Never miss an episode! 

Welcome to the Parenting Without Power Struggles podcast. I'm Susan Stiffelman, author of Parenting Without Power Struggles and Parenting with Presence. As a family therapist, teacher, and parent coach for over 40 years, I've helped thousands of families raise kids with more connection and ease. and fewer power struggles.

And I get to share some of what I've learned with you here. In this series we talk about real parenting struggles and practical ways to address them based on decades of experience and study in attachment theory, neuroscience, internal family systems, mindfulness, polyvagal theory, and of course decades of clinical practice.

You'll hear conversations with guests like Dan Siegel, Janet Lansbury, Mona Delahooke, Tina Bryson, Ned Hallowell, and many others, along with episodes where I answer questions from parents like you. At the heart of my work is a commitment to helping you be the calm, steady, loving, captain of the ship for your children and teens.

Managing dysregulation, your kids and your own, so that you can raise confident, resilient kids who feel safe, seen, and heard. Secure and open to your loving support. You can find out more about my work at SusanStiffelman.com where you can explore a library of masterclasses on everything from meltdowns and chores to helping anxious and sensitive children thrive along with lots of other wonderful parenting resources.Now let's get started.

Today's episode is going to be all about sibling harmony, and I'm going to play you a little part of that class because it was so much great content. But I'm going to start with a question, should I intervene or shouldn't I when my kids are fighting? Many parents are confused about that. We've heard that the only way kids figure out how to get along with their sibling and resolve conflict is to get through it, to figure it out.

The problem, of course, is that each child is their unique self. They have their strengths, their weaknesses, they have their age, their developmental capacity, their size, their brain function, their ability to stay regulated, to tolerate discomfort, the sense that they have a feeling close to you, all of those  are going to get folded into whether that child can successfully resolve conflict.

And Laura and I shared in this 90 minute session that kids need to learn. It's a skill. We don't just figure out how to tolerate the discomfort of a sibling intruding in our space or knocking down our tower or taking too long with a toy we want to play with or teasing us. Children are new to the world and they don't come with a natural ability to just tolerate this kind of competitiveness or  cruelty or  anger or a sibling's dysregulated state.

They need help. And that's where we come in as what I call again and again, the calm present. Captain of the ship. If you're a fan of internal family systems, these are qualities like compassion and clarity and calm and confidence and connectedness. So these elements that we bring to our child's frustrating moments with a sibling are what allow us to then coach them and to help them internalize The way that you can find your way through a disagreement or a misunderstanding or a hurtful comment or physical, punch and come out the other side with greater skill at.

Resolving or even preventing those kinds of conflicts and in parents, we really do have to take the lead on this so you're going to hear now an excerpt from this 90 minute session that I did on siblings, of course, the classes on my website at SusanStiffelman.com, and I'll come back on the other side to offer a wrap up and some final thoughts.

Enjoy the clip.  First of all,  Any two human beings are going to sometimes have conflict, right? We know that. And so the question isn't whether conflict is normal or okay, it's how can you have conflict in a way that you can resolve it and get closer from it. And that would be true whether you're talking about yourself and your partner, if you have a parenting partner, or your children with each other.

Why does conflict happen? That's number one. Number two is  Often kids are worried about their place in your heart. So this is something we parents actually have so much control over. Our individual relationship with each child, according to research, is one of the most important determinants of whether your kids will have sibling conflict.

Now, when I say conflict, really rivalry, and then how that rivalry gets expressed is, it can be very competitive, it can be meanness, it can be all kinds of things. But basically, will your kids have a lot of sibling rivalry? Yes, if one of them feels in any way like you could love anyone more than you love them.

Because you're the prize, at least when they're young, and there's a perception that there's not enough of you, not enough love, not enough fairness, not enough attention and time, and then of course we, you can throw in the developmental gaps, the younger child is chasing after the older ones, I'm, I've moved on now, I want my own friends, I don't want you around, or the older child is feeling stress, in other places, perhaps at school, and takes it out on the younger one.

Insecurity, what's a shortcut to feeling powerful? Making someone feel powerless. And these dynamics can get complicated. And of course, we look at hidden needs, anxiety, boredom, overstimulation, neurodiversity, dysregulated states, sensory overload.  When we're in a state of well being,  We're not fighting with our sibling, right?

When your kid comes home and they walk by their sibling and smack them on top of the head, clearly something's going on. The sibling may or may not have done anything. Parents are often saying to me, but the sibling did nothing and he doesn't even show any remorse. What happened is your kid came home with.

He's not in a state of well being. If you're in a state of well being, you're curious, you're open to learning, you're wanting to, you're playful. No, this kid who came home and smacked his brother, it has a lot of emotions that he's carrying around. I call that sometimes the full backpack. And he's just, he's dysregulated and he's not feeling good.

And his brother is the obvious person to take that out on him. If his brother's younger, or if his brother is older and did something to him yesterday, right? There's a whole set of preventive maintenance practices that work to restore equilibrium when a kid is not in a state of well being, when they're in a state of what the polyvagal theory folks would say they've moved into, not just fight or flight, but they're in a state of vigilance, waiting to see if there's actual danger there because they're scanning.

 I did a class with Terry Real not long ago, and he has this phrase, relationships are all about rupture and repair. This is the cycle. Some of us are shocked that our children fight, but If you think about what Laura's shared, what it feels like for a child to be heard, even if they have to wait their turn,  and to have their point of view acknowledged and validated, even if you don't agree with it, and then to be guided to go to the other.

I didn't like it when I told you three times I don't want to play with you right now, and you still kept making me, and I don't like that. Okay, however clumsy it comes out,  with your help, you are  Giving your children on a silver platter a gift that they will use for the rest of their lives. Rupture and repair.

This was a conflict. What happens when human beings come in close contact with each other? But you're not making anybody wrong for wanting what they wanted. You're hearing what they wanted. You're validating, in a way, the grief that they couldn't have what they wanted. Didn't go the way they wanted. And then you're supporting them as they start.

Very awkwardly, perhaps, practicing, I didn't like that, this is what I would have wanted instead, and you, this is something you'll do thousands of times.  And I think what you just said that's so important is the practice of it, but it's not being worked out without guidance. Parents often say you have to just let them work it out.

Actually, the research on this is pretty clear. When you just let them work it out when they haven't had any guidance from you about how to work it out, what ends up happening is the stronger kid wins. The kid who's willing to be the most aggressive. And you're basically allowing bullying. Because the other kid figures out that you're not going to intervene to stop it and they go along with it.

And that does not actually help your, the sibling relationship at all. Whereas if you do intervene, but you intervene, if you intervene in the usual parental way of taking sides, blaming one child, making the oldest one suck it up and let the other kid have their way, if you do those things in very conventional ways that parents try to maintain the peace.

That always goes awry. It always increases the sibling rivalry, obviously, if you're going to make one kid always win and always lose, or anyone win or lose, no matter what, because if you're deciding who wins and loses, then the kids are not feeling heard, right? That's not helpful either. Not intervening, not helpful, bullying.

Intervening in a way that blames or makes somebody wrong, never helpful, adds more sibling rivalry. But, If you can go in and do what we're talking about and really listen and help them learn the skills to practice talking with each other, that is how they learn to do it. And it does take some time. If you haven't been doing this and you started today, it will take you three months.

But it will get better as you go. And the whole way along, you'll begin to hear them from the other room and they'll be able to start to say things to each other. Oh, but I meant to say blah, blah, blah, or I needed blah, blah, blah, or please stop. That's so heartening. It's, yeah, first of all, it's realistic.

So you're not going to take the class, learn a few things, hear that, maybe you'll replay it a couple of times even, and then try it and have no more sibling rivalry, nor would you want that. The rivalry is the. Petri dish for so many important things to take birth, to grow. This is such a gift that your children have somebody to bounce themselves against and learn how to tolerate, to share, to be accepting, to express themselves, to resolve issues, to stand up for themselves and be compassionate.

There's a million benefits that come as a result of the conflict.  I hope you enjoyed those clips and that you're inspired to think a little bit more about  the role that you play, and of course, the more clean, the more present, the more regulated you can be when you show up to offer your kids the support and coaching they need, the better, because if you're overly identified with one child or another, maybe you were the one who was victimized by a sibling, or you were the one always blamed,  then it's going to be much harder to give them the support that they need.

So the next time you hear things ramping up and escalating in the next room, take a moment to center yourself, ground yourself.  Perhaps you put your hand on your heart or your hands  on your face just to bring yourself to this moment so you're not stuck in the past.  Take a couple of breaths. We offered a lot of tips for getting more regulated in the moment, which you can hear if you tune into the class itself, but  simply taking a minute to feel your heart and do a mental reset,  reframing what you're hearing, perhaps instead of, gosh, Joseph is such a bully to his brother, might become, sounds like Joseph's had another really tough day at school and he's taking it out on his brother.

It sounds like he needs my help.  Recognizing that children's challenging behavior is a message, it's information, it can be a cry for help, an announcement that a child has moved into a dysregulated state, and depending on who's in his path or her path,  there may be fallout, and they need our help.  Again, lots more information at SusanStiffelman.com, including this entire class and free resources just to support and help you along your way as parents. Thank you so much for showing up and for being a parent who is continuing to grow and learn.  For those of you really interested in doing deeper work, check out SusanStiffelman.com/ojai-workshop for a live all day workshop that I'll be doing in Southern California.

This is a very rare event, and I'm encouraging people who want to  Explore and practice the strategies I teach with my supervision  to take advantage of this very rare and special opportunity. I think it's going to be a wonderful day, lots of fun. And it's in Ojai, California next door to Hit Vegan, which has the best french fries in the world.

So if that's what it takes to motivate you, I encourage you to check it out at my website.  And now as we wrap up, just take a moment,  thank yourself, acknowledge yourself for showing up, for growing, for wanting to do the work, to break old patterns,  and be the kind of parent who is present, available,  and attuned to your children in the ways that they so need.

Remember, no matter how busy life gets, look for those moments of sweetness and joy.  Stay well,  take care, and I'll see you next time.