I’m going to start Book Week by reviewing Siblings Without Rivalry because this book has changed our household and it’s only been a few days since I finished it. If you are about to adopt your second, or if you already have more than one child, I highly recommend this book. I wish I had read it before we traveled, as I’d have handled some things differently in those first weeks had I read it first.

The main theme of the book is that you address the child you are talking to uniquely, without referring to the other child. If they complain that the other child called them a name you say “that must have hurt your feelings”. If you see they are angry about something then you say “I can see you are angry about your crayon being broken”. You don’t put the other child down for doing it, you only talk about the child you are talking to and maybe mention what the other child needs to learn. This approach is magical. The child with the hurt feelings has their feelings validated, the other child realizes that they hurt their sibling’s feelings.

As for how they recommend you handle the hitting issue, I’ll give an example from our household: TwinkleToes had been kicking GlitterGirl away during a certain part of the day. Every day. Nothing I had done was stopping the behavior. I had tried the nice “feet are not for kicking” talk, I’d tried time-ins, I’d tried my “mean mamma glare” with the corresponding “no kicking” thrown in. They all stopped the kicking right then, but it still happened again the next day. After reading the book I took a completely difference approach. I completely ignored TwinkleToes when she did it. When GlitterGirl told me about it I said “oh, that must have hurt”, and I pulled her into my lap and looked at it and rubbed it and kissed my hand and put my hand on her leg in a two step kiss process. I said “your sister needs to learn that she can hurt people with her feet so she’ll stop doing that, doesn’t she?” And I hugged GG some more and told her I loved her. And guess what? That was days ago, and TwinkleToes has not kicked again.

Also, I had somehow known that it was counterproductive to try to make things “fair” between them, but hadn’t really figured out how to explain it to GlitterGirl every time things seemed to not be fair. My explanations seemed as counterproductive as anything else. The book completely gave me the tools to use when one child gets something and the other does not. You treat each child uniquely, not fairly. When there are that many years between them things are just not going to be fair. And that’s okay.

There are lots of other things to think about, such as the damage you can do by putting kids into “roles”. To call one smart and the other athletic limits them both. Why can’t they both be smart and athletic?

One thing I will be putting to practice needs a bit of carpentry work. I like the idea that certain toys belong to a child and that other family members must ask permission before using them, but most toys are “community property” and whoever is playing with it has it until they are done. To put this into practice we need two small shelves in our den, one for TwinkleToes and one for GlitterGirl. Just big enough for four or five toys, and anything on those shelves is off limits to the rest of the family unless they ask permission. This should stop a lot of the “that’s MINE!” stuff that comes up when the toy that one child wants is the toy that the other child has. They can choose a limited number of “special toys” for their shelf, but everything else is fair game. (GlitterGirl does have other toys that I’ve put away for her to play with on her own when she wants, toys that are dangerous to have around a two year old. Those will still be put up and away, for her to ask to play with and have TT be heavily supervised when those toys are out.)

GlitterGirl has had a rough transition to becoming a big sister. Having a two year old join the family is a lot different than having a newborn join the family and slowly evolve into a being with a personality. But since I’ve been using the tools in this book things have been so much better. It’s a simple concept - repeat back what the child says to you and validate their feelings. Sometimes that is all you have to do and the crisis is averted before it really has a chance to get started.

I love that the goal of the book is to help your kids learn to get along with each other. The goal is not to make them be friends, as some kids are so opposite they are never going to be friends. But, if you give them the skills to learn to live with each other and get along peacefully in spite of their differences then those skills will take them far in life.

The book is written in an easy to read style with pages that are easy to find when you need to refer back to specific examples. I’ve been referring back to it a good bit as I get the hang of this new way of dealing with conflict between the girls. After a few days the conflict is down by half.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 13th, 2007 at 7:39 amand is filed under Book, CD, & DVD Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.