Sibling Conflict Is an Opportunity for Children to Grow

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Sibling conflict can occur often, and sometimes it is intense, leaving parents feeling exasperated. In response, many parents want to step in and stop it immediately or try to ignore it, often leaving the conflict unresolved and their children feeling frustrated and hurt. Many parents want to eliminate sibling fighting completely, but it is during fights with a sibling that children can learn critical interpersonal relationship skills and develop their thinking abilities.

Importance of Constructive Sibling Conflict

Sibling conflict provides an important opportunity to learn many interpersonal skills essential for healthy relationships, like listening skills, cooperation, seeing another person’s point of view, and managing emotions. Children can also learn how to solve problems, consider future possibilities, and experience the consequences of their actions. All these skills are important components of a constructive conflict experience.

When children gain these qualities, they develop warmer sibling relationships and experience less sibling conflict and rivalry. An added benefit from learning these skills is that these ways of interacting with others are carried over across the lifespan to peer and romantic relationships. Constructive conflicts can lead to greater well-being, including less depression and higher self-esteem.

Parents’ Responses to Sibling Conflict Matter

Parents’ and caregivers’ responses to sibling fighting matter. In fact, parents’ choice of response can decrease how often their children fight and teach them how to get along better. By helping or coaching their children to a mutually acceptable resolution, parents not only enhance children’s interpersonal and thinking skills and well-being but also create a more peaceful household.

Ineffective parental responses such as taking control and settling the fight or ignoring it are associated with greater sibling conflicts, a less harmonious sibling relationship, and lower well-being for the siblings, including worse physical health.

The mediation techniques described below can help children achieve a resolution and create a constructive conflict experience. Parents can begin using these mediation techniques when children are very young and just starting to develop social and cognitive abilities. As children age, these techniques can be used by the children themselves.

A benefit of guided parental mediation is that it can limit the occurrence of destructive conflict. Destructive conflict is characterized by escalation, a lack of resolution, and one child feeling like they ‘won’ and the other child feeling like they "lost" the fight.

It is important to note that these mediation techniques will not work if there is a persistent pattern of harm to a child accompanied by a power imbalance between siblings. If a child is being bullied or abused by their sibling, mediation could make things worse. If parents believe that potential or actual psychological, physical, or sexual abuse has occurred, they should seek help from a mental health or medical professional or local family resource center.

Mediation to Manage Sibling Conflict

Parents (or any caregiver) and children can use a simple and effective four-step mediation process, as described by Ross and Lazinski, to solve fights:

1. Identify ground rules and expectations for sibling and mediator roles (e.g., listen to one another, children take responsibility for solving, mediator facilitates the process).
2. Identify the issues to be solved (e.g., both want to use the same toy). Identification of, and agreement on, the primary issues to be solved is key to problem-solving for a solution. Areas of agreement should be noted.
3. Each child’s perspective should be discussed to build understanding and empathy among the siblings.
4. Children propose and agree to solutions to issues identified (e.g., taking turns). Siblings enact the agreed-upon solution.

With practice, these steps can go quickly and shorten the length of children’s conflicts. As children practice these steps, parent mediation is less likely to be needed as siblings learn to manage their disputes.

It should be noted that young children may need help seeing their sibling’s point of view, listening, or developing ideas for solutions. As part of the mediation process, parents can coach their children to help them gain these skills. Parents should not take one sibling’s side, show favoritism, or settle the conflict for their children. It is important for children to work together to find a mutually satisfying resolution.

Once there is an agreed-upon solution and siblings enact it, parents should praise their children. Working through disputes is not easy, and rewarding children’s behavior encourages them to use these techniques to create constructive conflict.

Mediation’s collaborative process creates a "win-win" solution, limiting frustration and anger, and demonstrating the value of each child and their relationship. When children take responsibility for resolving their fights, they develop important interpersonal and thinking skills which benefit them and their relationships with others now and in the future.