Sibling devotion: How to foster love between brothers and sisters
Parents can foster respect and adoration between their offspring by encouraging them to resolve their own conflicts and celebrate each other's achievements, writes Heidi Stevens
When Diane Knippen's third child was on the way, she and her husband had a conversation about shared values. "We decided on pretty broad items," Knippen recalls. "Be a good citizen of the world, be a good spouse and be a good parent. Those were our three goals for our kids."
Knippen's children are now 21, 19 and 16 - a little young to assess whether those early goals were met. But a beautiful by-product has emerged. Her kids adore each other.
It can feel like a heavy enough load to raise children who succeed academically and socially, eat their vegetables, bypass life's more dangerous temptations and treat others with kindness and respect. Getting them, on top of all that, to treat each other well? It's a lot.
But the pay-off is invaluable: siblings who enjoy - indeed, seek out - each other's company. Companions by blood and by choice.
"The sibling relationship is a dress rehearsal for life," says Time magazine science writer Jeffrey Kluger, author of The Sibling Effect: What the Bonds Among Brothers and Sisters Reveal About Us (Riverhead Books). "It's where you learn about conflict resolution, where you learn when to stand up for yourself and when it's smarter to stand down. You learn compassion, you learn intimacy, you learn confidence, you learn truth-telling.
"You learn that, left to your own resources, you can work stuff out. That pays dividends in life. But it also pays dividends in the sibling relationship."