguing over who gets the car on Saturday night and consoling each other over lost games and broken hearts. They may head their separate ways after secondary school, but that bond will continue through all the ups and downs of adulthood. We want to believe that we’re giving our children a priceless gift: a friend for life.
But sometime in the first year – maybe even before the baby arrives – most parents begin to realize things may not be quite so simple, as I hear from the families I coach:
• ‘She loves her brother … In fact, she hugs him so hard that it scares us … Her hands always seem to end up around his neck.’
• ‘I can’t even drive the car safely because they can’t keep their hands off each other.’
• ‘He really pushed me to my limit when I came out of the shower and realized he had peed on his nine-month-old brother!’
There’s no way around it. Sibling rivalry is universal. After all, every human is genetically programmed to protect resources that will help him survive, and your children depend on and compete for what are, in fact, precious resources – your time and attention. Even when there’s plenty of love to go round, young humans haven’t developed much impulse control, so they’re bound to get into conflicts. Finally, temperament colours every relationship. Children who tend to be challenging will be even more challenging when you introduce a brother or a sister, and some siblings simply clash.
Unfortunately, many parents don’t know how to help kids with these strong emotions, so hurt feelings can lead to aggressive acts, which can spiral into negative patterns of interacting with each other. Those hard feelings can set the tone in a sibling relationship right through the teen years, and even have a way of popping up at family stress points across a life span.
But there’s good news, too. The sibling relationship is where the rough edges of our early self-centredness are smoothed off, and where we learn to manage our most difficult emotions. Siblings often become good friends, and because they know each other so well, they can provide each other a deep sense of comfort. Even siblings who fight a lot usually do gain respect for each other and eventually get along. When they’re grown, many siblings feel a deep connection to the only other people who understand what it was like to grow up in their home.
And here’s the best news of all. Parents can make a tremendous difference in shaping the sibling relationship. Sibling jealousy is unavoidable, but it’s almost always possible to help children develop a strong, positive bond that trumps the natural jealousy. It’s not always easy to raise siblings who appreciate each other, who become friends for life – but a committed parent can make all the difference. I wrote this book to show you how.
When I was struggling after the birth of my second child, the only book on siblings that I could find was Siblings Without Rivalry by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish, and it stayed on my bedside table for years. This is still the book I recommend first to parents of school-age children whose kids are having a hard time with each other. But as a mother with a baby and a young child, I faced daily challenges such as how to keep my son busy while I nursed his sister, how to help him learn to be gentle when he gave her those overzealous hugs, how to handle it when she started crawling and went after his toys. There were constant challenges in those early days as a growing family; I wanted specific strategies to transform those challenges into closeness between my children. I had read enough research to know that the foundation of my children’s relationship was being laid in that first year or two, but I couldn’t find a roadmap.
As the years went by, I finished my PhD in clinical psychology at Columbia University and founded the website AhaParenting.com. My practice as a parenting coach gave me a window into tens of thousands of families, so I saw first-hand what worked, and what didn’t, when families found themselves struggling. I built on the empathic model promoted by Faber and Mazlish and their mentor, Haim Ginott, one of the grandfathers of today’s positive parenting movement, to integrate new findings from research on emotion, attachment, and brain development (please see the acknowledgements). Observing the dynamics in the families I worked with, combined with my own mindfulness practice, taught me how parents can take control to shift the patterns in their families, not by controlling their children, but by changing their own thoughts, feelings, words, and actions. I’ve found that parenting gets a lot easier when we as parents can do three very hard things:
1. Regulate our own emotions.
2. Stay connected with our child, even when we’re setting limits or the child is upset.
3. Coach instead of controlling, by fostering emotional intelligence, guiding with empathic limits instead of punishment, and supporting mastery.
These three ideas will transform your relationship with your children so they’re happier, emotionally healthier, and more cooperative – and you’re calmer and more fulfilled in your parenting. They’re fully explained in my first book, Calm Parents, Happy Kids: The secrets of stress-free parenting. To me, these ideas are the key to finding the joy in parenting. And because they’re the foundation of raising happy children, they’re also essential to a happy sibling relationship, as described by one of my readers:
After applying your three big ideas (self-regulation, connection, coaching), my six-, five-, and three-year-old all get along more often now. As each of them felt stronger in their connection to me, they seemed to feel less anxiety inside and thus less of a need to act out by fighting with their siblings.
– Anna
As transformative as these ideas can be for a family, parents still ask me the kinds of questions I struggled with when my children were young. How can they:
• Help young children develop the skills to express their needs and stand up for themselves – and also listen to their siblings?
• Help two small children, or even three, work through strong emotions at the same time?
• Create a family culture of cooperation and support that gives sibling love a chance to win out over sibling rivalry?
Luckily, there are solutions that really help. Every family has unique challenges, but there are proven, research-based ways to get your kids’ relationship with each other started off on the right foot, and to keep them on track to a satisfying relationship. Even when kids are temperamentally mismatched or fiercely competitive, there are strategies that work to minimize sibling rivalry and maximize positive connection. Not all siblings can be best friends, but they can all learn to respect each other and honour their differences. This book details those strategies, giving you practical step-by-step blueprints to transform your children’s relationship with each other.
As you’ve no doubt already figured out, just ordering children to ‘get along’ doesn’t help them learn to manage their emotions, communicate their needs, or resolve their differences. Peace doesn’t come from pushing conflicts under the surface; they inevitably erupt again, all too often while you’re driving, pushing the supermarket trolley, or eating dinner at Grandma’s. But if you give kids the skills to navigate the complex terrain of human emotion and relationships, you’ll raise children who can work things out with each other. They’ll be able to advocate for their own needs while respecting the needs of others. And they’ll learn to look for win/win solutions rather than settling into bully and victim roles. In short, you’ll raise kids who love deeply, regulate their emotions, and have healthy relationships. Not only will your children forge a close and lifelong sibling bond, but they’ll thrive with peers, co-workers, and their eventual partner. They’ll be the kind of person we need more of in the world.
Families are the crucibles that transform infants into mature human beings. No matter how hard things are in your family right now, it is possible to create a home where differences are resolved amicably, and to raise children who are friends for life.
If you’re able to read this book before your baby arrives, or during your first year with a new baby in the family, then Part 3 is especially for you. If your family is at a different stage, I suggest you skip Part 3, and focus instead on the ideas in Parts 1 and 2.
What works for us is my being there to intervene, coach, model, prevent the breakdowns and fights on the days that are rough. For me this has made a huge difference. I don’t see many of my mum friends doing that … even the really, really awesome ones. Not because they don’t care but because we are all so busy! It’s like someone needs to give us permission to just let everything else go and focus on the relationships.
– Beth
If your children are fighting a lot, you’re probably feeling discouraged. It may help to remember that no matter how you parent, all children will fight sometimes – just as all couples will fight sometimes, no matter how solid a relationship they have. Fighting doesn’t mean anyone is a bad person – not you, and not your children.
Maybe you find yourself wondering why your child is always the one hitting the baby while everyone else’s children seem to love their new siblings. Remember, though, that you can’t see inside anyone else’s family. All children get jealous sometimes, no matter how loving they may act in public.
Maybe you’re ready to scream because your toddler keeps hitting, no matter how many times you patiently teach him that hitting hurts. Don’t give up. Research shows that young children often hit, no matter what parents do, presumably because they’re still developing the prefrontal cortex that will give them more self-control. But as parents keep modelling and teaching a calmer approach, their children show more kindness to their siblings and more ability to regulate their emotions than children who have been raised with conventional discipline.1 Your patience is making a difference, even if you can’t see it yet.
Or maybe your children can’t get through a day without some unpleasantness towards each other, so you wonder if you’ve done something wrong. The answer is No. You’ve done as well as you could with the resources you had. After all, your children were born with certain temperaments, and you were just trying to get dinner on the table without falling apart yourself. You’re not perfect, but neither is anyone else. Most likely you simply have more challenging children. Parents who have easier children may not understand this, but I talk to thousands of parents, and it’s quite clear that some children are more challenging than others.
The truth is, parenting as well as we can is always hard – really, truly, the hardest thing any of us has ever done. It’s physically and emotionally exhausting. Too often we’re pushed to put our own needs second, or third, or – unsustainably – even off the list. Raising children challenges us to rise above our natural human feelings of need and want, to give, give, give to another human who is too young to show any gratitude.
So life with children is always challenging, even under the best of circumstances – and most of us don’t live in the best of circumstances. Most of us have multiple stressors in our lives and are so busy trying to keep up that sometimes it seems as if we end up raising our kids in our spare time. Like all humans, we get stressed and emotionally ‘dysregulated.’ That makes us lose our easy, enjoyable connection with our kids. Since our children depend on that connection to stay regulated themselves, they get emotionally off-kilter, too, so they act out, towards us and towards each other.
One of the solutions to this is to remember that our children are, in fact, our most important job; we’re raising humans. We’re shaping not only their relationships with each other, but their very brains. Coaching your children so they develop emotional intelligence is what transforms their relationship with each other. Who cares if you serve your children cheese and crackers and carrot sticks for dinner again? What matters most for who your children become and the relationship they develop with each other is their daily life as children. Sure, genetics has a lot to do with it. But the interaction of those genes with environment is what shapes your children.
This book has the tools you need to transform your family life. I hope you’ll find some Aha! Moments. I know you’ll also find that it takes real time and commitment to put these powerful tools to work. So I’m giving you explicit permission to prioritize your children, and their relationship with each other. There will be some days when you simply can’t get to do the washing up, the laundry, the emails. The only way to keep your children from bashing each other will be to sit on the floor with them to prevent the fights, to coach them to express their needs without attacking, and to find ways to transform tension into closeness with laughter or with tears. This is heroic work, especially because it’s so private – no one is there to see what it costs you. But it’s not as invisible as it seems. Just as a tree’s rings record environmental conditions year by year, your children’s experience now is creating the people they’re growing into. Every day, you are literally shaping who your children will be for the rest of their lives. And don’t worry, there’s also a very immediate payoff, which you’ll see in increasingly positive interactions between your children.
I say this well aware that you’ll still have days when your kids will be on each other every five minutes. That doesn’t mean you’re not doing a good job. It means this is very hard work. If you keep prioritizing relationships in your family over whatever else you think you ‘should’ be doing, if you keep digging deep for your own emotional generosity, you’ll see your kids begin to soften towards each other. It might be hard to imagine your children becoming best friends, but the foundation stone of emotional intelligence that you’re building will at the very least support a respectful relationship – and maybe something much closer.
Is it easy? No. Self-regulation is the hardest work any of us ever do, but that’s the essential first ingredient for calm parenting. Don’t worry. You don’t have to be perfect at it. It’s always a work in progress. There is no perfect parent, because there are no perfect humans. What matters is that we notice when we’re off track, get ourselves back in balance, and reconnect with our kids.
Luckily, our children learn a lot from the times we miss the mark, because they’ll miss the mark, too. Role modelling how to gracefully navigate the shoals of human imperfection is one of the most valuable gifts we can give each child – and their sibling relationship – because it teaches them how to forgive themselves and each other.
So please summon up all your compassion and forgive yourself, right now, for being human. Decide right now that instead of criticism, you’ll give yourself extra nurturing when you’re not at your best – which happens, on a regular basis, to every parent. Really. No matter what. I don’t care what you’ve done while you were exhausted or furious. You’re human, which means you make mistakes, and you can grow. You don’t have to have parented perfectly, and you don’t have to be perfect in the future. Whatever is happening in your family right now, that’s where you start.
Figure out what support you need. Self-care? Information? Counselling? A written agreement with your partner about how to handle certain problems? Or maybe simply strategies to handle the situations that stump you? (This book will give you lots of those.) Once you give yourself that support, you can start turning things around with your children.
Whether your children are toddlers, pre-schoolers, or much older, you can teach them the skills to get along with each other. You can create a family culture of support and respect. Even more important, you can help each child with the emotions that cause hostility towards their sibling. And you can deepen your closeness with each child, so he feels safe enough to work through those emotions, and so he never, ever fears that you might love his sibling more than you love him. All of this begins with your ability to manage your own emotions and find ways to connect with each child.
Worried that the damage is done? It is never too late. What matters is that you admit that you’re not happy with the way things are, and that you commit to intervening to make things better. Castigating your child to become a better sibling won’t work. Neither will shame, blame, or punishment – of your child, or of yourself. But changing your own actions, to meet your child’s needs and help him with his emotions, will always work. Is it a lot of work? A tremendous amount. Is it worth it? See what this mum has to say.
When Grant was born we went through an extremely difficult period with Dean – it was to the point that I literally couldn’t turn my back without him hitting the little one. At the time we were doing time-outs, etc. – often carrying him kicking and screaming to another room – and today I feel so much guilt about that! I used to get very upset and yell at him when he would hit his brother and have explosive tantrums. I do worry that a full year of getting so upset at him has done some damage.
The same mum, two years later:
I’ve worked very, very hard to cultivate a sense that we treat each other respectfully and fairly – the way we’d like to be treated. I praise them regularly for being kind to each other and encourage them to do little favours for each other. For example, three-year-old Grant decides he wants to take his pick-up truck when we’re ready to head out the door, and five-year-old Dean runs upstairs to get it. I sing Dean’s praises – literally – doing a ‘best big brother’ dance. We encourage them to hug and kiss and to be thoughtful of each other. In general we just focus a lot on how great it is to have a brother and playmate … and how we’re all in this together.
Grant and Dean are lucky to have a mother who didn’t give up, or give in to her frustration and hopelessness. Instead, she got down to work, every single day. She regulated herself. She helped her boys with their big emotions. She met their individual needs. She created a family culture of appreciation and support. And she’s raising sons who will be friends for life.
You can, too.
My first book, Calm Parents, Happy Kids: The secrets of stress-free parenting, describes how to notice the big emotions that high-jack us, restore yourself to a state of calm, connect with your child, and emotion-coach your child so he develops self-discipline and wants to cooperate without any need for punishment. In this book, you’ll find out how to apply those lessons to raising siblings. There isn’t space to fully restate the foundation for parenting outlined in Calm Parents, Happy Kids; I hope you will, or already have, read that book. While this book is a comprehensive source of tools to help you facilitate a happy relationship between your children, you’ll find that it becomes much more powerful when you combine it with the tools for self-regulation, connection, and coaching that are outlined in depth in Calm Parents, Happy Kids.
All siblings will do some fighting, no matter what their parents do. Conflict is a part of every human relationship, and you can’t stop your children from having needs and desires that sometimes clash. What you can do is give them healthy tools to work through those disagreements, tools they’ll use for the rest of their lives.
Every child is unique, and some siblings do have a harder time with each other. So it may surprise you to learn that the key ingredient to a healthy, fun-filled, satisfying dynamic between your children is not their behaviour or temperament. These are important, of course. But the key is you.
Decades of research on siblings and families have produced fascinating findings. I’ll discuss many throughout this book. But here’s one of the most important, confirmed by numerous studies:
When parents have better relationships with their children, those children have happier relationships with each other. When parents have more negative or punitive relationships with each child, the children behave more aggressively and selfishly with each other.1
So while you can’t control your children, you can control someone who has a tremendous influence on how your children relate to each other. You.
Yes, your children will inevitably feel some rivalry with each other. There will be times in every family when siblings seem to fight about every little thing, or say they hate each other. But it is usually possible to help the love win out over the rivalry, by using a child-raising approach that I call ‘calm parenting.’
When I am able to remain present and breathing, love often unfolds. When I am in my past or fear, then I cause an escalation that may not have even been brewing in reality.
– Staci
Calm doesn’t mean that things aren’t rambunctious or lively or hilarious at your house. It just means that you work towards being more peaceful and less reactive inside. That makes you a better role model for your children, and helps them build a brain and nervous system that can self-regulate.
No parent is calm all the time. But parents who want more peace in their families, and in their own hearts, find that three practices are invaluable:
1. A calm parent regulates his or her own emotions, even in the face of a child’s strong emotions and misbehaviour. That’s what allows us to relate positively to our children, and to do so even when emotions run high. We can count on children behaving childishly at times. So we have the responsibility to act like grown-ups, which means not giving in to the temptation to throw tantrums ourselves. As parents, we always have the power to calm a child’s storms – or to worsen them – with our own response.
How does the parent’s commitment to regulate her emotions affect the sibling relationship? Since parents are the role model, you’ll hear your child speak to his sister or brother using your words and tone of voice. Children of parents who regulate their emotions learn to manage their own feelings, and therefore their behaviour – including towards their siblings. They can calm themselves more easily, so they fight less. They still get jealous, but they have more internal resources to manage their mixed feelings in a healthy way, so the affection has a chance to win out over the rivalry.
2. A calm parent prioritizes staying warmly connected to his or her child. Every child needs to feel heard, understood, and valued, just for being himself, or he feels unsafe and acts out.
There’s another huge benefit: Connection is what motivates children to follow our guidance. We can’t really make anyone do something without using force, and that only lasts for as long as we have a substantial physical advantage. Our children have to choose to do what we say. That’s why many parents experience life with their children as an endless series of bribes, threats, and power struggles just to get through the day. But when parents connect deeply with their child, the child wants to protect that relationship and is much more likely to follow their parents’ guidance. So children who feel connected are more cooperative with parents. That’s easier on the parents, of course, but also on any siblings who live in the home, because the child is more cheerful and emotionally generous.
Finally, a child who feels connected to a parent is more likely to value what the parent values and follow the parent’s modelling. That means she’s more likely to act as her parent acts towards the sibling, so she’s more likely to be nurturing, kind, and patient.
3. A calm parent coaches, instead of controlling. What does it mean to coach instead of control? A coach teaches and supports a child to develop as his best self. A coach doesn’t punish. He patiently creates opportunities for the child to grow, and celebrates every step in the right direction. Children respond to coaching by wanting to try hard and to ‘be like’ the coach. Controlling, on the other hand, is forcing a child to behave as you’d like by threatening punishment when she doesn’t.
That means that calm parents don’t punish their children. Of course, they set limits, but that doesn’t include punishment. I know that many people think strict parenting produces better-behaved kids. It simply isn’t true. Research studies on discipline consistently show that strict or authoritarian child-raising actually produces kids with lower self-esteem who behave worse than other kids – and therefore get punished more!1
The other problem with punishment is that if the child isn’t actually choosing the behaviour, he doesn’t ‘own’ it. He isn’t intrinsically motivated to ‘do what’s right.’ When my daughter was sixteen, I interviewed her for a blog post about how she had learnt to behave without ever having been punished. She said, ‘Either way – if you punish or not – the child learns not to hit. But if you’re punishing to teach her, she learns not to hit so that SHE doesn’t suffer. If you’re using empathy to teach her, she learns not to hit because it hurts the other person. So she becomes a better person. She cares more about other people.’
So yes, it would be much more convenient if our children just obeyed us! But their need to choose their actions is actually a good thing. It’s the beginning of taking responsibility for themselves. If you coach your child, you’re helping him develop the skills and desire to be his best self more often. His motivation comes from inside. We’ll talk throughout this book about how you can use empathy, teaching, and modelling to coach your child, so he wants to cooperate, and you’ll never need to punish again.
And what about the effect of parental coaching, instead of controlling, on the sibling relationship? Research shows that parents who punish and control end up raising children who are more negative with each other, because they’ve observed that the way to get others to do what they want is to use threats and force.2 They’ve paid attention to their parents, after all. By contrast, calm parents coach children to master the interpersonal skills of conflict resolution, like learning how to get their needs met while still being respectful of the other person – so they’re better at navigating the inevitable bumps of living with other people.
Are calm parents always calm? Of course not! They’re human. Like all humans, no parent is perfect. And regulating ourselves is the hardest emotional work we do, so it can be an uphill battle despite our positive intentions. What distinguishes a calm parent is the commitment to self-regulation, connection, and coaching instead of controlling. That commitment changes our behaviour, one action at a time. Since the parent-child relationship is just a series of moments together, all those positive choices are cumulative. Two steps forward, one step back still gets your family on to a more positive path and, before you know it, into a whole new landscape.
If you’re aspiring to evolve into a calm parent, where might you start? With two essential parenting skills: Returning yourself to calm and emotion-coaching.
I never yelled until I had two children.
– Elaine
Most parents wish they could ‘stay calmer.’ But no one stays calm all the time, at least not when they have more than one child. We’ll always be buffeted by the trials of living with children, and find ourselves off-centre. Instead of trying to ‘stay calm,’ why not set yourself the goal of noticing when you’re starting to get upset – and develop a repertoire of strategies to return yourself to calm?
This process is a bit like learning a musical instrument. At first, it seems impossible to tap out a simple tune. But if you keep practicing, in a year you can play a sonata. Like any practice, you’ll never be perfect, but returning yourself to calm gets easier every time you do it. You’re actually rewiring your brain, building the neural connections for better self-regulation.
If you can get enough sleep and keep your basic needs met – often a huge challenge for parents – you’ll be more able to catch yourself before you slide on to what Dr Daniel Siegel, co-author of Parenting from the Inside Out, calls ‘the low road.’3 You know what the low road is. It’s when you’re stressed, exhausted, resentful. When you insist on being right or wringing an apology out of your children. When you’re in the grip of fight-or-flight and your kids look like the enemy. When your fuse is so short that you feel justified in having your own little tantrum. You know what the high road is, too. When you’re feeling really good, so you can be emotionally generous. When you respond to your children’s squabbles with patience, understanding, and a sense of humour. When you enjoy being a parent.
The first step is training yourself to notice when you’re starting to slide towards the low road. The second step is not to take any action until you’ve recentred yourself. That can be a short process – a few deep breaths. Or it can take twenty minutes, in which you do some physical exercise or meditate. (Can’t do either with your kids there? Try putting on music and dancing with them to shift your emotional state.)
This sounds hard, and it is. But you can start small, with some easy techniques. For instance, try the simple ‘Take Five’ practice to check in and recentre yourself. Just count five deep, slow breaths. To deepen the effect, notice what’s going on in your body as you breathe. Imagine you’re breathing light into any tense places in your body, and breathing out tension. This deceptively simple practice makes you more aware of your stress, so you can breathe through it and let it go. Research shows that conscious breathing like this can shift you from stressed to calm in five breaths, and it becomes more effective as you do it more often.4 You can ‘Take Five’ with a crying baby in your arms, while you’re giving your children a bath, or at a traffic light.
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