Rivalry

I am an only child and have three sons, so it's been a new thing for me to learn about sibling relationships. I highly, highly recommend the book "Siblings Without Rivalry." It helped me understand where some tension was coming from and how to address problems without setting up further rivalry. It's an important book to read, but it's a quick and easy read you could probably find at the library. One thing I learned is to pay attention only to the victim in a conflict, so there is no motive of getting someone else in trouble and no attention or control for picking on a sibling. Also, I learned that punishing a child because of meanness to a sibling can fuel resentment and rivalry because it's perceived as the sibling's fault the child is punished. . . the punished child just plots revenge, which wasn't the intention.
The book "How to Talk So Kids will Listen and Listen so Kids will Talk" by the same authors also addresses sibling conflicts and is the book that saved my sanity. I really, really recommend it. Hang in there!

Work always seems to help. At our house, I announce that it is clean up time and I say "pick a room". Each person picks a room to clean up, dust,vacuum. If there is any complaining or argueing, then I add a chore to their list and continue to add until they knock it off. It really helps in my household.

The other things I have done is to have a "consequence jar". If there is some fighting going on, they (one or both depending on who is causing problems)pick a piece of paper out of the consequence jar. Some examples at my house would be, play a game (of mom's choice) with the person you are fighting with. This makes them be close and interact with each other thru-out an entire game...uno, monopoly, etc. Read a book outloud to the person you are fighting with (my 5 yr old and 8 yr old go at it at times and then I have the oldest read a story to my 5 yr old. They have to sit real close in order to see pictures and by the time the story is over, they are better). Another chore would be I get out two bowls of soapy water and hand out 2 wash rags and have them wipedown kitchen cubboards. More examples are wash the car together, clean out the car together, wash bikes together, wash windows...something that they dont have to do normally on a regular basis but is age appropriate and forces them to work closely together as a team and hopefully will appreciate each other and be proud of a job well done. It really works at my house. Give it a try and see what happens!

It's a very normal thing at their ages for kids to be constantly pushing each other's buttons. I would stick with the timeouts when it happens. But maybe tweak it a bit. When kids are getting upset over each other's things, set a "family cool down". Give each person a designated spot for their cool down. Every person involved (even mom!) has to go to their cool down spot for 5 minutes and the kids can't interact with each other or mom for that time. It's hard to tell who the instigator is at this age, kids get pretty sneaky at it sometimes. So this way your letting them know that they're still responsible for any part of the issue they participate in.

It's going to take a lot of patience from you over the next few years. Kids in the early teen years are going through a lot of changes - growth spurts, puberty, massive brain development (almost as much as they did in the "terrible two's") - and they are often pushing their boundaries. Consequences may not "solve" the problem for some time, but it lets the kids know that it's still not okay for them to act out like that. The ultimate goal is to help them become responsible, functioning adults, and having an involved, consistant parent is a big contributor to that.

Also, make sure that you spend some time with each child individually. Let them each know, privately and in family, how special and wonderful they are. They each have unique talents, abilities, and gifts. Let them hear that.

I was that way with my siblings.

An idea I've seen someone use recently is to make them work together on a project. For example, make them work together to clean up the yard or attic or to build something. You stay out of it but it has to be done by xyz time and they are stuck there. The idea is that it teaches them to work together instead of punishing them for fighting.

I only have one child so haven't tried this out myself yet but it sounds like a good idea.

Girls or Boys? I've noticed it's easier when one of them is gone - at a friend's/neighbor's/grandma's house. Sometimes I send my oldest daughter to ride her bike around the block.

When my kids are fighting, I make them clean. I mean...if I have to listen to their spats, atleast my house is going to get cleaner. Usually I just ask them to pick up XXX things off the floor and put them away where XXX is how old they are. I NEVER tell them that it's because they're fighting...but they figured it out pretty fast because as soon as they fight again, it's XXX more things. If they complain or keep asking why why why or don't start, I keep adding 1 to the number of things they have to pick up until they just do it.

It's like a quick timeout because they have to go put stuff away. Sometimes I only ask them to put away one thing.

We also encourage our kids to protect each other. Once when my husband was disciplining one of the kids (and going overboard on purpose) I encouraged one of the other kids to go protect him. She stood up to her dad and told him to stop and apologize.

Dad stopped and asked her, "Are you protecting your brother??" "Yes!" So, dad backed off and made the punishment a LOT lighter - making sure everyone knew it was lighter because she'd protected him.

Now the kids protect each other with little or no encouragement. It's brought the kids closer together...AND it gives us a way to gracefully back out when we're really mad and we're being too harsh.

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as an aside, have you ever sat and listened to kids that age play together when they didn't know you were listening? It's prolly good for your kids to practice having someone be kinda mean to them...because then they're better able to deal with how their friends treat them.

I'm not saying it's good to be mean...just realize home isn't the only place they have to deal with it.