How do you handle it when your sibling and parents fight and try to bring you in?

[Anonymous]

My sibling and my parents have been fighting lately - mostly my parents saying my sibling does not help them or check in with them enough in their old age and also my sibling's spouse hates my parents and has been vocal about this. My parents are nice to my sibling's spouse, so personal treatment is not the issue. Anyway, there are a million factors to this story that I don't want to get in to, but long story short, my parents try to bring me in to their disagreements with my sibling. I try my best to stay out of it and now, even change the subject if it comes up. How have others dealt with this sort of thing? Any advice?

Also, I live far away from the whole family and my sibling and parents live about 1 mile away from each other...

[Anonymous]

Say, "I'm Switzerland. I love you all and I'm staying out of it."

[Anonymous]

"Well, you're all adults I'm sure you'll work through it."

Repeat.

[Anonymous]

When family members are having a tiff, I generally make a point of engaging with everyone involved about *normal* stuff and keeping my mouth shut on the dispute. By reaching out to all parties, I'm trying to convey - hey, as far as I'm concerned, we're still on good terms. Other people's beef isn't my beef, but I'm not taking sides either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My sibling and my parents have been fighting lately - mostly my parents saying my sibling does not help them or check in with them enough in their old age and also my sibling's spouse hates my parents and has been vocal about this. My parents are nice to my sibling's spouse, so personal treatment is not the issue. Anyway, there are a million factors to this story that I don't want to get in to, but long story short, my parents try to bring me in to their disagreements with my sibling. I try my best to stay out of it and now, even change the subject if it comes up. How have others dealt with this sort of thing? Any advice?

Also, I live far away from the whole family and my sibling and parents live about 1 mile away from each other...

If I am annoyed, I say "I don't want to hear your nonsense." Or you can be more polite and say, "This doesn't involve me, I'm staying out of it."

You can always get up and leave or say bye and hang up. Or tell them to grow up and stop acting like children.

If they need help, perhaps they need to be in a retirement community/home. Why does sibling need to check in with them? She is grown. Or do you mean check up on them?

[Anonymous]

"Sorry, I'm not interested. Take it up with [sibling]."

[Anonymous]

I usually defend my siblings if they are right or if my parents (or in laws) are right, I'll tell them that I don't understand how my siblings think and I'm sorry it hurts them. I'm sure it gets tiresome, but when you get old, it's hard. You need more help and you have less to do so you can perseverate on the slights.

[Anonymous]

When we were all younger, I used to help if I could be of help. One time my sister was just about to run away because my dad had just gone over the edge - I convinced her to give it a day and if I couldn't get things to simmer down, I'd arrange a ride for her to stay with Grandma (rather than some random friend at school) until he came to his senses. I deescalated the situation and it was resolved without further yelling.

But now we're all adults and there isn't any reason for me to get involved and it wouldn't be helpful if I did. Some of my siblings still haven't learned how to deescalate tensions and instead just add fuel to the fire when a disagreement arises, but there's nothing I can really do about that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I usually defend my siblings if they are right or if my parents (or in laws) are right, I'll tell them that I don't understand how my siblings think and I'm sorry it hurts them. I'm sure it gets tiresome, but when you get old, it's hard. You need more help and you have less to do so you can perseverate on the slights.

+1. I am the only family member that lives out of the state. It allows me to take an objective view of family tiffs. If I feel that the person is perseverating on something too long, I redirect them by asking a question.