Mom Loves You Best

Sibling “I Hate You” stories are formed like hurricane Irene. They start small, gather size and speed, and then wreak havoc.

Many family rules are silent. Usually no one writes them down, but they get deeply scrawled in indelible ink on our cerebrum. At times hushed codes are a deadly narrative for "I Hate You" stories.


 Perhaps you need to seek resolution with that step brother or stepsister before the summer wedding.

If you have fallen in love with another person after divorce and hope to create a step family, go to counseling long before you merge your two clans.

Using a family meeting as a tool, blood, stepsiblings and half siblings in stepfamilies can begin to deal with old or new wounds.

Parents of twins feel challenged to divide their time, attention, and love between their children.

Not treating twins as individuals can lead to future "I Hate You" stories.

If one child feels like the helpless person, and the other sibling has all the power, this may lead decades later, to an "I Hate You" story.

Family Dynamics

Make Your Kids Into A Team: Hold Family Meetings

Cathy Cress M.S.W. on June 1, 2011

Family meetings also help open lines of communication and allow siblings to solve problems in a group—a great skill for brothers and sisters as they age.

Family meetings also help open lines of communication and allow siblings to solve problems in a group—a great skill for brothers and sisters as they age.

Working together teaches siblings to share, to delegate responsibility, and to really appreciate each other. What's more, learning to work as a team cuts down on sibling rivalry and squabbles and builds a deep bond that the siblings carry with them for a lifetime.

How siblings behave toward each other is the first social lesson they get on how to interact with the world and perhaps their future boyfriend, girlfriend, partner or spouse. It also gives siblings the framework to cooperate with each other.

Mom and Dad's - if new baby arrives, sell self-worth to each sibling and pay attention to roles- especially middle children.

Family meetings are an excellent tool to let you listen to both sides of a sibling argument

If one child feels like the helpless person, and the other sibling has all the power, this may lead decades later, to an "I Hate You" story.

Do not let siblings settle differences between themselves.

Engaging the support of older family members like baby boomer grandparents, who today can be pretty vital sixty-year-olds, can be a hand up with the heavy lift of parentng .

One thing the baby boomer generation has taught us is to involve men more in the parenting process. It takes a couple of engaged parents to get ahead of sibling conflict.

When trying to field a parent care squad, MFT geriatric care managers, geriatricians, gerontologists, geriatric social workers and nurses often run into seething sibling roadblocks.

Time is running out on the midlife family stage. There is only so much time for forgiveness and reconnection.

Siblings, both cruel and supportive, were big winners in the Oscar nominations this week.