Category Archives: Siblings

It’s really easy to get down on yourself for behaving regretfully toward your child. What’s hard is forgiving yourself because you’re human and making amends.

Repairing mistakes is one of the best skills you can teach your child. Isn’t this what we want them to be able to do? Repairing, apologizing, owning up and being accountable for your behavior is the sign of a strong, responsible person—exactly what you want your child to become.

But it’s hard for many parents to own mistakes and make repairs. When you have learned through your childhood that apologizing, showing vulnerability by admitting mistakes is a sign of weakness, it is hard to do it with your child. It can feel like admitting defeat, losing authority, giving in. But the opposite is true.

Coming down off a righteous pedestal to apologize, to say I see it differently now and wish I hadn’t said what I did, to admit wrong-doing, is not backing down or being inconsistent and wishy-washy. On the contrary, it is the powerful thing to do.

If you want your children to become respectful, responsible people, you must model that behavior. With poor boundaries, this is hard to do.

Contrary to popular opinion, boundaries and limits are very different from one another, although many use the words interchangeably. The word boundary is often used to refer to setting limits. Kids “push boundaries” or they won’t “listen to the boundaries”. It is the rare parent who understands the true meaning of boundaries. And it’s no wonder. Many of us were not brought up with them.

When we say someone doesn’t have good boundaries, we are talking about a dividing line between two people and their personal space and responsibilities.

When people blame others or situations for how they feel or for their life circumstances, they have crossed that line, taking no responsibility for themselves. They have poor boundaries.

Good boundaries are essential for a family to work cooperatively as a team.

Limits

Limits are what you impose to keep your children safe and behaving appropriately. Limits are parameters you set around your children’s behavior using your parental

Harmony children* are just what the name implies — they thrive on harmony. They hate fights, anger and tension and will do what they can to avoid it. Unlike an Integrity child*, Harmony kids can easily comply with your wishes and back down when faced with anger. Similar to the Dandelion child* who does well in any environment, your Harmony child is likely to be flexible and can transition well.

Whereas an Integrity child has you tearing your hair out, Harmony kids make you feel like a great parent. They will work hard to meet high expectations. This child can get very upset and angry but gets over it pretty quickly. Things that stick to your Integrity kid like Velcro, roll off your Harmony child like water off a duck’s back. This child is easy to live with and doesn’t often stress you out or give you reason to worry.

They make great friends and generally have lots of them. They are easy to like as they are good at understanding all points of view. They can move from group

Sharing and Hogging

Q. My three-year-old has a very big issue with sharing and hogging. She has an 18 mo. old sister who is not allowed to touch anything. I understand that my daughter still is having a hard time with her arrival, she has to share me, she doesn’t get to have me all to herself, she doesn’t even get to read books alone with me and on top of it all I am three times as tired, have to do a lot more chores, can’t play with her at the drop of the hat, and she doesn’t get to have all of my adoration just for her. I still feel really guilty about that. At first I thought, fair enough the toys were hers, so I opted to buy my youngest toys for herself. I told my eldest and explained before we bought anything that I was buying for her sister so she doesn’t have to touch hers. She agreed but once the toy is bought she wants to have it and play with it. She gets so

Getting Out the Door

Q. HOW do I get my 3.75 yr. old to MOVE in the morning?? It’s not a matter of getting up earlier or being more organized. When he knows we’re going to school, he puts the breaks on and repeatedly tells me he doesn’t want to go to school. This is his first year, and he goes 2 mornings a week. This has just started happening 2 weeks ago. I don’t recall a change and teacher say nothing happened there in particular. When I pick him up he’s always happy but just doesn’t want to GO. So how do I make getting ready to leave a fun thing to do if he doesn’t want to go?!

A. The first thing you want to understand is that there is no reason whatsoever that a 3 or 4 year old should want to leave the house in the morning. Even if it’s something fun, they don’t usually want to get up, dressed, eat, and out. They want to stay in pjs, play what they want, and not be

Happy Siblings for Mother’s Day

Wouldn’t it be nice if your Mother’s Day gift from your children would be their promise never to fight again and to love each other always. As much as we try for sibling love and harmony, we cannot make it happen. But we can influence their relationship, their treatment of one another and the respect and support they give each other. In her new book, Peaceful Parent, Happy Siblings, Dr. Laura Markam shows us step by step, complete with dialogue, how to stop the fighting and build thoughtful, considerate connections between our children.

Instead of punishing, banishing, labeling, fixing the problem, and otherwise setting our children up to compete with one another, this book helps parents understand how important it is to connect with each child’s emotional state so that they learn to understand and respect each other’s. When that happens, children are well equipped to work out their differences through problem solving and conflict resolution with you acting as “interpreter” and coach rather than judge and jury.

Nothing is more time consuming, frustrating, worrisome, and annoying than your children’s sibling rivalry. In an nano second, you fear they will never have any meaningful relationships of any kind. You don’t know what to do to change it, you yell at their behavior and maybe send one or both to their rooms. And it starts all over again. The drain on a parent’s psyche is palpable.

So let’s go through the process and make some changes that will not only get you out of the fray, but will give your children the most important life-long skills they can have.

What happens? You hear the inevitable coming from the other room. You immediately fall into step:

1) You think, When will this ever end, I can’t stand this fighting, Why can’t things ever be peaceful, and you assume, They’re going to grow up hating each other, Why can’t I teach them to get along? I don’t know how to handle this. I have to do stop it.

2) Then you go in to intervene fearing bloodshed or at least escalation