The Top 50 Questions Kids Ask by Susan Bartell

Author:Susan Bartell
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: &NEW, Juvenile Nonfiction, Parenting, Children's Questions and Answers, Questions & Answers, General, Family & Relationships, Games & Activities
ISBN: 9781402219153
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2010-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

6

Sibling Stuff

If you have more than one child, I bet you have experienced sibling rivalry to one degree or another. It’s not fun, but in reality the competition, jealousy, teasing, and out-and-out wars prepare your child for the world outside your home, helping her develop resilience and skills for managing similar, inevitable social experiences. In fact, having siblings helps a child to adjust to sharing, being flexible, and relating within a peer group that much sooner. Of course single children learn all this too—with cousins and friends—it just takes a little longer and a bit more planning by parents to ensure regular exposure to other children.

As the parent of a single—or any—child, you also need to make sure you don’t always take the side of your own child when it comes to helping him negotiate sticky Darlene

situations. This will go a long way toward enabling him to develop the skills he may otherwise learn as the member of a sibling group. You can review Chapter Two, Question #8, for some tips on not always taking your child’s side when he is in an argument or fight with another child.

Despite its practical utility for your child’s social life, sibling rivalry can be stressful for parents and children. Notwithstanding the period after the birth of a second child (which represents the quintessential time that a child is jealous of a sibling), the older-elementary years are often a time when sibling rivalry peaks. This is because many older-elementary-age children—now more confident and with stronger verbal skills—are willing to assert their displeasure with both older and younger siblings far more readily than they might have when they were younger and less verbal.

Parents sometimes exacerbate sibling rivalry without even realizing it, by accidentally comparing siblings to each other, mixing them up, or inadvertently treating them “unfairly” in the eyes of their siblings. It is practically impossible to escape the “it’s not fair’s” and “you like her more’s.” The most common questions that children ask on the topic of siblings all reflect sibling rivalry in one form or another. So let’s jump right in and begin to explore the issues, and come up with the solutions.

116 The Top 50 Questions Kids Ask (3rd through 5th Grade) Darlene

#30: Why iS She AlloWeD To STAy

up lATer AnD i hAve To Go To Sleep

eArlier?

(or: Why Do We hAve To Go To Sleep AT The SAMe TiMe if i’M olDer?)

Ashley (age 8) gives her parents, Penny and Sherman, a hard time every night because she doesn’t understand why her older brother Cole (age 10) has the privilege of going to go to sleep an hour later than her. “It’s not fair!” declares Ashley. “Cole and I wake up at the same time every day for school. He’s not so much older than me—he’s also in elementary school. Why can’t we go to sleep at the same time?”

Bedtime is often a challenge for parents, because very few kids want to go to bed at the designated bedtime—no matter when that may be.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.