Tom and I did a lot over the years to cultivate close sibling relationships within our family. I hear frequently that this is an issue of importance and concern for you as you raise your kids. You want to build strong sibling relationships between your kids. So, what do you want to see for your relationship with your kids when they become adults? What do you want to see in the relationships between your children when they become adults? Let’s talk about how you can build a strong foundation starting now to achieve that vision.
Throughout the day we spend a lot of time settling arguments and soothing hurt feelings between the kids, don’t we? Someone did something to someone… again.
“Mom! So and so looked at me funny.”
“Mom! So and so broke my lego set.”
“Mom! Why does he always get to stay up late?”
Sometimes it’s an endless list of offenses, isn’t it? By the end of the day mom falls into bed worn down and worn out. Maybe she’s even begging the Lord to please make the kids stop fighting and start getting along. I bet that happens in your family too. If you have several kids, the amount time spent being a peacemaker or referee can quickly add up.
The truth is that teaching your children to love and honor and accept each other for who God made them to be is necessary to the future of your family. I believe God established the family unit to not only bring Him glory but to help us live a life of togetherness.
You probably already spend countless hours investing in your child:
Reading
Playing
Teaching
Going to church
Reading God’s Word
What more can you do?
Relationships, Relationships, Relationships
You want to build a strong family. You want what’s best for your family. It’s going pretty well until maybe around middle school or high school or college and then you might find these relationship related things are becoming a little harder.
People often ask me about my kids and our relationships. How are the relationships now that they are adults? How did we get there? Well, it is important to know first that how we live life has changed over the years. This is something I write about in Parenting Beyond the Rules. The schedules and routines we clung to when the kids were little, like nap times and bedtimes, shifted when we hit new seasons like high school. I suggest not becoming perplexed when what used to work stops working. There is a natural shifting and changing that takes place over time. Let God lead you in how to change these things as you and your children grow and change.
I don’t think when I was a younger mom there were as many self-proclaimed experts telling me what to do, but I was still careful of who I let give me advice in those days. Back then, I would sometimes get down thinking about how imperfect our family was or how I wished things could be better. That’s the internal drive I have towards ideal. The problem is that’s not realistic. What is realistic is that we have to cultivate that which we want. We have to put in the effort it takes to guard and protect and nurture those sibling relationships. Then we must be willing to adjust along the way.
Richard Plass and James Cofield wrote in The Relational Soul (page 12): “We are designed for and defined by our relationships.” Think about that for a minute. You are designed for relationships. First with God, then with others. Next, you are defined by your relationships. First with God, then with others. Being designed for relationships with others starts within your home with the imperfect people God chose for you to do life with.
“We were born with a relentless longing to participate in the lives of others… We cannot not be relational.”
The Relational Soul – Plass and Cofield
How to Build Sibling Relationships
We must nurture trust with and between our children. They need to know that your family is safe. This is a safe place to be you. Here are some ways that you can do that:
Don’t allow your children to poke, make fun of, or shame their siblings for their weaknesses.
Listen to learn why a child struggles with another sibling.
Don’t allow your kids to compare between each other.
Ask leading questions
Don’t let joking cross the line to making fun of a sibling.
Remind each child they are part of something larger – the family!
Trust is the key to building the relationships that hold your family together. It takes sincerity, reliability, competence, and care every step of the way.
How can you learn to love struggles and trials? We are conditioned to ignore and suppress struggles and trials in order to not appear weak or vulnerable. But, God can use struggles and trials to grow and change you if follow His leading.
It is important that you know that God has equipped you to walk through struggles, and you should not be consumed by them!
Through the LORD’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not.
Lamentations 3:22 NKJV
Struggles and trials are common to everyone. I’ve been in difficult situations many times in my life. I’ve learned that these struggles and trials are teaching you something you wouldn’t learn without them. God can teach you things like:
Patience
Perseverance
Perspective
and more!
These struggles and trials are making you stronger! My husband and daughter recently went on a cross-country motorcycle trip. From the outside, it looked like an amazing trip. The reality is that they faced all kinds of storms and winds along the way. In pursuit of their dream, they endured incredible trials and struggles. God took them on unexpected detours that allowed them to experience the most beautiful places, but it wasn’t easy.
Struggles and trials force you to your knees, not to crush you, but to make you look to the Lord. In your weakness, God’s strength is made known. Struggles and trials change you. You will come through a struggle or trial differently than when you entered. Your faith will grow. Your resilience will increase. Your attitude will improve. Think about grandparents. Why are grandparents typically easier on grandkids than they were on you? They learned everything isn’t the battle we think.
How will you look at your next difficult circumstance? Will you learn to love struggles and trials?
Grief is part of life. Death, loss, separation, trials, unmet needs, or unfulfilled expectations are a few things we find ourselves grieving over. How can you walk wisely through seasons of grief?
How we deal with grief can depend on our age, temperament, the ages of our children, faith or lack thereof, and the circumstances surrounding the situation. With all these factors to consider, walking through seasons of grief is a rather personal matter. How you process what you are feeling is unique to you.
Planning for Grief
By the time I had hit my late teens, I had survived a boat explosion, my parent’s divorce, abuse, abandonment, and betrayal. That is quite a lot for a child to endure, but I learned lessons through these events that would serve me well throughout my life. I learned that:
God had a plan.
Life will still go on.
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, if you choose not to get bitter.
We can’t plan for accidents or losses. Oh, I wish we could. We can’t count on friends to walk with us — though some will. We can’t expect our spouse to know what to do — though many do try. People won’t fully understand what you are going through — so don’t expect them to. That isn’t fair to others.
While we can’t plan what will come our way, but God does. He knows precisely what is coming and how He will make a way if you lean on Him. His ability to help you overcome and walk through dark times is unmatched! You can’t do it on your own. And you were never meant to either.
I’ve learned people don’t get to the other side of grief in the same way. How will you choose to walk through grief?
How to Walk Wisely Through Seasons of Grief
These are some things to hold onto as you walk through seasons of grief:
Discover the joy within the stop and go of life.
Remember that the grieving process takes time.
Keep in mind that seasons of grief shape you.
Have patience. Transformation happens slowly. It’s doubtful you’ll see the change happening until you reflect back at a later time. But, if you walk through your season of grief well, you will be refined.
See how God gives you a greater capacity to walk with others in their seasons of grief.
We all will suffer. Suffering is as much a part of life as joy and happiness. What you do with that grief and how you allow God to refine you during those seasons of grief are what will define you.
You can learn so much about your children from playtime. Playtime for children can be more revealing about who they are than talking or even watching them in a vocation as they get older.
The Need for Playtime for Children and Adults
You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.
-Plato
When there is no test to pass and no educator to please, God-given strengths can flourish through playtime. So, as parents, it’s important to remember not to confuse an interest that your child has in something with a strength that remains through life.
Helping children pursue interests is not about pushing them to be their best at something or jumping into something you think is a natural fit for them.
The best way to lead your children in the process of discovery is through observation.
When you pay attention to your child’s interests, their strengths start to emerge. So, ask questions, listen, and watch what they wonder about. Children are full of surprises.
Play Can Lead to Interest
Play is very positive. It opens the mind to a world of possibilities, allowing new thoughts and behaviors to be formed.
Encourage your children to try new experiences. For example, playing a new game or sport or meeting new friends can lead to discovering interests they didn’t know existed.
5 Ways You Can Help Your Child:
Help them step out of their comfort zone
Encourage without pushing
Plant seeds of possibilities
Tell them about ‘what if’ outcomes
Give them a reason or benefit for trying something new.
Watch, Don’t Control
Try not to spend your child’s playtime controlling everything they do. Instead, allow this time to be spent observing their behavior and actions. You can learn a lot through watching them.
Create Time for Exploration, Experimentation, Innovation, and Creativity
As parents, we must balance allowing children to discover interests and restricting choices. Of course, children need to learn social norms and obey the rules, but sadly, there’s a great deal of pressure on children to compete and conform, and little time is spent encouraging the joys of exploration, innovation, and discovery as it pertains to cultivating your child’s strengths.
Help Them Learn from Failed Attempts
Some children are risk-takers, and some children are afraid to take risks. I know some kids who naturally view failure as part of trying; therefore, they don’t get discouraged when one of their great ideas doesn’t pan out. Instead, that optimistic child sees life as a great adventure with a few pitfalls along the way. While other more competitive children don’t want to do anything unless they are reasonably confident will bring success.
Knowing how your children think about stepping into uncharted territory will help you construct the proper scenario to help them learn how to work through not winning, being successful, or failing.
You know that your kids are watching you, right? They are watching and learning from you how to communicate from the time they are little and well past the teen years into young adulthood.
Last week we finished up the series Knowing Your Strengths. We spent four episodes talking about what strengths are, how to discover your strengths, understanding your strengths, and how to use your strengths. You can listen to that conversation in episodes 71, 73, 73, and 74. That series then made me think a little more about how strengths tie into my life now and a recent situation. I needed to talk with one of my daughters and we needed to be able to speak face to face, eye to eye. So I sent a text to set up the meeting.
Your Kids Are Watching You
Before I tell you the whole story, you need to know that your kids are watching you. Maybe your child is two years old and pointing at everything while listening to you play the label game. As they get older they are watching how you handle the difficult situations and how you treat people. They pick up on even the little inconsistencies in your life. Your teens then think that what you allow for yourself is also ok for them.
The key observation here is that the words you choose are critical. How are your words going into the ears of the listener? Knowing your strengths helps you figure out how to navigate these circumstances. They are tools that give you the ability to communicate better.
See, I know my daughter and how she is best communicated with. I sent a text asking to get together to do something active and have a talk. I needed to have this conversation with my daughter. It was a hard conversation about heart issues. My heart issues!
Say It Like It Is… Or Not?
Maybe you think: I just say it like it is. In the mind, out the mouth. Well, that’s not always wise. We need to have some filters on our mouths. Some people need to warm up to what we have to say. Some people like to get right to the heart of the matter without all the chit-chat. You need to know which kind of person you’re talking to.
Would my words draw conversation out of her or put up a wall? Inflection, tone, and directness all play into how the conversation could go. In the end, the conversation with my daughter was great, but that was because I was aware of the words I was using.
Shore Up the Relationship with Your Teen
If you have a teen, now is the perfect time to shore up your relationship with them. The dynamics and influence you have will change as they grow up and move out into the world. Set the foundation now! Your kids are watching how you respond to the daily challenges of your life. How do you handle conflict? How do you handle disruptions? Will your teen choose to model what they see in you? Will they invite you into their lives as young adults?
In our conversation, my daughter made the observation that I always need to be productive. That’s one of the strengths that I have in the striving domain. I am very productive. I don’t sit well and do nothing. She said to me that sometimes she just needed me to sit and be present with her. That hit me hard. She was watching. She picked up on a place in my life that I still wrestle with.
Productive But Present
A few things to ponder:
It’s ok to be productive, but you have to be present.
It’s ok to be out leading a group or a business, but you have to make sure you’re present for your kids.
Make sure that you’re spending time in your purpose. Is this thing you’re doing the purpose to which God has called you?
Be mindful.
Watch your body language.
Are you responding with kindness, love, and unconditionality?
Are you encouraging others?
Every day brings new challenges and opportunities. As your children grow, so do you. Things are always changing and you may feel like you’re running out of time. My conversation with my daughter showed me the fruit of all of the all work and prayers I put in over the years.
In your productivity, stay present and actively engaged. Take time to speak in a way that your spouse, your kids, your coworkers, and others can hear.
Are you running your race with confidence or looking around at what others are doing? Do you know why running your race is important? Do you find yourself looking at others and trying to imitate them?
How you run your race depends on your season of life. A twenty-something runs differently than someone in their forties or sixties. Why? Life experience, the demands of children, and physical health. It is wise to accept the realization that your race will change as you age. God designed it this way.
Every runner knows the speed at the beginning of their race will get slower the further they run. It’s natural to slow down. This is true of you. It is true of me. Understanding this reality early in life will profoundly impact how far you can go later in life.
But running your race with confidence requires you to consider a couple of truths. You can’t run your race if you are in someone else’s lane. And you have to know what race you are running. Life is not a sprint; it’s a marathon. Sure, there are times one needs to sprint, but the amount of energy it takes to sprint can’t last long. Our bodies are designed to run a marathon at a sprint pace.
How Do You Start Strong?
Discover who you are. It’s more than temperament and Enneagram type. God made you a one-of-a-kind original. You aren’t a copy of someone else.
Take an honest look at your talents, then decide which of them you are passionate about developing.
Focus on becoming excellent in a few areas. This takes time and lots of practice.
Be willing to pivot. Change does not mean you are wishy-washy. Your race will require you to change. As your season of life changes, so does your ability to run. It is wise to be aware of this.
Your race is unique to you! You can’t do what everyone else is doing.
How will you run? There is a bit of strategy in preparing for a race. A runner has to know what they are capable of doing.
Get serious about learning more about yourself. Be intentional about your discovery process.
What are you doing to develop the talents God has given?
What is your season of life?
Running your race with confidence will not allow you to miss God’s best for your life. You aren’t missing out when you focus on being faithful to doing your best in your season of life.
If you don’t run your race with excellence, who will? No one.
How Can You Discover More About Yourself?
Pay attention to what excites you.
Listen to the stirrings of your heart.
Start journaling. Write down God’s subtle whispers.
Don’t be afraid to try something new, even if you are afraid.
When You Run YOUR Race with Confidence
You aren’t tempted to look at what others are doing.
You are more focused on your training.
You don’t feel compelled to compare yourself to others. It loses its appeal.
