A mom from our community sent over this video with the following message: “Is this a definition of sibling rivalry? It’s getting viral here in Miami. I can’t think I can’t help to think as parents, we can help them. I hope I’m thinking of baby number two, and I’m scared these videos don’t help me. They don’t help my decision process.”

I feel like a lot of parents, whether we have more than one kid right now, already, or we are about to have another kid, we are so worried about their relationship. And making sure that they have a good relationship and that it’s not filled with so much contention and jealousy and conflict, like that is our number one goal as parents of more than one child is to make sure that we are fostering a healthy sibling relationship.

I get this question so much about sibling conflict. It is such a big delicate process to navigate, because on one end, we don’t want to ever choose sides. We don’t want to ever make the other child feel like we are not on their side. We always want to be neutral, ideally.

A big part of this, a big part of staying neutral is to be aware of our triggers and to stay grounded in those moments. Because a lot of the time this happens so fast. We’re over here doing something else. I mean, this was a birthday party, so all eyes were on them. But so often when we’re at home or wherever, like we turn away real quick. And then all of a sudden somebody’s crying, somebody’s getting hurt and somebody screaming and we’re like, well, what happened? Like it just happened so fast a lot of the time. I don’t know. I feel like that happens with my girls, and we are like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. 

So my main goal, when my children argue is to slow down. I’m like, this is not an emergency. I don’t see blood. I don’t see anybody getting super, okay. Nine times out of ten. Now, if they are and of course, if they’re being aggressive, that’s different. But you know, the screaming and the arguing, like I have to just remind myself, I can approach this very slowly. And I need approach this very slowly. I need to come from a place of calm and I need to be aware of my energy in this moment. They’re both hyped up in, amped up. I can’t come in there matching that energy.

I have to come with a different energy. I have to come with a calm energy if I expect to bring them back down. If I expect them to come back down to baseline and problem solve with me. So just, I don’t know, a little small ramp, but in this video, this little girl, she just turned three and she is going to blow out her candles and her sister make her sister comes and blows out the candles for her.

And she gets so upset. Rightfully so. Okay. That’s her trigger. Is you’re trying to steal my shine and this little girl, the older sister is probably like, I want it to be my birthday. I want some shine. I want some attention on me. I want to do this fun thing and blow up the candle.

So she’s feeling left out and the little girl is feeling so frustrated and so sad that her older sister took that moment from her. So that’s the like trigger. Then she, the birthday girl looks at sister and said, and like gets upset. Like why did you do that? And the older sister goes like she no remorse. And mind you, none of the parents are saying anything right now. It’s not until the birthday girl goes to pull her hair and is aggressive. Then everybody’s like, Oh my God, no, no, no, no, no, no. 

But I wonder what would have happened if anything would have happened differently if the parents, right there in that moment, when she went to go blow out her sister’s candles. If that parent would have pulled her away, would we have even gotten to this point? Just food for thought. But anyways, so she pulls her hair. Everybody’s like, , no, no, no, no, no, no, no like it’s trying to separate them, which is good.

We don’t want to encourage violence ever. But what I noticed is that the older sister is like doesn’t care about the aggressive aggression. She’s just like whatever I already got what I wanted, which was to steal your shine.

I got a rise out of you. Now I’m getting all this attention. And then her mom goes to fix her hair, like fix your hair, like fixing the girl’s hair, who was attacked. And everybody’s like telling the birthday girl to calm down. 

So what that told me is that a lot of the instigating behaviors that are done between these two are not being addressed. I think the parents are probably only addressing the aggressive behaviors. I don’t know that for sure. I don’t want to make these huge assumptions because obviously my scope is very limited. It could be that just because this was a birthday party. They just wanted to kind of save face and move on. 

But it was shocking for me. And it kind of reminded me too, of the dynamics that my little girls once had, where Julia was the older one. And she would do things to rile up her sister, like on-purpose, like take her toys that she knew she was playing with or just do little things. 

And I can tell, like she wanted to engage with her. And the way that I perceived this is that she, Julia wanted to interact with her sister. She wanted her sister’s attention. And the way that she knew how to do it in the develop, I guess just developmentally speaking was to take her toy.

She knew that was going to upset her. And so instead of saying like, Hey, I’m feeling left out. I want to play too. Will you play with me? She knew to grab toys and do like other impulsive behaviors. And I think that’s what is the case for this older sister, but with years and years of like, I think maybe some reinforcement or some lack of interact, inner intervention. That’s what I want to say. So I, as a mom, it’s really easy to see that within Julia and get really ticked off, like, why are you doing this? Why are you upsetting her? Why are you being mean? 

It’s so easy to come from that place. But I had to tell myself that one, these are impulsive reactions. They’re not done. They’re not fully thought out. They’re not fully premeditated. It’s an impulse that she has done because she has learned, this has worked for her. 

Listen, children, all of us only do behaviors that work for them period. And so she learned over time that this is how I get my sister’s attention. And this is how I get some interaction out of my sister. And so what I worked with Julia on was how to respectfully initiate an interaction with her sister, how to respectfully ask her to play with her, how to respect her space and to ask for things that she wanted and use her communication and then how to wait.

All of these things that we have to sort of break down for our little ones and teach them in these moments. And that’s what I really hope that you can see in what I talk about in my sibling master class, before. And I will work with the mamas in my mom community called the moms sisterhood on, and we’ll do this more in depth work.

And this play by play work is you have to view these conflict moments as opportunities to learn and grow. And we have to seize these moments to teach our child lagging skills. Now, sometimes they’re going to be so dysregulated that we first need to bring them back down to baseline and bring them back down to a calm place before we can teach skills.

And yeah, absolutely. You want to do that first and then teach, but please don’t miss the opportunity to teach because there’s so many good teaching moments. So in this case, going back to this video, what I would have done was I would have pulled the older sister aside, maybe took her out of the frame, took her to the side where it was quiet and said, look, I know that this is hard for you. You want to be the birthday girl. Maybe you don’t feel as special and just kind of fill it out. See if that those things are resonating with her, read between the lines a little bit, not to say that we are excusing the behavior, but you have to first lead with connection.

As Dan Siegel says, right, we want to connect before correcting. And so connect with that part of her that feels left out. That feels like she is unseen and not special in that moment. And then say, look like, this is your sister’s birthday and this is her time to blow out her candles.

And she felt really sad when she missed that opportunity. And let’s make a plan for you to feel special or whatever, like you want to kind of do a little bit of correcting there and let her know the impact of her choice. The fact that her sister felt really sad and really upset that she wasn’t able to blow out the candles.

And then what I would do. So one parent is doing that. And then somebody else is realizing that candle, first letting her know, Hey, I totally understand why you’re upset. You wanted to blow out that candle. Yes, you wanted to blow at the candle. Oh my gosh, it’s your birthday. You’re the birthday girl. You deserve that. And you’re going to get another chance to blow out that candle. But first I want to let you know, it’s never okay to hit. I know you are feeling frustrated, but we have to use our words. Come ask me for help. Come look to me and we can relight that candle.

Let her know you’re on her side, but that you’re drawing a boundary here. We can’t use our hands to hurt, but I can still help you through this moment. I still see you. I still not choosing sides or making you feel bad in any way. And the same for the older girl. We’re not choosing sides or making her feel bad in any way, but we want to keep not miss this opportunity I guess, because what happens is you’re just paying attention to the one who’s being aggressive and not really teaching the one who instigated this, how to get her needs met in different ways. So then what happens? Well, she just does this over and over and million ways throughout the day.

And I’m sure the other sister, the birthday girl is probably doing the same thing. And it’s just the cycle that just keeps continuing between them. And so you up that in the button, you definitely want to nip this in the bud when they are little, not when they are teenagers or adults, how sad would that be?

And then you relight the candle and you give the birthday girl that moment to shine. Absolutely have to have a redo moment. And I hope that these parents did that for that little girl. But I would love to keep this conversation going. Let me know in the comments below, what was your reactions to seeing that video? Was there any parts of it that were relatable for you and your children?

Do you resonate with the mom who sent me this, who she has one child she wants for another one? And she’s so afraid that this is going to be her situation. I want you guys to know that a lot of this is normal, not to say that we want to not intervene in any way, but I hope too, that a lot of the sibling jealousy and rivalry is normal. Especially when they are little, like these girls were a little too old to be new at all of this. Like we would hope when they would get it start getting it together a little bit. 

What would have helped, I think two major key, write this down, when you get in these situations. Where one child it’s their day to shine. You want to prepare that other child for that, do that before the birthday party and make a plan to do something special either before the birthday party or after the birthday party. So they know, okay, I’m going to get my time to shine too.

That would have been a major key for these parents is doing a little bit of prevention work if you will. But let me know in the comment section of the YouTube video, let’s keep this conversation going. What were your reactions? What are your thoughts? What are your concerns? What are your questions? Let me know.