Reply to Having a Sibling is Overrated

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Reply to "Having a Sibling is Overrated"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
As an only child, I am so happy to have two children who get along so well (boy and girl, 5 years apart).

Remember, OP, that as parents [b]we have some control over how our children interact[/b]. We can model healthy communication and boundaries and intervene when necessary. You are looking at this from the perspective of a powerless child.

I don't know of anyone who has had extra children because they were "supposed" to. Seems a pretty big financial, physical and emotional effort if you don't have an urge to love another child, no?[/quote]

A new poster here. I just want to address the bolded, because my mother tried to hard to manipulate the relationship between my brother and I while we were growing up. She viewed him as the golden child, and I was constantly told how great a brother I had, how lucky I was to have him as a brother. He of course, used this to his advantage and my mother always took his side by punishing me any time we fought. By the time we were teens we beat the shit out of each other any time we were home alone. We both had to put up huge walls and really distance ourselves from our parents in order to forge any type of sibling relationship.

So I caution you: don't use that control so much. Now my mother has two grown adult children who DO get along, just like she claims she always wanted, but almost no relationship with us. [/quote]

I am a different PP than the one you are quoting, but I think you misunderstand what the PP you quoted is saying.  You can't make your children like each other and you cannot ultimately control what they do.  But as parents you do set the tone and you can do your best to foster an environment where family time and family get-togethers are viewed as fun and happy times etc.  And as PP said, you can model appropriate ways to communicate and resolve conflict.

And I think equality between siblings is very important.  As soon as you set up one sibling as somehow better or more valued than the others, you cannot expect good results.  My parents placed a lot of emphasis on fairness and equality between my siblings and I.  We all felt equally loved and equally valued.  [/quote]

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