Competition Snapshot

The Scenario: Your six-year-old daughter doesn’t want to try anything because her older siblings—a seven-year-old brother and an eight-year-old sister—excel at everything they do. The older siblings receive numerous compliments for their “amazing” abilities, particularly in sports. Now the six-year-old wants nothing to do with physical activities. What can we do to encourage her participation?

The Solution: Stop asking her. Counter-intuitive? Perhaps, but pushing her to do sports is likely not to help the situation. Ask her—when her siblings are not around—what activities she’d like to try. Then see if there’s a class or group in which she, and she alone, could become involved. Don’t allow her siblings to attend the class or group; let her have this all to herself.

Then to lower competition in your home, don’t talk so much in a family setting about how well the older sibs are doing. Ask different questions about their sports that change the focus from them to someone else, such as “Who did you think played well today?”

Also make sure you’re not contributing to the competitive atmosphere by praising your older children too much. This should help your younger daughter find her own special place and also help your older children realize it’s not all about them and their “amazing” abilities.

Excerpted from Ending Sibling Rivalry: Moving Your Kids From War to Peace, available in October. Posted with permission of Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City.

Competition

Over the next several Tuesdays, I’m giving readers a sneak peak chapter-by-chapter at what’s inside my new book, Ending Sibling Rivalry: Moving Your Kids From War to Peace, which is available in October, with permission of Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City.

Sibling competition has been around as long as there have been siblings. Rivalry marred the relationship of the very first sibling pair, Cain and Abel. Cain’s reaction seems to indicate that he viewed the offerings to the Lord as a competition between himself and Abel. Cain’s disappointment at God’s rejection of his offering triggered his anger towards Abel, whose offering had been accepted by God. Cain refused to heed the words of the Lord to guard his heart against sin. That refusal led to the first murder ever recorded when Cain killed his brother. Competition among siblings can have a similar devastating effect.

Competition often begins as soon as a new sibling arrives at the home. The new, often younger, sibling wants what the older sibling has, while the older sibling wants the younger sibling to go away and leave him—and his belongings—alone.

If you read any books about child rearing and/or sibling rivalry, you’ll find that most child psychologists and parenting experts contend that competition among siblings is merely their way of vying for parental affection and love. But in attributing competition among brothers and sisters to merely an unvoiced or perhaps unconscious desire for parental love is to miss the larger, more harmful reason for this contest: Our innate desire to have our own wants and needs fulfilled first.

Some parents further complicate the issue by insisting that competition in the home is good practice for kids because it can prepare them for living in a dog-eat-dog world. Others view competition as a way to get ahead in life, to become a “winner” instead of a “loser.” Again, what these views fail to consider is that pitting children against one another does little to build them up into responsible and respectful adults.

While both views have a grain of truth, overall, our homes should strive to be less competitive and more cooperative, less focused on winning and more centered on respecting and loving each other.

Read more about how parents can reduce unhealthy competition in their homes in Ending Sibling Rivalry: Moving Your Kids From War to Peace, available for pre-order now on Amazon.com, CBD.com and Beacon Hill Press.