Listen now: The Roots of Sibling Rivalry – Series 7, Episode 5
In the 5th episode in our series, Managing Your Dysfunctional Family, Lynn, Shay, and Austin will get to the heart of a common struggle in many families: sibling rivalry. In other words, difficult, strained, or broken relationships amongst siblings. We’ve talked about mom and dad, and now we need to talk about brothers and sisters, and how and why those relationships can be so difficult.
We’re going to look at three aspects of sibling rivalry:
Your Circumstances: What are the circumstances that create and continue sibling rivalry, and what are the results? This involves how parents impact sibling relationships, as well as other things outside of your control.
Your Role: What role do you play in creating and continuing sibling rivalry? This involves internal matters of the heart that are inside of your control.
The Here and Now: The root of your sibling conflict may go back 30-40 years, but what can you do today to deal with these challenging relationships?
Your Circumstances – 3 Harmful Patterns
1. Favoritism: Also known as “the golden child” phenomenon: parents praise or prioritize one child over the other(s). This can show up in several ways: the attitude of the parents towards the child, or through resource allocation, where one child gets more money, time and attention than the others.
Whenever one child is favored, there will be hurt feelings on the part of the other children, which often turns into jealousy. Sometimes this jealousy will be expressed openly, but other times it might go underground for long periods, only to resurface later in life. In some families, it surfaces after the death of a parent, when siblings receive an unequal inheritance.
2. Enabling: Enabling is when you do for someone else what they can do for themselves. That is a simple definition and it’s most often seen in families where there is an addict. It can be substance abuse, a behavioral addiction, or immature and irresponsible behavior. As well-meaning parents try to help their child, they end up crossing the line between “helping” and “hurting”.
Instead of enforcing boundaries and consequences to bring the self-destructive behavior to an end, they pour a lot of money and energy and time into bailing the child out of their choices and buffering the pain of their behavior. The time and energy that goes into enabling one child means that much less time and energy is spent on other children. This ultimately leads to distrust: the siblings cannot trust the parents to take care of their needs, but they also don’t trust each other.
3. Financial disparity: Shay’s mom used to say you really don’t know someone until you must deal with them over money. This piece of wisdom has shown itself to be true over the years and can quite frankly tear a family apart. When parents engage in financial disparity among their children, this causes a lot of harm. In adulthood, if one sibling is more financially successful, then comparison leads to resentment, bitterness jealousy or envy.
In some cases, siblings get along well when the parents are alive but after the parents die, the kids fight over money or the possessions that are left. There are many sad stories where siblings don’t even speak to one another anymore because of this.
Your Role
The Bible makes it clear that all humans have a sinful nature. That means that you need to look at your own heart when it comes to your siblings. Here’s a list of some specific fruit of sin that can create and perpetuate these sibling rivalries:
Comparison and competition
Pride and jealousy
Selfish ambition and materialism
A sharp tongue and a critical spirit
If you notice any of these sins creeping into your sibling relationships, then it may be time to get to the root of how that began and what you need to do about it now. It starts by doing some deep self-reflection and work in your own heart. Take a posture of forgiveness and, if possible, be reconciled and let go of those things that have come between you. When you can stop comparing yourself to your siblings and realize that in Jesus, you have everything, then bitter tensions that have plagued you can begin to subside because you don’t need to compete for God’s love.
The Here and Now
Sibling issues can be deeply rooted, with a lot of history and water under the bridge, so what do you do with your present reality? How will you manage the here and now? Let’s start with the internal things that you can control, and then look at the external, which you often can’t control.
INTERNALLY:
Take ownership of the ways you’ve contributed to the conflict.
Apologize for your own sin – sooner rather than later.
Cultivate empathy towards your sibling and try to see things from their perspective.
Make restitution for sins you’ve committed, including financial and behavioral.
EXTERNALLY:
Implement boundaries to keep from being pressured by unhealthy family members.
Avoid triangulating with family members and encourage direct communication.
Seek a healthy family within the context of your church, small group, or friends.
Pray for healing for your family and that God will give you strength to persevere.
In families where there has been a great deal of hurt between siblings, reconciliation may not be possible, but individual healing is always possible. God is there to fill our deepest needs and longings; as it says in Ephesians 2:19, “So then, you are not foreigners or strangers any longer; you are now citizens together with God's people and members of the family of God.”
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