Dealing With Sibling Rivalry

Moms & dads must be able to distinguish between healthy sibling conflict and damaging abuse. Sibling rivalry is a normal, and mostly harmless, part of growing up. Brothers & sisters often compete without anyone getting hurt. These sometimes fierce, but balanced comparisons regarding achievement, attractiveness, and social relations with peers may actually strengthen sibling ties. For example, fair and balanced competition teaches kids how to share, compromise, win without humiliation and lose without self-debasement.

Sibling violence or abuse can be described as a repeated pattern of physical aggression with the intent to inflict harm and motivated by a need for power and control. Often, it is an escalating pattern of aggression that moms & dads have difficulty stopping. Some of the most important questions to ask are: “Is one child consistently a victim of the other?” “How often and how long has the behavior been occurring?” and “Is the behavior age appropriate?”

A 8-year-old youngster hitting his 5-year-old brother over a toy is one thing. A 13-year-old repeatedly hauling off and slamming his 9-year-old brother for hogging the video remote is something else again. When one youngster is always the loser, the aggression keeps escalating, and if moms & dads do not intervene effectively, the safety of the victimized youngster becomes the primary concern.

There is often an emotional component to sibling violence, as well. Frequently, the aggression begins as “teasing,” which might include ridiculing, insulting, threatening, terrorizing, and belittling a younger or less powerful sibling. Sometimes, a youngster will destroy a younger sibling’s property as a means to incite the violence. Sibling violence appears to occur more frequently than violence between moms & dads and kids or spousal abuse.

What causes or leads to abuse?

What begins as normal sibling rivalry can escalate into something more when moms & dads fail to adequately supervise their kids or teach them appropriate means of resolving conflict. In one fairly common set of circumstances, moms & dads may leave an older sibling in charge of younger ones. The youngster in charge may not know how to mete out appropriate discipline. When one youngster misbehaves, the older sibling may go to extremes to get the youngster to comply.

There is solid evidence now that being hurt by an older or stronger sibling has both long and short-term consequences. The younger kid may begin to exhibit signs of depression, anxiety, fear of the dark, school behavior problems and even, in some cases, thoughts of self harm. The youngster who is the aggressor may also suffer. He or she may also be bullying kids at school. There is some evidence that the youngster in the aggressor role may experience long-term effects, like being aggressive with dating partners or spouses in adulthood.

Don’t overlook cruel behavior—

Moms & dads often overlook, ignore, or deny cruel behavior between their kids. Parents must intervene anytime there is a suspicion or danger of one youngster being hurt. They should also intervene after providing brothers & sisters with the opportunity to resolve their own conflicts and seeing that they may need some extra help. Timing and sensitivity is critical. At first, sibling conflict is often about fighting over resources (like toys, space, money, etc.). When moms & dads intervene there is the danger of it becoming about the parent’s love. Fighting over a parent’s love will generally lead to much more aggressive sibling behavior.

How to intervene in early stages—

If your family tends toward competitive disagreements, be mindful of minimizing rivalries between kids by pointing out similarities in their behavior and avoid accentuating differences. Reward sensitive, positive behavior among brothers and sisters. When you praise positive interactions, the potential for sibling abuse is reduced. Set ground rules early regarding “no hitting” policies, name-calling, belittling, taunting, and terrorizing. You may dislike such emotional abuse but excuse it as sibling rivalry and mistakenly accept it as normal childhood behavior.

Set aside time regularly to talk with your kids individually, especially after they have been alone together. Be sure to monitor your kid’s media choices (TV, video games, and Internet surfing), and either participate and then discuss the inappropriate media messages, or ban their poor choices.

Once a sibling struggle begins, learn how to intervene in ways which prevent an escalation of the conflict. Take the time necessary to get each youngster’s perception of the conflict. Allow each youngster to say what the other’s perception is until they fully understand it. Get an expression of feeling from each youngster, whenever possible. What does each youngster want to do about the problem? Help them forge a compromise. If they cannot agree, take 10 minutes to work out options for a compromise.

Give your kids reminders when they begin picking on each other. Help them to remember how to state their feelings to each other. Don’t solve the problem for them, but help them remember how to problem solve. Remember, it doesn’t matter who started it, because it takes two to make a quarrel. Hold kids equally responsible when clearly established ground rules are broken. Teach your kids how to compromise, respect one another, and divide things fairly. Give them the tools and then express your confidence that they can work it out by telling them, “I’m sure you two can figure out a solution.” Don’t get drawn in.

Prevention—

Listen and believe your kids. Never dismiss a youngster who says that he or she is being victimized. Also, avoid giving one youngster too much responsibility or power over another. Provide good adult supervision in your absence. Be sure to investigate sudden changes in mood or temperament in your youngster. And seek professional help if you cannot control combative or abusive behavior among your kids.

Professional Intervention—

Therapists with training in both family therapy and family violence can help your family meet the challenge of dealing with sibling aggression. A therapeutic climate where families are encouraged and reminded of what they do well and moms & dads learn to help kids resolve conflicts on their own can reduce or eliminate sibling aggression. Parents can learn how to intervene in serious sibling conflicts immediately and effectively through a series of prescribed rules and conduct meant to encourage a win-win solution.

Moms & dads sometimes also need to learn how to manage their own levels of anger so that they can teach their kids how to manage theirs. The development, implementation and modeling of good conflict resolution skills during calm times can be helpful in moderating and reducing arguments and disagreements. Dangerous fights need to be stopped immediately. Kids must be separated and taught how to calm themselves. Once they have calmed down, parents can facilitate discussion about what happened and make it clear that no violence is ever allowed. Kids caught in fierce power struggles with a brother or sister appreciate a safe and structured therapeutic environment where they can address current conflicts without fear of retaliation or judgment.

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Resources—

• “Sibling Abuse” Public Radio (WFYI 90.1 FM) Live Interview with John Caffaro, PhD. “Sound Medicine,” Indiana University School of Medicine.
• Sheila Rae’s Peppermint Stick, by K. Henkes, 2001. HarperFestival. (A preschool boardbook.) Sheila Rae taunts and torments her little sister and refuses to share her peppermint stick. Features a win-win ending.
• Sibling Abuse Trauma, by J. Caffaro & A. Conn-Caffaro, 1998. Haworth Press.
• Siblings Without Rivalry, by A. Faber and E. Mazlish, 1988. Avon Books.
• What Parents Need to Know About Sibling Abuse: Breaking the Cycle of Violence, by V. R. Wiehe, 2002. Bonneville Books.

Adolescent Self Harm

By definition, self-harm refers to hurting oneself to relieve emotional pain or distress. The most common forms of this behavior are cutting and burning. The least common forms of self-harm include pulling out bodily hairs, punching walls, and ingesting toxic substances or sharp objects.

Many teens today are struggling to cope with extreme levels of stress in school, in their families, and in their peer relationships. Some of these youth are overscheduled and being hurried through their teenage years by parents and peers alike. Teens have become vulnerable prey to our highly toxic, media-driven world. Being in front of a computer or TV screen for close to six hours a day has become business as usual and more important than spending time with family and friends. Teenage girls are constantly being bombarded by images in the media about how they should look and act. Especially for young women, failure to live up to these idealized images can lead to developing an eating disorder and/or engaging in self-harming behavior as a form of self-punishment.

What Causes Adolescent Self-Harming Behavior?

Like substance abuse, teenage self-harming behavior has no one single cause. It cuts across all cultural and socioeconomic levels. We do know, however, that more teenage females engage in this behavior than males, and that self-harming teens are rarely suicidal. Most of these teens are seeking quick relief from emotional distress.

One major reason why teens gravitate towards self-harming behaviors is the endorphin effect. When teens cut or burn themselves, endorphins are quickly secreted into their bloodstreams and they experience a numbing or pleasurable sensation. For some of these youth, cutting or burning themselves numbs away unpleasant thoughts and feelings or they feel "high" from the experience. Like addiction to a particular drug, the endorphin "high" provides fast-acting relief for teens from their emotional distress and other stressors in their lives. Other important reasons as to why teens engage in self-harm include:

• Feeling emotionally dead inside or feeling invisible in their parents' eyes. Self-harm makes them feel alive inside and helps confirm their existence in reality.
• Feeling emotionally disconnected from or invalidated by their moms & dads.
• For girls, self-harm may be used as a coping strategy with overly demanding moms & dads, especially in situations where the father is the dominant voice when it comes to discipline and decision-making.
• Wanting to "fit in" within a particular peer group that encourages and rewards self-harming behavior.

How Do You Know When to Seek Help?

Since teens often engage in self-harming behaviors in privacy or with their friends, moms & dads may not be aware that this problem exists. In addition, parents also need to be aware that there is a big difference between self-decorating and self-harming behavior. It is a popular fad among youth today to body pierce and tattoo as a form of self-decorating. Teens who self-harm are seeking relief from emotional distress, they are not self-decorating. Here are some signs that might indicate that a teen has a problem with self-harming behavior:

• Cut or burn marks on their arms, legs, and abdomens.
• Finding knives, razor blades, box cutters, and other sharp objects hidden in the teen's bedroom.
• Regularly locking herself or himself up in the bedroom or bathroom following a bad day at school, negative encounters with peers, and family conflicts for lengthy periods of time.
• Reports from a sibling indicating that he or she found blood encrusted razors or caught the teen in the act of self-injuring.
• The family physician, a teacher, or other adult observes cut or burn marks, or that the teen appears to be regularly removing bodily hairs.
• The teen's peers cut or burn themselves.

What Kinds of Treatments Work?

By far, the most effective treatment for teenage self-harming problems is family therapy. A skilled family therapist will be able to help improve family communication, teach conflict-resolution and problem-solving skills, and help foster more meaningful and closer relationships between parents and teens.

Skill-building groups can be helpful to self-harming teens as well. A good group should teach teens effective tools for managing their moods, challenging unhelpful thinking, visualization and meditation skills, and healthy activities to better manage stress.

How Can Adolescent Self-Harm be Prevented?

Moms & dads play an integral role in preventing their teens from engaging in self-harming behaviors and from joining an unhealthy peer group, where this problem may be the glue that keeps them together. At home, parents can make spending time together as a family a priority. Moms & dads can put the teen in charge of selecting and planning a weekly family outing. The family mood needs to be more calm and inviting for the teen. When conflicts do erupt or crises occur, family members should work together as a team to solve these situations. Teenagers need to feel a sense of place in the hearts and minds of their parents. They need to feel appreciated and know that their moms & dads will be there for them unconditionally. It is the parents' responsibility to create firm boundaries between their work and family lives.

One way to help foster more meaningful connections between parents and teens is to share family stories. Moms & dads should share with their kids what their struggles and high points were in adolescence. They can also share with their teens any important words of wisdom and stories that their own parents shared with them when they were growing up.

Self-harming behavior can be dangerous, particularly if the youth is abusing alcohol and other drugs. Moms & dads need to take a firm stance and set consistent limits with these behaviors. Moms & dads also need to model for their teens' responsible use of alcohol and healthy ways to manage stress.

It is a parent's right to meet their teen's friends, as well as their moms & dads, and voice your concerns when warranted. Should a parent discover that their teen is engaging in risky and dangerous behavior such as self-harm, they should rest assured that a family therapist will be able to skillfully assist the family and teen with this serious issue.


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Related Books—

• Alderman, T. (1997). The scarred soul: Understanding and ending self-inflicted violence. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger.
• Clarke, A. (1999). Coping with self-mutilation: A helping book for teens who hurt themselves. Center City, MN: Hazeldon.
• Conterio, K. & Lader, W. (1998). Bodily harm: The breakthrough treatment program for self-injurers. New York: Hyperion.
• Miller, D. Women who hurt themselves: A book of hope and understanding. New York: Basic.
• Selekman, M. D. (2002). Living on the razor's edge: Solution-oriented brief family therapy with self-harming adolescents. New York: Norton.

Kids and the Internet

Computers have traditionally been trusted by both kids and adults as reliable and accurate sources of information. The rapid growth of online services and Internet access has added a new dimension to modern computing. Through a modem and phone line kids now have access to an almost endless supply of information and opportunity for interaction. However, there can be real risks and dangers for an unsupervised youngster.

Most online services give kids resources such as encyclopedias, current events coverage, and access to libraries and other valuable material. They can also play games and communicate with friends. The ability to "click" from one area to another appeals to a youngster's natural impulsivity and curiosity and needs for immediate gratification or feedback.

Most moms and dads teach their kids not to talk with strangers, not to open the door if they are home alone, and not to give out information on the telephone to unknown callers. Most moms and dads also monitor where their kids go, who they play with, and what TV shows, books, or magazines they are exposed to. However, many moms and dads don't realize that the same level of guidance and supervision must be provided for a youngster's online experience.

Moms and dads cannot assume that their youngster will be protected by the supervision or regulation provided by the online services. Most "chat rooms" or "news groups" are completely unsupervised. Because of the anonymous nature of the "screen name," kids who communicate with others in these areas will not know if they are "talking" with another youngster or a youngster predator pretending to be a youngster or adolescent. Unlike the mail and visitors that a parent sees a youngster receive at home, e-mail or "chat room" activity is not seen by moms and dads. Unfortunately, there can be serious consequences to kids who have been persuaded to give personal information, (e.g. name, passwords, phone number, email or home address) or have agreed to meet someone in person.

Some of the other risks or problems include:

• kids accessing areas that are inappropriate or overwhelming
• kids being invited to register for prizes or to join a club when they are providing personal or household information to an unknown source; and
• kids being mislead and bombarded with intense advertising
• hours spent online is time lost from developing real social skills and from physical activity and exercise
• online information that promotes hate, violence, and pornography

In order to make a youngster's online experience more safe and educational, moms and dads should:

• insist that a youngster follow the same guidelines at other computers that they might have access to, such as those at school, libraries, or friends' homes.
• limit the amount of time a youngster spends online and "surfing the web";
• make use of the parental control features offered with your online service, or obtaining commercially available software programs, to restrict access to "chat lines," news groups, and inappropriate websites;
• monitor the content of a youngster's personal webpage (homepage) and screen name profile information;
• never give a youngster credit card numbers or passwords that will enable online purchases or access to inappropriate services or sites;
• provide for an individual e-mail address only if a youngster is mature enough to manage it, and plan to periodically monitor the youngster's e-mail and online activity;
• remind a youngster that not everything they see or read online is true;
• teach a youngster never to give out any personal identifying information to another individual or website online;
• teach a youngster that talking to "screen names" in a "chat room" is the same as talking with strangers;
• teach a youngster to never agree to actually meet someone they have met online;
• teach a youngster to use the same courtesy in communicating with others online as they would if speaking in person -- i.e. no vulgar or profane language, no name calling, etc.;

Moms and dads should remember that communicating online does not prepare kids for real interpersonal relationships. Spending time with a youngster initially exploring an online service and periodically participating with a youngster in the online experience gives moms and dads an opportunity to monitor and supervise the activity. It is also an opportunity to learn together.

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Behavior Problems in Teens

Many teens today have problems and are getting into trouble. After all, there are a lot of pressures for kids to deal with among friends and family. For some teenagers, pressures include poverty, violence, parental problems, and gangs. Kids may also be concerned about significant issues such as religion, gender roles, values, or ethnicity. Some kids are having difficulty dealing with past traumas they have experienced, like abuse. Moms & dads and their teens are struggling between the teenager's wanting independence while still needing parental guidance. Sometimes all these conflicts result in behavior problems.

Any number of isolated behavior problems can represent adolescent problems and delinquency-shoplifting, truancy, a fight in school, drug or alcohol ingestion. Sometimes, kids can't easily explain why they act the way they do. They may be just as confused about it as the adults, or they simply see delinquent behaviors as appropriate ways to deal with what they experience. Moms & dads and loved ones may feel scared, angry, frustrated, or hopeless. They may feel guilty and wonder where they went wrong. All these feelings are normal, but it is important to understand that there is help available to troubled kids and their families.

Many teens get into trouble sometimes. A big question for moms & dads (whether they be "traditional," single, step, or grand-moms & dads), though, is how to know when a teenager is headed for more serious problems, or when bad behavior is just "a kid being a kid." Try to focus on patterns rather than an isolated event. In other words, does the behavior happen repeatedly despite efforts to change it?

The patterns signaling the need for help include not only deviant behaviors by the adolescent, but also the presence of other problems in the family or tensions at home. For example, problems in the moms & dads' marriage or frequent fighting or hostility among the family members can also be involved in the teenager's behavior problems. The problem behaviors and other family issues can interact and feed off each other, so that it is hard to tell where it started.

Of course, there are also some obvious signs that indicate the need for immediate and effective intervention, including violence against other persons or animals, or when peers are involved in destructive processes (crime, truancy, drugs). Or, a parent may simply have an instinctive feeling that something serious is happening. An important first step to find out what is going on is to try to talk to the adolescent and other family members about what is happening, possible reasons, and potential solutions. Others who know the adolescent and family, like teachers or caregivers, may also be able to provide information about the teenager's mood or behaviors outside of the home to help assess the severity of the problem.

Many factors put teenagers and families at risk for juvenile delinquency, though they do not necessarily cause delinquency. Such factors include the teenager’s attention and hyperactivity problems and learning disorders, volatile temperament, and even the early onset of puberty and sexual development. All these factors affect the way an adolescent feels and acts and also how peers, family, and society view the adolescent. Similarly, parental problems, such as depression, substance abuse, and domestic violence can interact negatively with a teenager's developing path of delinquency. Rather than causing delinquency, factors such as these tend to place teenagers at increased risk, intensify the downward spiral, and in turn add to the difficulty in changing these processes for the better.

Once you have determined that you and your loved ones need help, there are many kinds of treatment that you should explore. First, there are popular group-based, residential, and "life-experiential" options, like survival camps, boot camps, and "scared straight" programs, which have had some limited success. Research indicates that the most effective treatments, even with very difficult teenagers, are programs and treatments that are family-based and multi-systemic. That means treatment that involves the adolescent and his or her family, and that also addresses other aspects of their lives, such as the school-system, the neighborhood, peers, juvenile justice system, and even employers. In other words, it is treatment that focuses on all the parts of the teenager's life that shape how he or she views the world, emphasizing family and parental support.

Treatments that focus on the family can also be useful in helping adults develop their parenting skills, deal with stress, and work on marital relationships. Many parent aids have demonstrated promising positive results. Professionals, such as family therapists, are there to help the adolescent and family gain understanding of the relationship dynamics and background issues that may be influencing the problem, and come up with solutions.

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