Sibling rivalry: competition between siblings especially for the attention, affection, and approval of their parents.

My two youngest are currently on top of one of those rope-climbing contraptions in our local park. The ones that look like a gigantic triangle tangle of wires designed specifically to alarm parents when their children are at the peak waving manically, whilst not holding on. One of mine is halfway up, and the other (the eldest of the two) is at the top, coaching his younger brother on how to climb and reach his dizzying height. This is a good day, a day where they are friends, a team working together and supporting and encouraging each other.

It’s not always this way.

Especially when you add my teenage daughter into the mix.

Don’t get me wrong, my children are very pleased to have siblings, but sometimes I think they’d rather not have them around all of the time. Rivalry between people who share blood is inevitable. Even the most placid of personalities can be riled by those closest to them and as a parent it can be frustrating and upsetting to watch.

I have two ways of dealing with the disagreements, which mainly occur when my children are tired and drained of any kind of resolve. If my they are physically fighting, which thankfully is not a regular occurrence, then I tend to dive in and resolve the situation, no-one needs to get hurt because they both want to play with the same toy, and anger should never be allowed to erupt and be directed at another just because they’re doing something you don’t like or can’t control. However, if it is a verbal disagreement then I often stand back and wait, for it’s these very encounters where children begin to learn to manage conflict. To understand empathy. To fight their corner. To adapt to situations and manage shit beyond their control.

Imagine we were all thrown together in close contact with people we didn’t chose to be with, made to get along with, share bedrooms with, spend more time with than anyone else. A mix of people with different needs, wants, personalities, and beliefs. People who are competing with you for attention and affection. We only have to watch Big Brother to know how those situations work out. Conflict and rivalry seeps in from day one. Siblings are the starting blocks for dealing with a world where everyone is different. For understanding things from another perspective. For learning about compromise.

Whilst also learning quite rightly that the world does not revolve around you.

My children know this, even more so because of the boys’ medical needs, and I am in awe of the way my teenage daughter is accepting of the situation. And also how beautifully supportive the boys are of each other; they hold hands during blood tests whilst telling the other one that it’s ok, it won’t hurt for long. I’m lucky that something so horrible has brought out the best in my children and dampened their rivalry somewhat. My brother and I were not the same as youngsters. Best of friends now, we fought endlessly as children and exhausted our mother because of it. And the stuff we fought over all seems so petty now. What to watch on the TV. Toys. Winning Monopoly. Again it was illness that changed it all. First my brother contracting a bone abscess and being in hospital over Christmas when he was eleven, and then our father passing away when we were in our early twenties. Landing on Mayfair and going bankrupt was insignificant after that. My brother says he didn’t know how much I loved or even liked him until he went away travelling for six months when he was eighteen and I balled like a baby when saying goodbye. Something he doesn’t let me forget.

Sadly not all rivalries can be contained to childhood. It’s sad when families fall out and siblings no longer speak, but you can’t force people to like each other even if they are related. You can, however, force them not be to vile to each other, but often in these cases things have gone too far, resulting in estranged families who no longer speak.

And, of course, not all children have siblings. In my novel, currently on its fifth and hopefully final draft, three only children seek to fill the space their unborn siblings have left. And that doesn’t end well. Not that I’m saying being an only child is a negative thing, not having siblings doesn’t automatically put you at a disadvantage in life, of course. Being an only child, or a sibling of one, or to many all has pros and cons. And I haven’t even touched on the horror of losing a sibling in childhood, that deserves a blog post all of it’s own. So does writing about half brothers and sisters and the many wonders of blended families, like mine.

There are many angles and things I’ve not touched on here, I know this.

In this post I wanted to focus on rivalry between siblings and how the inevitable fall outs can help teach children important life skills. There isn’t enough tolerance around at the moment, or empathy. The world is a very different place to the one I grew up in and children and teenagers face more challenges than ever before. And I do wonder if parenting now has affected this. Helicopter parenting, tiger mums, over protective adults who strive so hard for their children to be happy that they won’t even let them have an argument with their siblings and resolve it independent of adult intervention.

Yes childhood should be filled with love and laughter and play, but it’s when the foundations for life as an adult are laid down ready to be built upon.

And a healthy dose of sibling rivalry can help do just that.

This post was inspired by the new novel, Blood Sisters, by author, journalist and Sunday Times Bestseller, Jane Corry. Blood Sisters is out 29^th June, pre order here now.

‘The Good Girl’ is a thought-provoking novel with an extremely important message held within it.
The story centres around two female protagonists, Ailsa, the mother of three children and a head teacher at a local secondary school, and Romy, her seventeen-year-old daughter, and heeds a warning for all parents and their children in this modern day world filled with technology, where naïve decisions can have disastrous consequences.
The two different voices of the main characters are distinct. One being written in the first person and the other in the third aids this, and as you read it soon becomes apparent that the story is being told retrospectively. Readers are shown the disastrous event that the novel is leading towards in the prologue, and are carried through the months leading up to it, all undoubtedly with a feeling of dread in their stomachs. The dual narrative enables the reader to see the different viewpoints in relation to the disastrous event and the thoughts justifying each of the characters actions. It’s a fascinating and clever insight into the parallel lives of a mother and daughter relationship and how things can be viewed differently depending on who is doing the observing.
And either way, in the end, the consequences of Romy’s actions have far reaching effects that no one could have anticipated. And both Ailsa and her husband, due to their own past misdemeanours, feel in many ways responsible. For how one is brought up undoubtedly has an impact on who they are and how they parent their own children. However, times have changed an immense amount in the last few generations and parents now are often unable to relate to the lives of their offspring. Technological advances mean that nothing is ever fully erasable or forgotten. Something uploaded onto the Internet loses the ownership of the person in the photo or video and, once out of the hands of its stars, can spread all over the world.
Fiona Neill is very scathing of social media and the Internet and is very clear throughout the novel that she believes it can have a negative impact on a person’s life far after they have had their five minutes of online fame. It’s a lesson that everyone needs to learn. The novel also explores sexting and becoming addicted to Internet porn, both very real issues for all ages.
The book also looks at the different attitudes to males and females with regards to sex. In how men are somehow deemed manly and are revelled if they are highly sexually active, however girls are often broadcast as sluts and deserve everything they get. The inequality is a theme that runs through the book through Ailsa and her husband Harry, as well as their older children. Luke, Romy’s older brother is allowed to bring girls home by the dozen with his parents showing a very relaxed attitude to his private life. And, because he has chosen not to make a live video of said private life that is exactly how it stays.
The sharp writing carries this book along and I found myself thinking about the issues it raises long after I had finished reading it. The characters contain someone that everyone will be able to identify with – even the quirky sex therapists from next door – and the family dynamics make your empathy for each character shift over time.
This book is contemporary and intriguing and definitely something that every adult of teenage children should read. In a world of over-sharing and an Internet that is awake twenty four hours of every day we all need to be thinking about our digital imprint and the effect it could have on our lives and those close to us if something intended to be private reached the wrong fingers tapping at the wrong keyboard.

Thank you to Mumsnet Book Club and Penguin for sending me this book to review. I’d highly recommend it.