Jonathan Caspi, PhD, MSW, is Professor of Family Science & Human Development at Montclair State University in Montclair, NJ. Dr. Caspi is an internationally recognized sibling expert. In addition to research, writing and teaching about families and siblings, he has been a family therapist for over 30 years, with a private practice in NJ. Dr. Caspi is also frequently tapped as a media consultant for family-related matters and has appeared on WNPR, WNYC, WHYY, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN, Washington Post, and many more. Dr. Caspi's fourth book is called "Raising Loving Siblings".
536: How to Cultivate Great Sibling Relationships
Dr. Jonathan Caspi
Hunter Clarke-Fields and Jonathan Caspi explore the intricate dynamics of sibling relationships, discussing how siblings influence each other's identities, the impact of birth order, and the importance of fostering positive interactions. They delve into the surprising findings about sibling differences and practical strategies for parents to nurture healthy sibling bonds while avoiding common pitfalls.
Ep 536- Caspi
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*This is an auto-generated transcript*
[00:00:00] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: You're gonna expect that there's gonna be conflict to, to think that your civil, your children are not gonna fight with each other is is fantasy.
[00:00:11] Hunter: You are listening to the Mindful NMA Podcast, episode number 536. Today we're talking about siblings and how to cultivate great sibling relationships with Jonathan Caspi.
Welcome to the Mindful Mama Podcast. Here, it's about becoming a less irritable, more joyful parent. At Mindful Mama, we know that you cannot give what you do not have, and when you have calm and peace within, then you can give it to your children. I'm your host, Hunter Clarke-Fields. I help smart, thoughtful parents stay calm so they can have strong, connected relationships with their children. I've been practicing mindfulness for over 25 years. I'm the creator of the Mindful Parenting Course and Teacher Training, and I'm the author of the international bestseller, “Raising Good Humans Every Day”, and “Raising Good Humans: A Guided Journal”.
Do you have siblings? Do you have more than one kid? Then this episode is going to be for you. This is fascinating. This is a fascinating episode talking to Dr. Jonathan Caspi, who is a professor of Family Science and Human Development at Montclair State University in Montclair, New Jersey. He is an internationally recognized sibling expert and has been a family therapist for over 30 years with a private practice in New Jersey. He has four books including “Raising Loving Siblings”, so you can find him at siblingexpert.com.
This is a really great conversation. We talk about the dynamics of sibling relationships, how siblings influence each other's identities, the impact of birth order. The importance of fostering positive interactions and basically how to do that strategies and pitfalls to making kids like love, not hate their siblings. There's a lot here. Before we dive in, I wanna remind you that you can bring me to your workplace or your school as a speaker. In the last few years, I have done talks all around the world for groups, and it's a lot of fun. I'm known for offering evidence-based learning in a way that's clear, realistic, humorous, and immediately helpful. So you can go to MindfulMamaMentor.com/Speaking to book your dates. And now join me at the table as I talk to Dr. Jonathan Caspi.
[00:03:25] Hunter: Thank you so much for coming on The Mindful Mama Podcast. I'm so glad you're here.
[00:03:29] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: Yeah, I'm glad to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
[00:03:32] Hunter: We've established that you have kids, so they have siblings. I am wondering about, what you got you so interested in studying siblings and if it had anything to do with your own sibling relationships.
[00:03:45] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: I actually did not in an overt sense. But I like the question because it's a great way to get into the topic of siblings. No the way I got into it was I was a doctoral student and when you're a doctoral student, all you do is read. And so I'm reading all this family literature and I came across two findings, which really caught my attention.
The first one, which is. Really fascinating. And I gonna guess we'll end up talking a little bit about this, is that if you take two random pairs of str strangers off the street and you give them a personality test and you give them psychological adjustment test, which is anxiety and depression and those kinds of things.
And then you give siblings the same tests that the siblings will score as different as random pairs of strangers.
[00:04:35] Hunter: Oh, wow.
[00:04:36] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: And what, when I first came across this, I went, no way. Could that be true? Because siblings are all the same. We have so much similarity. We grow up in the same household, typically with the same parents in the same economic circumstances.
Exposed to the same good times and bad times, live in the same geographical regions, go to the same schools, eat the same food,
[00:04:58] Hunter: the same music, the same.
[00:05:00] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: Yes. All of that plus genetics alone should explain greater similarity than random pairs of strangers. Yeah. So at the end of this article, which was called, why Are Siblings So Different?
It written by BioGene, geneticists it, it said something, not in these words, but paraphrasing. Maybe somebody with a family background can figure this out. And I said, geez, maybe that would be something I could learn more about. And so I've dedicated a lot of my time to that very question about why are siblings so different from each other despite having all this sameness in their life.
And that was the first. Thing that got me interested in siblings. And the second, which is a little bit darker, is I the research finding that's been consistent is that the number one form of abuse of children is perpetrated by a sibling and it outnumbers parent abuse of children and peer bullying and partner battering combined.
Like it's extremely common. And, as somebody who'd been a therapist for a number of years at this point had a graduate degree was in the field I was like, how did I not know this? Because typically we don't talk about it or get trained in that. And so those were the two things that really said, wait, I gotta learn more about this whole sibling thing.
And it's also. At the time and still is an exceptionally understudied area of human development and human behavior. And in fact, it looks like siblings are more influential in regard to who we are than anybody else in our life. If you had different siblings, you'd be a different person. And it's but again, it's, not on people's radars that the, such a powerful influence in our daily lives or siblings.
[00:06:44] Hunter: I certainly wouldn't like the cure as much as I do without my brother, that's for sure.
[00:06:49] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: Yeah. If a positive ad negative influence we'll put that in the positive category.
[00:06:54] Hunter: Yeah. Yeah. We'll put that in the positive category. I guess I could understand that. That abuse thing and that, and the way that you are, if you are as different as we say, you say we are, right?
We're these completely different people, as different as two random strangers we're thrown together. In a family, we're competing for resources, right? We're competing for attention, and some things are more competitive than the others, so there's. I can, in a marriage you've chosen to be together at some point, even though there's a lot of abuse in marriage, you have chosen to be together.
And in other relationships you've chosen to be together. So there's, there isn't that element of we chose each other ever really for siblings. So I could see how that maybe could be the result. A sad,
[00:07:43] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: yeah. I don't know of a case yet where somebody gets to choose their sibling. But what a interesting thing that would be.
[00:07:50] Hunter: Yeah. Yeah. Before we do you, how did your sibling, how have your siblings shaped you?
[00:07:56] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: I have one sibling. He is a younger brother. We were both athletes, but he was a much better athlete than I. And
in carving out our identities I continued to play sports, but I made more of I my identif my identity as a musician in the arts as he continued in sports.
And probably if I had a sibling that was not as talented athletically I may have pursued sports a little bit harder.
[00:08:20] Hunter: And this is one of the ways maybe that siblings affect each other, right? Is that we're. We're getting our niches right? If one is the, is more athletic than one might actually, I mean that my brother is very athletic and I'm very artsy too so I'm not sure, maybe those were our niches as well.
[00:08:38] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: What a coincidence that we're both here talking about siblings.
[00:08:41] Hunter: So yeah, so these are some of the ways they. We affect each other. How else do, you said that siblings have some of the most effect on us, who we become as people in the future. So what are some of the ways that siblings affect each other?
[00:08:55] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: Yeah, so I'll give you a couple. The first one that you already identified is that, we choose particularly a particular areas of expertise. Or niches. So you have, if a child decides, for example let's say the older child is playing basketball and the parents are very excited about it.
They go to the games, they cheer they, the child wins trophies. People are talking about the child that the younger sibling is watching all of this, and they go, oh, I wanna play basketball too. So they wanna follow in their footsteps, and then one of two things is gonna happen. Either they're going to be a as good or better than their sibling and they're gonna, really achieve and then all of a sudden everybody's like very excited about the younger sibling.
And oh my gosh, they're so talented and they're, they have to be on the All Star team and look at that trophy and the older siblings like, you know what, there's not as much of a payoff in this anymore because I'm getting. Out shown, if that's the correct word, by my younger, smaller sibling or the younger sibling is gonna say, is not gonna have the same experience or be as talented and go, this isn't as much fun as it looked there.
There's not much of a payoff in this, and then let me carve out my identity somewhere else. And so they end up choosing very different. Paths and then those paths are not inconsequential, if somebody's athletic and that gets reinforced, they meet different people than artsy people meet.
I. And they have different friends and they have different social circles, and they go to different majors and they end up in different careers and they couple up with different kinds of spouses and it has this major impact. It's it what seems like just a, a fairly small shift in focus or maybe to where we're most talented has a lot to do with what our siblings choose.
It's if you're. If you have an exceptionally talented for example, like we were using the example of a basketball player and you decide, okay, I'm not gonna play you've made a choice to avoid that a whole basketball enterprise, but at the same time, if you had a different sibling.
One that was not athletic. You may have continued to pursue that, and who knows where that would've taken
[00:11:09] Hunter: you. Yeah. Yeah. It could have been the thing for you. That's interesting. It
[00:11:12] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: could be the thing for you. Yeah. And so it, it shapes you in so many different ways, these kind of like small earlier choices and how siblings function.
And so much of that has to depend, depends on, the parents and what they decide to do too. Because some families are like, you all have to do the same thing. You're all gonna play football or you're all gonna play field hockey, or you're all gonna be artists. And that, that shapes the.
The way people interact within those niches. And so sometimes you'll meet a team where it's like meet a team. You'll meet a family where they have three siblings who all play soccer and all do very well in soccer. But you'll see that they choose different niche niches or niches within.
Soccer. One will be an a, a goalie, one will be a striker, one will be a defender, and so on. You rarely see two people in exactly the same position. And it's why people like, the mannings who were both quarterbacks is, are such exceptions to the rule. It you don't see that so often, but that's.
There's definitely a culture of football in that family that would put everybody together in the same sport in the same position.
[00:12:21] Hunter: Stay tuned for more Mindful Mama podcasts right after this break.
I asked my teammate team members about what do you wanna know about siblings? I'm talking to Dr. Caspi, we have a lot of questions about how to cultivate good relationships. I wanna get to those. But it's on thinking about a little bit on what you just said. It almost seems like it might be like a good strategy for parents to be like, we are all doing this. If the parents are into football or the parents are into what, like you, we are all doing this and really like making a strong encouragement for everybody to do the same thing. Because then at least culturally you'd have this kind of bonding element as a family, like a team does. Does that, I don't know, what do you think about that idea?
[00:14:56] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: If only it works so simple.
[00:14:58] Hunter: I know. I'm saying it as if it's just an easy choice.
[00:15:02] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: Because not all kids or talents are good at the same thing.
We all, we're all very different from each other. And if you're not a painter and your family's everybody's gotta paint it, it puts you, it, it puts you at such a disadvantage because if you think about, who parents invest in they're not, if you're the bad painter in a painting culture, family, you might get the least amount of attention and investment and reinforcement.
So it may not be such a good move for that child. I think helping children find their own past and their own talents despite their siblings parent talents it just because your, brother's a superstar soccer player doesn't mean that you can't play soccer and also excel at it is a different discussion.
Then a forcing discussion.
[00:15:45] Hunter: Yeah. Yeah. And also since we're differentiating each other and what, what we wanna do as siblings when we're kids, does it end up that if the older child is, maybe very responsible or compliant or obedient, does that sort of birth order end up that the, maybe the middle child or the second child might knee shouldn't be, not quite as responsible because the older sibling has that covered?
[00:16:12] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: Yeah, so there's interesting research on this too. First of all the, just to give background to the answer, I'm about to give you to that question and it's related to your prior question, is the other thing is that siblings don't want to be like each other. And they actively try to be different.
Is the term is called de-identification. They really work to develop their own identities. And I teach at a university and I ask my students every semester who wants to be like their sibling and almost nobody raises their hand. Because they all wanna be themselves.
Sometimes they do if they have a sibling who's like much older and accomplished. But when, one of the interesting things to answer your question about how siblings function with each other in birth order role is that the closer they are in age, the more different they are.
The more age spacing, the more similarity you get.
And so you have this process of active. De-identification. And so you even see it in little kids where you take 'em to the ice cream truck and one's I, I'll have chocolate. And the other one's then I'll have vanilla. And you're like, but you love chocolate ice cream. And they're like vanilla is my new favorite now.
And that's just a small example of what happens in much bigger ways with families. Huh. And so you get this this greater differentiation in close age. You also get. Which is interesting, more closeness often because they're around each other a lot and have more of the same shared interest than you do with, say, wide age spacing.
But you get more conflict too. And so just like your niche question earlier, the more kids are in the same. Area, the more they're gonna compete. And so you're gonna get more conflict too. And it's not that competition or conflict is inherently bad, it's how it's managed, but it's you just expect more of it.
[00:17:55] Hunter: Yeah, that's interesting. 'cause of course we all want our kids to be close and that whole, how far apart in age should they be questioned as a big one? Yeah. My, my neighbor is ni. Contemplating this. Her first daughter is like going on too, and she's I want them to be, my daughters are three years apart almost exactly to the week.
To the week, and I. They're pretty good friends at this point. Like they're 14 and 17. They do a similar they do some similar scouts venturing things and they're different people, but they are friends and my neighbor's I want them to be close like your daughters, and what?
I have to figure out the optimal age separation for having child number two. If we have child number two and I'm like, I don't know. Now I can point her to this closer, but more conflict the closer in age they are.
[00:18:44] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: That's just a general rule for a lot of relationships is that when you're close, you're more likely to get bump into each other.
Sure. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. And when you're cl, when you're close in age, and particularly if you're both of the same sex, like you have two daughters they tend to gravitate towards the same kinds of, things. And so there's, more opportunities to have disagreements.
[00:19:03] Hunter: Sure,
[00:19:04] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: yeah. And so the, your friend who's choosing about optimal age spacing age spacing is only one tiny component of the whole equation. And, there's so many other things to consider about how do you develop close relationships than than how many years apart they are.
And maybe your friend is lucky this way, but a lot of families aren't so talented that they can decide exactly how many years Yeah. That their kids are apart from each other. Yeah, there's
[00:19:32] Hunter: Plenty of oops in that equation, I'm sure.
[00:19:35] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: Yes, exactly. And then there's, and even though there's, there can be wide age spacing is, it tends to have less closeness in terms of like friendship.
There's other kinds of closeness too. And the caretaking closeness and so on. So it, all of it has its pros and cons. It's has much more to do with how the family manages those. Differences.
[00:19:56] Hunter: Okay, so let's dive into that. And I'm wondering maybe if we should talk about first, like what not to do, and I think there are probably some, maybe not set so skillful practices from the past that maybe may arise here.
You tell me what, what should parents. Not do if we're wanting to have our kids be, have connected close relationships.
[00:20:20] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: This, I'll start with what something that's gonna sound funny and then we'll get to strategies. The first one, and this is a big one, and it's a hard one for parents, is the research on parents' involvement in their kids' lives is typically the more involvement, the more fighting, huh.
[00:20:37] Hunter: Wow.
[00:20:38] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: Yeah. Yeah, because the ways parents typically get involved actually that
[00:20:43] Hunter: makes a lot of sense to me. Yes. Go ahead. Keep going.
[00:20:45] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: Actually exacerbate the fighting for multiple reasons. The big reason is that anybody who has a third person in the middle of their relationship.
It makes that relationship less close. You just think about, your significant others or your spouses. If there was somebody else trying to manage your relationship, it would be worse because you'd have somebody either translating or, speaking on your behalf or taking sides.
There'd be all kinds of messes that would happen, and that's why you'd
[00:21:12] Hunter: complain to that person. He didn't do this thing. I'm so anno. Yeah. Okay.
[00:21:17] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: And that's exactly what happens. If the kids come running over to the parents and they complain about their sibling, and now the parent has a choice, like, all right, what do I do with this information?
And. One of the things that is very frequent in a lot of families is that when parents do get involved, particularly they don't, they wait till the last minute to get involved. They wait until the kids are fighting. You can have two kids who are in a room playing with each other really nicely and, the parents are, oh, that's great.
Now I get to. Do work or wash dishes or what, whatever. Other tasks they have going on and they're thrilled about it. And the, and then when the screaming starts, that's when they get involved. And so when they get involved at, during the conflict, a couple things happen. One is that I. They, you're trying to handle it on the fly and they don't really have any plan for what they're gonna do when they, so they end up saying things like, just be nice to each other, or go to your rooms, or You're older, you should know better.
And all of those things actually make the sibling relationship worse. If you send kids to the rooms, what you've taught them is stay away from each other, which doesn't build closeness. It just is avoidance. If you say, be nice to your younger sister. You're older, you should know better. You've just taken the younger one's side
And now, and made an outsider of the older one. Which builds more resentment and then fosters more conflict and more aggression. And why can't you just two be you two, be nice to each other? It's almost like a ridiculous statement. It's
[00:22:42] Hunter: just blaming them both.
[00:22:43] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: Yeah. And it's, it doesn't teach anything.
No, it doesn't give them you strategies. It doesn't. Plus the, and this is really important, and I think this is really important for anybody listening to this, is that if they were playing together nicely for 20 minutes before they started yelling. Yeah. And that's the thing that requires the attention. If you can go in and say, man, I love how you tour playing with each other so nicely, and how you're sharing and you're, you.
And point out the things that they're doing that you like how you're complimenting each other and being polite and then you can walk out and then you come back in and you reinforce it again. Then the good behavior gets your attention and gets reinforced and it doesn't have this sort of negative experience for everybody when people come in and try trying to wing it when their kids are fighting.
[00:23:27] Hunter: Yeah. You need to have some kind of strategy. All those are, they're terrible. Yeah. Why don't, why can't you just be nice to each other? What does one say to that? Mother, because right now my fight, flight or freeze stress response is activated and therefore I cannot use my thinking brain.
[00:23:43] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: Exactly.
[00:23:45] Hunter: This is not gonna happen. So it's important to understand this, and I think this is what you were saying before, the closer an age you are, the more conflict you have and if you want your kids to have close relationship, that means they spend time together, they're gonna be in conflict.
And sometimes I think that. We wanna avoid some, A lot of parents wanna avoid all conflict, but to be in a relationship is to have conflict with each other and we're gonna have conflict with our kids. We're gonna have conflict with our parenting partners. We're gonna have conflict with the people in our lives who are close to each other.
So we need, I. A strategy to be able to handle this conflict that we can deal with. And we also need to teach our kids a strategy for handling conflict that they come into with each other. I imagine you're nodding, you're agreeing. Yeah.
[00:24:29] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: Yeah. All of that is true. The. The belief is that siblings are always fighting with each other over parental attention or favoritism or that, but it, most of the fighting that happens between siblings is just living together.
It's ha it's having to share the same space. It's the same thing that happens between couples when they live together and they run into conflict. It's, I. It's not like you're fighting over your in-law's attention. Maybe some families are, but it's more just the day to day.
I wanted to go here on Thursday afternoon and you want to go there and which, where, which way are we going? Or, I washed the dishes the last five days and you've done nothing and. I feel like I'm being, taken advantage of it. It's typical just kinda living together stuff. And I do a lot of couples counseling and what I often say to couples is, it's not that you're, we don't have a goal that we wanna stop fighting.
You're always gonna get into some conflicts because that's just the nature of relationships. It's how quickly you can manage it so that it doesn't linger, and how to let go of little things and address the bigger things. And so it's the same thing. It's to some degree with siblings, which is you're gonna expect that there's gonna be conflict.
It's a thing that your si your children are not gonna fight with each other. Is is fantasy now. Not all kids do. There are some that have learned, that either it's the personalities or the culture of the family and they don't go at each other that often. And some are at each other all the time.
So the ones that are at each other all the time, I. Are the problem situations, and that's typically this. And typically what happens is how the parents then get involved with this constant bickering or fighting and those things is exacerbating and not reducing it. If any parent tries to reduce the behavior and it doesn't go away in a couple weeks or change, I should say.
They're now in on it. They're part of the. Whatever's happening.
[00:26:18] Hunter: Yeah, that's good to understand for ourselves, is am I helping this situation or am I hindering it? And I imagine kids are learning their, everything is modeling, right? Like we're always modeling for them all the time.
So I imagine they're learning their conflict resolution skills from their parents, right? So if mom and dad start yelling and bossing each other around or bossing the kids around, then the kids are gonna do that with each other. Is that right?
[00:26:46] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: Yeah. A lot of it is you're correct, is modeling. And if, if parents are not resolving their conflicts or just yelling at each other it doesn't demonstrate a lot.
But also, children especially young children, don't have a lot of relational skills and they don't have a lot of higher order cognitive skills to make sense of. To really understand what's going on. And so you do see some behaviors that are very different from adults than you do with children.
Kids often hit each other and push each other down and rip things outta the other person's hand and so on. And, you do see that in adult couples, but not as much as you do with little kids. And those moments are great teaching moments. And a lot of that is just developmental, right?
[00:27:31] Hunter: Yeah. I can remember being really perplexed. 'cause I was like, why are they hitting they're not seeing that at all in the family. So what can parents, like when kids are fighting, what should parents do? I.
[00:27:41] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: One thing is, if we could back up to what you said a minute ago, is that being prepared, like having strategies is helpful.
And so what you want first and foremost is you and your parenting partner to be on the same page and have a similar approach. Because if you don't you, you can very easily end up undermining the other person's authority. And so you wanna be together and you want to have a plan. If you know that conflict is happening a lot you can come up with what do we do if it come, if it happens.
And if the kids are very young, you can have this conversation first with your significant other or co-parent, and then you can say, these are the things we expect to see. From from you when you're interacting with each other and when you're fighting with each other and you make the rules for what they're supposed to say.
And then after you have those clearly laid out, you, you either meet with the children or you develop these together with the children. And then I. When it happens, somebody say, shoves the other person and you say, no, he said There's no shoving. What do you do if you wanna play with a toy and it the other person's not sharing?
And, different families are gonna have different approaches for that. It might be, ask lightly. It might be, can I play with it in five minutes? And it might be asking for a parent to help with that. And then the rule for the other person is to say, I will let you play with this when I'm done with it, which you know, may be in a few minutes.
Can you please wait a few minutes and then I'll be happy to give it to you. You give them some sort of direction about how to behave and then when they do it, you just praise the hell out of it and reinforce it. And when they don't do it, you say to them, oh, remember the rules, remember what we talked about.
And then you say, let's try again. And you give them an opportunity to do it again, and then you can praise it. And if they don't, you may for some children have to lay out some consequences. And for some children they don't require that. So it depends on how much they push back on things.
[00:29:40] Hunter: You're basically saying teach them what they need to learn in this situation, right? I need to learn how to interact with the my siblings. So you gotta teach them very explicitly how do we do this, right? You know when your brother runs away with the cheese grater, say, Hey, I was like the cheese grater bag, whatever it is.
That was a q and a that was submitted here to the podcast.
[00:30:01] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: Oh my God, she's great. There, there is another rule, by the way, which is if anything is dangerous and you have to intervene quickly, if a child's punching another child, you can't be like parental intervention makes it worse.
You have to get in and keep your kids safe and. Cheese graters could do some damage.
[00:30:19] Hunter: Cheese grater could be damaging. Yeah. The, I'm glad you concur. That was my advice. I said I think that this is one for the adults to step in on was the cheese grater.
[00:30:28] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: Oh I absolutely. It's like running around with a knife.
[00:30:31] Hunter: Watch out for that hacksaw honey.
[00:30:35] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: Exactly.
[00:30:36] Hunter: Okay, so we can step in when our kids are fighting and we can give them some tools. We can practice those tools. And what I also heard in what you're saying is that you're not being punitive, right? You're not saying what's wrong with you for making a mistake and messing up.
You're just saying, okay, we gotta just try it again, right? And what I'm hearing in what you're saying that's underneath the surface is that the parents need to be regulated. They need to not be adding a bunch of fuel to this fire. They need to be downplaying it, right?
[00:31:06] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: It's so much easier to regulate your own emotions when you have strategies and you have a plan.
Because if these are the steps I'm gonna do. Then you feel more confident in the way you intervene. If you're winging it, you're much more likely to scream and feel overwhelmed and then the children don't respond and then it just escalates. And emotional regulation is an internal strategy, but having a plan is always the best way to look to, to regulate, if for folks, for example, like you were mentioning before, who struggle with anxiety, if you have a plan for the thing that's.
Causing you to worry that you think is dangerous, you're much more confident in going in than just winging it. And it's the same thing for parents when they're with their children. The more you have strategies for yourself and that requires you taking the time to. To have conversations about what is it gonna look like?
How am I gonna intervene? How am I gonna give them another chance? And not be like, Nope, you messed up. You know you're done. Go to your room. But rather okay, you're angry right now. Take a deep breath, take a minute, calm down. Now come back to it and try again. That now you have things that are much more likely to go well, and that you can reinforce and you walk out of it feeling good and they walk out of it feeling good, and nobody walks out of the screaming feeling particularly good.
[00:32:20] Hunter: No, no one does.
Stay tuned for More Mindful Mama Podcasts right after this break.
[00:33:04] Hunter: All right, so have some strategies. Implement your strategies. Calmly again,
[00:33:10] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: try again.
Big one,
[00:33:11] Hunter: try again. Try and try again. Begin anew all the time. Okay. Then how can we, other than those moments of conflict, can we cultivate them getting together? I remember wanting my girls to be, to not hate each other. That was my goal, is I want them to not hate each other. And, I had a book about sisters and I would talk about how they're lucky to have their sisters, different things like that.
I don't know if that was right. You tell me. What can we do to have cultivate warmth and connection between them?
[00:33:43] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: Clearly it was right. And you've done a lot. Because you said that they are friends and that's great. That's a really nice thing. And the evidence is the best evidence, right?
There, there's a few things and some of them are don't, and some of them are dues, so we can run through that as well. It don't take sides. I. As soon as you inter, if you're, if you go in and say you're older, you should know better. You're the big sister that only builds resentment, and resentment builds distance and relationships.
So that's a no-no. You're not defending one against the other. The second is the more parents compare their children. The more competition is fostered and a sense of winning and losing. And mom likes you better, dad likes you better, or whoever the parent is. And that leads to resentment.
I. Right. And so we try to focus on individual behaviors not comparing to brothers and sisters, which is very hard to do because they want to compare themselves to each other too. And then of course you have teachers and coaches and everybody else, grandparents and cousins, all doing this comparison.
But the more you minimize that. The less you foster this sort of okay, that's my rival and I don't wanna lose. Especially if it's the comparisons are high price comparisons like we were talking about earlier. If like you're from a family that is like super into football and you have one child who's great at football and the other child he.
Is not interested or doesn't wanna play it, it very quickly can become you like that one better than me because they're a football player and you don't appreciate art, but that's what I want to be. And so now you feel like an outsider in your own family, and so that also cultivates greater distance.
So I if there are these high price comparisons that will create more distance in relationships, sending people to the rooms and telling 'em to stay away from each other creates apathy in relationships and distance. It doesn't build closeness. And all those things I would avoid.
Reinforcing the positive moments, telling them how great they are together giving them opportunities to have shared experiences. And even on neutral ground shared experiences sometimes vacations are the absolute worst things for families. 'cause all rules and all bets are off and everybody's tired and stressed and so there's a lot of fighting, but it also creates nice opportunities for shared experiences that they aren't having with peers, for example, or other people.
Helping them, you learn pro-social skills such as complimenting and praising and showing interest, advice, giving being able to go to your sister or your brother and saying like, how do I do this? I don't, this is not something I can talk to mom and dad about. It's too embarrassing.
How do you know how to kiss somebody the first time? Those kind of things that you don't talk about with parents. All those things, cultivate. Closeness. And, the this might sound almost cliche at this point but getting, kids off their phones because that really builds a lot of disengagement into relationships too.
The siblings end up very much in their own social circles in their own place on the phone, and they could be sitting next to each other on the couch and not know each other at all. And so they have to have opportunities to have shared experience. And also if they fight and they resolve it, that actually makes people closer.
[00:36:57] Hunter: Yeah. Yeah. These are great. Yeah. I I. I love that I was thinking about all the vacations and how when we encountered our first climbing wall and all these different experiences and when we hiked that hill and there were b we know, almost blown off by wind and all these different things. Yeah I think those are really wonderful.
And yeah, and the whole idea of just sometimes I think of it as like a campaign to catch them in the good times, right? What you're saying, reinforce the positive things like, oh, thank you. I appreciate you being so kind to your sister, or whatever it is. Those I think are really great.
What do we do? This question came from my team member. What do you do? How do you address it? If one sibling gets upset and says, I hate my younger sister.
[00:37:40] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: It's a good question. There are gonna be those moments and, sometimes the, as you said, the person you never had a choice in being in your life is somebody that you don't particularly share interest with or has a very different personality.
But more often it's it's related to feeling like the presence of your sibling is e either overshadowing yours. That there's some favoritism that's happening. And so that sibling makes you look bad or is winning parental favor. And sometimes it's that the person that's hated is able to get away with things.
So it's like a, an over, like a violation of boundaries and personal space. And, they go in and borrow the sweater without asking. Or they share a private moment publicly that's supposed to be kept private within the family and those feel like violations. And this builds up this r feeling of I really dislike this person.
It doesn't have to be a permanent state of affairs to feel like you're always in that place. And what I tell parents is that when kids say things like that you have to take it seriously. And actually not in the heat of the moment, not when kids are like really heated up, to come back after they've calmed down a little bit and said, can we talk about that?
That's a really powerful statement. And I don't think that you want to hate your sibling and I certainly don't want you to hate each other. So tell me what you think is going on and to be open to feedback that your child might say 'cause you guys favor and like him or her more. And I hate that.
And not to go no. I love you all the same. And dismiss it. Because if you dismiss it, it only makes them feel even more like an outsider. So
[00:39:20] Hunter: they won't wanna tell you more.
[00:39:21] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: Yeah, exactly. So take it seriously and treat it like it's real. And and I'm not saying if it's a one time explosion and it's like super dramatic, that you can let that go.
But if it seems to be like you're hearing it. Regularly and something's up. And so why not put it on the table and really try to understand it and not try to rationalize the child out of it? It's just 'cause you don't understand, right? It's, actually listen to what they're saying.
[00:39:45] Hunter: I. And from your warning earlier, like there could be stuff going on, like this is the mo, the relationship in which it's maybe most likely to be happening. So let's be open to understanding as uncomfortable as that may make us feel. I guess I would say, like if someone said, a kid said to me like, I hate my younger sister, I guess I would just.
I dunno, validated that or empathize with that first. Oh wow, you're so mad right now, you're really frustrated with them. And just then see what happened there, in as far as what to do in the heat of the moment when that is really frus coming up.
[00:40:22] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: Yeah. Oh, that's great.
Yeah. A hundred percent. You want them to, you want your children to feel like you're their advocate and ally, and not like you're there to defend the other child or to just, to say, why are you being so dramatic and over the top, and those kinds of things. Because that will only fo, that will only make things worse.
I. In the big picture. And you're a hundred percent right. Just taking the time out to validate it and show some empathy is a great place to, to start.
[00:40:48] Hunter: There's so much here. I think it's I didn't get, I have all these, this huge list of questions I don't get to ask you. Anyway, I guess it means maybe we'll have you come back on again some other time, but
[00:40:59] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: that would be great.
I teach courses on, at the university siblings and it, it's like 15 weeks, an hour and three hours of pop or something like that. It's hard to get it all in an hour. I.
[00:41:10] Hunter: I guess. I guess it is.
[00:41:11] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: Yeah,
[00:41:12] Hunter: I guess it is.
[00:41:12] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: Yeah.
[00:41:13] Hunter: This has been so fascinating and interesting. I think anybody who has multiple kids or who has siblings themselves it's so interesting to think about these very special relationships.
I think on the positive side, it can't, it can be this great relationship that you can have for life, right? Like with somebody. That's in your life forever. And that's what, that's my hope for my kids. So hopefully some of these strategies will help people do that.
[00:41:38] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: Just, I'll just add one more minute because what you said is critically important.
And I don't want that to get lost on anybody. The, the. The area of sibling positive sibling relationships and its effect on humans over the lifespan is incredibly impressive. This sounds nutty when I say it, but there, there's, there is research on this that siblings are in adulthood the number one predictor of of happiness.
Is a good relationship with sibling longevity because if you think about how isolated people get towards the end of life, having a close sibling relationship can make a huge difference. And so related to that is better health. People have better relationships with their spouses if they have good relationships with their siblings.
They do better at work, they get promoted more, they make more money. Like it, it's got a lot of amazing developmental benefits and to make it to even reinforce it further, and this is really what I think is fascinating is that a good relationship with a child, with your sibling and childhood acts as a buffer for very difficult events that happen in life.
So for example when parents get divorced and kids really. Struggle, they end up doing generally okay, but in the beginning they, they fall behind academically and behaviorally and those kind of things for a little, for a short window of time. But they if they have a good relationship with a sibling, you don't see that.
And so it, it really buffers these negative effects in very powerful ways. And that's because you have somebody who understands you and has shared witness and you can commiserate with. It's it's extremely powerful. And so people with poor relationships actually do worse on all the same things that I just said.
So it's not just start stopping the bickering. In the house so that you can have a more peaceful house. You want to create a, an environment where your siblings develop, real closeness and friendships and can support each other through the course of the lifecycle. 'cause it has incredible benefits the entire way through.
I.
[00:43:40] Hunter: Okay. So would you, as your kids are old enough to understand some of that, would you share some of that with them? I remember talking to Maggie and Sarah about yeah, when, friends will come and go and your life and your sister will be there forever and they're gonna be there for you.
And if you guys are. Kind to each other, would you do that?
[00:43:58] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. And even you can fall, you can create some of that early on by, if a child comes to you and says I'm I'm having trouble with a kid at school who's being mean to me, what do I do? You can say, you know what your sister, your brother had something similar happen if you, why don't you go ask for some advice there?
And, have them have those kind of serious. Conversations and help to advise if the older sibling handled it in an appropriate way. If they did, that's a different story. And you could still provide guidance as a parent, but you can bring, you can bring their brothers and sisters into it, so you can foster those moments too.
[00:44:35] Hunter: Oh wow. That's awesome. I'm so glad you jumped in. I I was gonna ask you, is there anything that we missed that you would like to share with the listener and tell us also. You have several books and tell us where we can find you. The lister can find you if you wanna take the conversation further.
[00:44:51] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: Oh thanks for asking. Yes. I have a book just out now called Raising Loving Siblings. That's out and you can find it on all the, online sellers. Not hard to find. And I have, a website, which I'm not the greatest at updating, but I do get there. And it's sibling expert.com.
And you, my,
[00:45:11] Hunter: there are some fascinating articles from 2014 there.
[00:45:13] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: Yeah, you're killing me. There's actually a good one. I'm gonna, I think I'm gonna try to update it later today. There's an interesting new research out on, which kids' parents tend to favor because most kids, most parents do have
[00:45:24] Hunter: oh, the
[00:45:25] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: children that they favor, even though it's such a taboo subject.
And it's it's a real, it's an interesting thing. So I'll get that up there on there too.
[00:45:32] Hunter: Oh, good. See, that's gonna be teaser for us. By the time this podcast is out, we can go to, say the website again,
[00:45:37] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: sibling expert.com.
[00:45:39] Hunter: Sibling expert.com, and find that. John, thank you so much. This has been a real pleasure.
I've really enjoyed it. I'm so glad you're doing the work to share this with the world 'cause I think it's incredibly important. So thanks for coming on. Yeah,
[00:45:54] Dr. Jonathan Caspi: thanks for having me. I really appreciated the discussions, the questions and subjects were really good ones. You hit all the good, the important notes.
[00:46:05] Hunter: Thank you so much for listening. I think it's so fascinating to learn about siblings. This relationship. Hopefully we'll have all our lives. So I'm glad you listened. I know no, that you have at least a one friend today who could benefit from this episode. So please text it to them. And if you're that friend, make sure you are subscribed so that you get every.
Episode of the Mindful Mama Podcast in your inbox, there is so much here to learn from and to grow from. So it helps you. It helps us be able to, grow the podcast and helps us to keep our team happy. So share it with a friend and thank you. Thank you for listening. I'd love to hear your takeaways.
I'm at Mindful Mama Mentor. Wherever you can find me, and I'm wishing you a great week. I hope some of this helps you have more enjoyable, steadier, happier, less stressful relationships with your kids. And I hope that you take some time this week for quiet. Take some time for a walk a moment, a few minutes without a device, without a distraction, just to breathe and be with yourself.
And, breathe in the air. Hopefully you've got some lovely springtime stuff going on where you are, and I'll be doing those things too with you so that we can have our steadiness, have our self-awareness so that we can make conscious choices and a kind of crazy world. And yeah wishing you peace and ease and joy and all that good stuff. Thanks for listening.
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