Helping Parents Manage Siblings Who Fight

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Eighty percent of U.S. children have a sibling. Siblings can be sources of companionship, play, and joy—as well as jealousy, rivalry, and aggression. A national survey found that one-third of U.S. children living with a sibling experienced sibling aggression in the past year.

Managing sibling fighting is one of the most common parenting challenges. Research shows that parents want guidance and strategies to reduce sibling aggression and promote positive sibling relationships.

Those seeking parenting advice for other concerns have abundant resources: parenting books, social media influencers, podcasts, and parenting education courses. Many of the latter are supported by research on their effectiveness and can be accessed online or through local family resource centers. Some parenting courses are tailored to new parents, divorcing parents, or those under the supervision of child protection agencies.

Because sibling aggression is such a common parenting challenge, it should be a major topic in parenting books and education courses, but in fact, it’s not usually covered. Most books and existing evidence-based programs focus on parent-child dynamics and positive discipline techniques, with little attention to sibling dynamics. Those parenting programs that do address siblings (e.g., Triple P Positive Parenting Program, Parenting Wisely) tend to focus on sibling rivalry rather than aggression.

This curious absence can be explained by our cultural blind spot around sibling aggression. In our society, we typically dismiss aggressive behaviors between siblings as expected or harmless sibling rivalry. We expect the positive aspects of the sibling bond to overshadow any negatives, but this is not always the case.

Importance of Parents for Sibling Relationships

One may wonder how much parenting impacts how well siblings get along. Certainly, other factors like personality and age differences influence the quality of sibling relationships.

Still, parents play an important role in how siblings get along and manage disagreements. Parents directly teach their children relationship skills. Parents are also models for their children, showing how to get along with others.

Research shows that parents are key to preventing and stopping sibling aggression. At the same time, ineffective parental responses can increase sibling conflict and aggressive behaviors. According to the research, some of the parental responses that generally don’t work include:

• Nonintervention: Parents ignore sibling conflicts or tell children to work them out independently, which is especially ineffective when young children lack conflict resolution skills. (Note: a hands-off approach can be appropriate for adolescents).
• Controlling responses: Parents step in to solve the problem, often in favor of the younger sibling, or punish the siblings for fighting, which doesn’t support social skills development and can breed resentment.
• Allowing physical aggression: Parents encourage or communicate that it’s normal or beneficial to resolve sibling conflict through physical fighting.

Instead, the most successful parental responses are child-centered and take a coaching or mediation approach. Parents can help children learn to see their siblings’ points of view, communicate their feelings and needs, and work together to find mutually agreeable solutions to their conflicts.

It is also important that parents create ground rules for resolving conflict, including that hitting, insults, threats, and other similar behaviors are off-limits. When parents guide these important teaching moments, a positive family atmosphere is restored, and children develop valuable conflict resolution and emotion regulation skills.

Improving Resources for Parents

There are very few evidence-based resources for parents to help manage sibling fighting and aggression. Although not specifically focused on sibling aggression, Incredible Years is a parenting education program to reduce child aggression. One recent study showed that Incredible Years reduced sibling conflict among families that initially reported high levels of sibling conflict.

We hope other parenting courses and resources will be adapted to include evidence-based strategies to reduce sibling aggression. Existing research offers several suggestions, including parental mediation of sibling conflict, limiting differential treatment of siblings, praising siblings when they get along, and establishing family “no hitting” rules. Siblings play an influential role in child development, and sibling aggression can cause enduring harm. It is important to give parents the help they need to reduce sibling aggression and promote positive sibling relationships.