DAD-Chronicals : Sibling dispute makes you smart - A comfort for troubled parents
Sibling dispute makes you smart - A comfort for troubled parents
Are you also one of the parents to whom the eternal quarrels of the children rob the last nerve? Then, perhaps, you console the results of Cambridge University researchers: arguing is clever, expanding vocabulary and promoting social skills.
The study monitored 140 children over a four-year period. They came from socially strained families and were filmed in their environment. Parents, educators and also the children themselves were interviewed and tested. The results are somehow reassuring: even if the eternal quarrels annoy the parents, the children benefit in the long run from it. The effects of the quarrels are positive.
Siblings as a sparring partner for the development of social skills
One can rely on the family, siblings are and always will be there, even toddlers feel that. This reliance on family ties allows children to try one another out. Sometimes that takes on quite extreme forms. Many siblings argue throughout their childhood, the inhibition threshold, which often consists of other children or in groups of children, is not present here. Only the parents stand between the quarrels and are sometimes quite helpless. The siblings learn very different skills when arguing - so the younger ones develop methods to defend themselves against the stronger ones or even to dodge and give way. Older children learn compassion and willingness to compromise in their quarrels with their younger siblings. For the parents, these successes are often not directly apparent, but they often have an effect much later, namely, when the children are grown, almost grown up.
Age difference and forms of conflict are related
The best way for conflicting siblings to learn from each other is if the age difference is three years, according to family researcher Hartmut Kasten from Munich. The pedagogue has been working intensively on sibling relations, but also on the development of children in different age stages. The three-year gap is so favorable because the children are close enough to each other to work together, but the gap is large enough to develop different age-related competencies and behaviors in the course of a dispute. If the age gap is smaller, then the rivalry is greater, the behavioral strategies are very similar. At a larger distance hardly more conflict potential arises, for the toddler, the older sibling has then almost the status of an adult.
Siblings must be allowed to argue
If conflicts between siblings prevail, they must also be lived out and clarified. Parents should be able to control themselves and give the children the opportunity to agree without interference. A limit, however, should always be set if one of the children is always deliberately pissed off and provoked by the other. Then you should show your children that, and above all, how to resolve disputes differently. Punishment and sanctions are not appropriate in this case. However, sometimes it may be necessary to separate the brawlers and wait for them to calm down. Then you can talk.
Why is arguing strife again?
That arguing promotes the social skills, the so-called "soft skills", may just be clear, why is arguing but now also clever? The reasoning of the psychologist Peter Sturm sounds plausible: in a dispute or argument, the brain is running at full speed. While one still listens (or observes in the case of a toddler), one develops already his counterarguments or reactions to the statements and deeds of the counterpart. This challenges the brain tremendously and causes the child to form new synapses. The learning effect ends, however, when the debate is a mere "hit and sting". That's why it's so important to keep encouraging your child to talk and argue with one another instead of trying to get along.
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