Been There, Done That: Siblings

Every family is different and every sibling group has its own mix of personalities, but we as moms can help shape the relationships of our children. Quite honestly, I wish I could go back and implement a few more of these tips earlier in my journey as a mom. But no matter where your children are, even if they are grown, God can still work to strengthen sibling relationships. Whether your family is big, small, blended, or barely started, I think you will find some great wisdom you can use from Kendall’s tips!

1. Require your children to do work together.It is so important to teach them how to get along and be a help to one another, and working together is one of the best ways I have found. I would pair them up for jobs and if there was any fussing, that pair would have an extra task so they could "learn to work together well." This did not need to happen much.

2. Teach your children to support one another.All our children were involved in sports, so we would attend events together as a family when possible to support one another. I think Tyler was 2 days old when he went to his first soccer game. When our son was a junior in high school he was on the basketball team and having a very hard year. We encouraged all our children to go to his games to support him. We asked each of his siblings to pray for him. It was wonderful to see them come alongside him and encourage him.

3. Protect them from isolating.One key way to reinforce this principle is to have your children share rooms. Firstly, this is good practice for marriage! Secondly, all community rooms are open to everyone at all times. This is why it is good to have the TV in the family room and not allow them to have a TV in their own room. In this day and time, you will also need to guard against TV and movie viewing on iPads or laptops in their bedrooms. Keeping a TV out of a room is not necessarily enough if you have portable technology with services like Netflix, etc.

4. Teach them that being part of your family is fun.If the family was doing something, all had to participate. We jokingly called this "forced family fun." Engaging in shared activities is key to unity in a family! We thought of fun things to do like going to a drive-in movie. We wanted them to have lots of shared fun experiences to look back on. We did small things such as nature walks when they were small, to taking trips to Florida and the lake as they got older. We believed we could always have fun with just our family, so we intentionally didn’t take friends on most of our vacations.

5. Acknowledge each child’s uniquenessIt is important for each child to see his or her individual strengths. We wanted each one to find his niche and develop it as long as it was not at the expense of the family as a whole. No one child should be labeled the star, or require more time and energy than the rest. This causes resentment and rivalry. We let all our children try any endeavor they wanted, then we tried to focus their efforts where their strengths were.

Wonderful stuff!Please encourage any mom you know who has teenagers to check out my next couple of posts as we tackle the teen years!