We know parents have a huge impact on our personality development, but what about our brothers and sisters?

By Stacy DeBroff

Statistics show we spend 33% of our time with our siblings, more than anyone else! Now studies show that the "birth order" of a child can determine personality traits, conversational skills, and educational achievements.

• This is a highly charged issue. No parent wants to play favorites, but often feel drawn more to one child over another. For instance, you find yourself drawn to a child who is most successful, athletic, social or most like you.
• However, siblings are like hawks when it comes to clues of favoritism, and despair at any negative comparisons. Never intimate or confide in one child that she or he is more loved or more talented than her sibling.
• Remember that as parents we have endless capacity to love all our children uniquely.

Breaking Up Sibling Fighting: Will it Ever End?

• My husband Ron, an only child, asked me when our kids Kyle and Brooks, then ages 13 and 12, would stop fighting with other, and I assured him things were going well and should be much better in a decade if all continues to go as planned!
• Children spend 33% of their free time with their siblings and All that proximity creates friction, and our parental, challenge is to take a neutral position in sibling feuds.
• Institute a "no-fault" policy in your house and escape the constant role of referee. Make it a family rule that as long as no one gets hurt, tattling is not allowed, and both kids go to their room, regardless of who started it. To put an end to your children fighting over toys, create "toy jail" on a high shelf.

Bringing Home a New Baby

Sibling Frustration as Attention is Diverted to a New Baby

• Welcoming a new sibling will challenge your child no matter what their level of maturity, and the baby will undoubtedly seem to at times to be an invading force.
• Expect behavior regressions, competition for your attention, pouting and acting out. Don't dismiss jealousy and anxiety. Empathize and set aside one on one time such as tuck-ins for extra affection and cuddling. Your child will most likely solve the issue herself once things settle down.
• Dad or your partner has the perfect opportunity to pick up the slack, and whisk siblings off for adventures outside the house, bringing them closer together.

Older Siblings Might Become Closer if they Feel Off on Their Own

• Older children often become more independent, which often involves being more adventuresome and more destructive. Suddenly you could have sofa diver on your hands: your toddler always wanted to try that and you are busy feeding the baby, one minute later -- trouble! As attention goes to the new baby, an upside is that siblings become closer collaborators, playmates, and co-conspirators.

Welcoming a Third Child

• Parents go from one-on-one to zone defense because there's no longer one parent for each child. This means someone is always doubling up!

Triangulation of Sibling Relationships

• 3 plus kids triangulate sibling relationships, with one child at any given point feeling like the odd man out from the chumminess of the other two. As allegiances switch give your attention to the excluded child of the moment: ice cream helps!

Birth Order

"Birth order" of children can determine personality traits and achievements. Parents tend to be much more easy-going, less anxious, and less demandin with second and third children.

• High expectations and intense parental focus as everything is a "first" creates strivers and achievers among oldest children. Case in point: almost all of the U.S. Presidents were either the first-born child or the first-born son in their families AND All the first astronauts sent into space were first-borns.
• Even if you're not the first child, first son or daughter or five years separating sibling will bring out these first born traits: confidence, leadership, tenacity and determination, and seeking outside approval.

• Middle Child Syndrome is real for kids sandwiched between the attention lavished on the first born, and parental sentimentality attached to the family baby. Middle children need some extra parental attention to avoid feeling short-shifted and resentful.

• Youngest children tend to be most affectionate, and more sophisticated than their peers with older siblings to show them the ropes. And did we mention spoiled rotten?! At least that is what all older siblings will assure you!

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