Positive Sibling Relationships and building strong family bonds

 

As our children have grown, it's been fun watching their relationship develop. As M becomes more interactive, both kids have found creative (and adorable) new ways to engage and play with each other. 

BUT. 

The adorable interactions have also come with increasing annoying each other, invading personal space and conflict. Our eldest child doesn't always want to share her toys, and our youngest has a lot of annoying but developmentally normal habits. I'm very close with my siblings and my husband and I both pictured a close-knit family where our kids had similarly tight bonds, but we are also realists. While I'd love for our kids to be close as they grow up, our main goal as parents is to try and maintain the peace in our household and parent fairly. Luckily, much of the success behind close sibling relationships boils down to just that- equitable parenting. Here's a few things we're doing to try and maintain peace and positive sibling relationships in our home.

Prioritize family time. So much of our kids' behavior stems from wanting our time and attention. With two working parents (one full time and one part time), time that all four of us are together is pretty limited. We have to be very intentional with our schedules to ensure we have regular quality time together. For us, the most convenient way to do this every day is a family meal. We do dinners together- everyone eats the same thing at the same time, and we talk about our days. We share favorite, hardest and funniest parts of what happened during the school or workday, share what we've been working on or struggling with, or sometimes just eat quietly together. We also try and incorporate family walks and bike rides, and the occasional longer or more adventurous outing during the weekend. Older families might choose to do game nights instead, or have a dedicated night every week to do something as a family if daily family meals aren't an option. The key to whatever you're doing is that you're doing it together.

Catch them in kindness. This may sound silly but it's actually been shown to be much more effective than other forms or discipline or behavior modification. Catching a child doing a wanted behavior can be a powerful tool. I try to keep it simple- "you shared that toy so nicely with your brother!" plus a hug, high five, or a shoulder squeeze. We also love "positive gossiping" as a strategy- in the car or on walks together, my partner or I will loudly share, "E was helping the babysitter find M's pacifier this morning- it was so nice of her!" Both of these approaches can be a very effective way to reinforce wanted behavior (in this case, kindness.) 

Avoid choosing sides. This can be tricky if you have a big age gap or very young kids, but we try very hard not to favor one child, even from an early age. Our kids are quite young, so at this age it mostly involves lots of listening to big sister, encouraging her to communicate her feelings directly to her brother with words, and helping her brainstorm ideas for solutions when she is frustrated. Apart from listening we try really hard not to be the judge and jury of their conflicts, and although we do have to sometimes help come up with solutions, I am impressed more often than not with my daughter's ability to figure out how to negotiate conflicts. 

Zero tolerance for bullying.  I know this sounds contradictory, and the reality is with a younger sibling this is a very fine line to tow! Our kids are 2.5 years apart, and while M is getting bigger, stronger and more verbal every day, he can't always stick up for himself when a toy or object gets snatched away. We can't moderate the kids every moment, but if we see something go down that upsets him (and occasionally big sister when she is the victim), we loudly call it out and correct the action. This might be a "hey, no bullying!" or if one of them has left the other one crying, giving lots of love and attention to whoever was getting picked on. As E has gotten older this has definitely gotten easier, but of course they're both human and from time to time we do need to intervene. 

Protected one on one time. This might be one of the most impactful things we can do to reduce sibling rivalry. It may sometimes feel like no amount of time is ever enough for our kids, but even a few minutes of setting the phone aside and getting on your child's level for some dedicated attention can make a huge difference. This tells your child they are a valued and important person to you, and that they matter. When M was tiny, E and I would spend an hour during M's naptime on the couch reading together. Now that he's older (and we get plenty of time together while E is at school,) I've been trying a new routine where E and I run errands or do something special together for at least an hour a week. Scheduling 'date nights' where kids can get one on one time with each of us individually has been really beneficial for both her and us- we love getting to know her and spend time with her without interruptions or distractions and she loves having our undivided attention. 

We're pretty early on in our parenting journey, so we're far from the home stretch, but hopefully these strategies will put down a foundation for our family to stay close for years to come. 

What do you think? Anything I missed? See below for a few great articles and resources on parenting siblings and making sure each child is valued.

The Science Behind Positive Attention

The benefits of one on one time with children

The definitive text on parenting siblings

A great, free and easy course on parenting from a Yale professor in child psychology.

Low Waste Cooking: Our favorite quick and easy plant-based meals

Last year, one of our new year's goals as a family was to reduce our meat consumption. With two working parents we have no choice but to run a tight ship it we want to keep things going smoothly, stick to our food budget and minimize waste. 

We have a loose meal plan that helps tremendously with this. In general we cook two big meals on the weekend that we eat the first half of the week, then cook the rest of the week with a break on Thursday for takeout. We generally stick to cooking one meat dish and one meal with fish, and the rest of the home-cooked meals are plant-based.

A year on and I can say we've finally found a rhythm that works for us. Here are four of our most-used dishes and links to where we got the recipes (plus a bonus tip at the end!)

Greek lentil soup (fakes): this is a hearty, low effort meal that can come together in 45 minutes or less. What's more, it's generally pretty hands off. My biggest meal pet peeve is when a meal boasts being easy or quick but doesn't factor in the amount of chopping needed (anyone else? Just me?) This one is definitely not that, and the hands-on time is pretty quick. We usually serve this with garlic naan or the everything but the bagel bread from Aldi, feta cheese and a side salad (we love making salads from scratch but are currently in the bagged salad season of our lives for efficiency and survival.) We use a recipe typed into a word document from a friend in Greece, but this recipe is pretty close (almost word for word!) We just swap out fresh tomatoes for tinned crushed tomatoes or passata.

Link: Greek lentil soup (Fakes) 

Revithosoupa: I discovered this in the cafeteria at the university where I studied during my Fulbright grant. For 3 euros you would get this incredible rich, completely meat and dairy-free soup and bread, and it was the perfect quick meal on a cold winter day. We're actually making it today when it's unseasonably cold in Florida (55 degrees Fahrenheit and chilly!) and the kids both tend to like it about half the time we serve it (real talk, that's a win in our family! both kids have become major snackaholics lately.) It can also be made with dry chickpeas (soak at least 12 hours before boiling) or with two cans of chickpeas, drained.

bonus tip: take two cups when finished cooking and blend with some olive oil, salt, pepper and the lemon juice before re-adding to the pot. This makes for a thicker, creamier texture that's just amazing. 

Link: Greek chickpea stew (revithosoupa) 

 Red lentil dal with tarka. 

This one's a new addition I found during my library ritual of flipping through a cookbook while the kids play in the children's room (highly recommend!) It comes together SO quick and is so filling and tasty! And my favorite part is the tarka we make to go on top and add a little heat to the grown ups' plates. It's also versatile - we often toss a handful of greens in towards the end or mix with yogurt for some extra calcium for the kids. 

Link: Milk Street: Cook What You Have 

Sheet pan tofu and broccoli with peanut sauce. 

This was another library cookbook discovery, but I've followed Jenny Rosenstrach for a while through her writing on Cup of Jo and had somehow never picked up one of her cookbooks! There are so many great recipes in The Weekday Vegetarians. This one is a mix of the basic baked tofu and spicy (ish) peanut sauce. We just add broccoli, tossed either in olive oil, salt, garlic powder and pepper, or soyaki sauce if we're feeling fancy, and serve on a bed of rice. 

The Weekday Vegetarians 

Honorable mention: Bean and cheese quesadillas. This could also be labeled "anything with beans" because when I open a can of black beans my two grazers inevitably start eating them right from the sieve in the sink! We like to do basic rice and beans with bell peppers, onion and garlic (easy, quick, cheap and great because the kids get to choose additional toppings and think its a fun game to assemble their own meals) and quesadillas, which my four year old still calls "bean pizza." 

So much of low waste living is not about the big buys or changes - it's the simple little things you can do every day and might not even think about. 

What are your favorite plant based recipes? I'm looking to add some new ones into rotation in 2025!