Sibling relationships make a significant impact on who our children become as adults. Make time to help foster sibling relationships and your relationship with each child individually.

• Encourage your children to work as a team. Maybe make a pizza together or recycle bottles and decide how the money is spent.

• Stop yourself if you try to micromanage their interactions. Let them build their own relationships away from you.
• If they start to fight, don’t become the referee. Come up with ways they can work out their own arguments. One mother has them stand at their bedroom doorway and talk it out until they figure out a solution.
• Spend 1-on-1 time with each child. This says to the child that “We are a team, but you are unique and special.”
• Take time to observe each of your children to truly understand their temperament and approach to the world. What really makes each of your children happy?
• Strive to meet a child’s individual need when it arises. When one child is sick, make chicken soup for him and give him a back massage. This does not mean it’s unfair that his sister doesn’t get the same treatment.
  
• Never expect an older brother or sister to babysit without asking. It is our job to care for your children.

Reference: Doe, Mimi. Busy But Balanced. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2003.