Understanding Sibling Competition

• 💡 Siblings often compete for the ultimate resource: a parent's love and attention, which can lead to painful underlying feelings.
• 🎯 The goal is not to eliminate competitive feelings but to help children recognize and regulate them, leading to improved behavior.
• 🔑 When children feel safe and secure in their place in the family, they are less threatened by siblings and more likely to see them as playmates.

Strategies for Reducing Competition

• 🚀 Instead of creating races or pitting kids against each other, try joining them together as a team.
• 🤝 You can even position yourself as the 'opponent' to encourage cooperation, saying things like, "I wonder if both kids can get to the bath before I do."
• 💬 When competitive feelings arise, accept and normalize them by saying, "It feels hard to have a brother," rather than shaming the child.

Play as a Tool for Understanding and Regulation

• 🎭 Play is a powerful way to help children understand their feelings about siblinghood, especially in explosive moments.
• 🧩 Through role-playing, you can introduce themes of mattering and order, allowing children to explore feelings of needing to be first.
• 🧠 You can also model coping mechanisms in play, such as a child telling themselves, "I matter even when I'm not first."

Proactive Problem-Solving and Mantras

• 🛠️ Engage children in problem-solving in advance by naming what often happens (e.g., getting out of the bath) and asking for their solutions.
• 🗣️ Teach children mantras like, "I matter even when I'm not first," to help them self-regulate when feelings of insecurity arise.
• 🌟 Whispering and using phrases like "I can't wait to do our secret handshake" can make children feel seen and special, especially when jealousy is present.

Handling Intense Moments and Narration

• ⚠️ In the moment, when things are difficult, the best approach is often to survive, then talk about it later.
• 🚶‍♀️ If a child becomes dysregulated, calmly remove them from the situation, saying, "You're having a hard time being here, we're going to go out."
• 📝 Later, narrate what happened to help the child make sense of the incoherent moment, e.g., "Getting out of the bath felt really hard... it felt as if he won in some way or as if he was so important and you felt unimportant."
• ❤️ Reassure the child, "I love you, you are a good kid who is having a hard time."