Sibling rivalry can be difficult for parents to handle and the squabbling difficult to listen to. We use a range of different methods to deal with sibling rivalry, depending on the situation. The first way is pulling our children apart and putting them into separate rooms and finding out from each child what happened. Then bringing them back together to discuss how they could have done something differently. Another method is telling our children to stop the squabbling and sort it out themselves. There is also the intervention method where we decide what is going to happen and perhaps punish the sibling whose fault we think it is. There are certainly many more. However, we do tend to do the same thing regardless of the type of children we have. How many of you think about each of your children’s personality types and how they respond to arguments, a bossy sibling, feeling favouritism etc?
Children’s Personality Types And Avoiding Conflict
I stumbled across this article yesterday and found it really interesting Child Sense: Solving Sibling Conflicts. It identifies four personality types and explains how they effect a child’s response to conflict:
1. auditory
2. tactile
3. taste and smell
4. visual
Knowing your child’s personality will help you both identify the different ways they behave in a conflict, after a conflict and what could start a conflict. I think it is really helpful to know this so that we are able to help our children to recognise their trigger points, their needs and to squabble less. It means they have to have a level of control and recognise their trigger points to avoid a conflict. Have a read and test it out. What would you say each of your children is and do you think these methods would work? It is an interesting concept and one I think should be tried out.
If you would like your children to get on better and think outside intervention could help you then please get in contact with me.
Image courtesy of marin at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
