You love him more than you love me

Sibling rivalry is perhaps the most difficult thing for a child to experience and a parent to handle. No matter how often a parent tries to assure a child that he loves all of his children equally, that is not necessarily how the child feels.

Think of it this way… you have several friends and they all hang out together frequently. You may feel more comfortable with one of your friends who you consider to be a kindred spirit. However, this friend can spend more time with one of her other friends or with one of your other friends. Isn’t there that spark of jealousy and resentment towards that other friend? And if he’s one of your other friends, don’t you feel hurt and betrayed because you were friends with him first?

Adults often bury their emotions and do not admit that they are jealous of each other, but children do not know how to do it. In a parent/child relationship, in a moment of frustration, anger, or pain, it can all boil over and the child may say to her mother or father, “You love him more than me.”

A father, hearing those words from his son, may still be angry with him for this latest incident and not feel inclined to have the kind of conversation with him that would dilute the situation.

When things calm down, you can tell your child that you love both of your children equally, but that this particular behavior was not acceptable and that you would be just as upset with your other child if he/she had done the same.

Emotions are not logical and parents and children do not speak the same language when emotions reach boiling point. If you can think clearly enough to know when to make a strategic withdrawal, you can hold off the discussion for another day.

But sibling rivalry is a serious problem for both children and parents. These formative years are the ones that children remember their entire lives and are the foundation of their adult behaviors. We can rationalize past behavior through the eyes of adults, but it is the child within us that reacts to life’s difficulties with our emotions.

After something traumatic has happened, we often think about all the things we should have said, and all the things we would say if we were put in the same situation again. We hear the words in our heads that we would say and see all the things that we would do differently next time. We see it so clearly in our heads, it’s like we’re planning it down to the last detail.

It doesn’t take away the feeling that we failed this time, but it gives us hope that next time we’ll do much better because we’ll be more prepared. We can tell ourselves that we were caught off guard this time, but now that we’ve planned everything in our heads, we won’t be caught off guard next time, and next time, we’ll win the day.

Even with all the should-have-done thoughts and planning for the next time, life is not made up of what-if situations where we have the luxury of thinking things through and coming up with appropriate responses when we find ourselves in similar situations. We’d like to think we’d do it differently, but most people live in the NOW moment and our responses are often quick and spontaneous.

When you’re driving your kids to school and they’re fighting in the backseat of the car, it’s hard to imagine a harried parent thinking of the most loving and tactful way to stop their argument. Most of the time, the parent will either yell at the child who is yelling the loudest or yell at the child who is making his other child cry.

It’s not fair and it’s not loving, but it’s convenient and when you live in the NOW moment, convenience often wins out over textbook theories on how to lovingly handle sibling rivalry. It is also during these times when children are blamed that feelings of being unloved and unloved are born.

Think of the countless ways that we as adults internalize hurt feelings, anger, betrayal, and indifference from the people who are most important in our lives. We could get in the car and drive until we calm down or go to the gym to get rid of the red haze of anger, but a child can’t do any of this. At most, he can act or learn to suppress his emotions so that he doesn’t get punished.

Parents would do well to watch their children playing in the sandbox with other children because the old adage is true: what you are at seven, you will be at seventy.