When a younger child is welcomed into the family, parents inadvertently focus their energy on the younger child who needs more care, at which point the first-born child feels unloved and loses his or her sense of security in the family and in the parents. In families with two or more children, the oldest child will develop jealousy and low self-esteem, become uncommunicative, unmotivated to learn, degenerate in behavior, and even develop excessive behavior. Of course, not all families with two or more children will have problems with the first child, which is related to many factors, family education and family atmosphere has a crucial impact on the first child to reject other siblings. In order to avoid these problems, how should we do in raising our children?

1. Avoid Differentiation

Differential treatment is defined as a way in which parents direct their emotions, input or discipline more toward one child and less toward another. Due to the differences in personality traits and temperament types of children, parents may unconsciously direct their emotions and discipline toward one child over another, which can have undesirable effects. Differential treatment presents different domain characteristics, including differences in emotions, disciplinary norms, sibling privileges, distribution of chores, and time spent with parents in activities. It is unlikely that there will be no differences at all, but as parents we may have to consciously regulate our own behavior and emotions to be relatively fair.

2. Use good communication

Whether you are having a second or third child, you need to communicate positively with your first and second child so that they have a psychological expectation of the changes in the family structure, an understanding of the true inner thoughts of the child, and positive guidance. Paying more attention to the children's changes, communicating in a democratic way, and communicating when it is found that the children may be different from what they used to be, needs to be done in time to avoid the formation of serious psychological problems. If a family has a good education and communication style, children know how to share and tolerate under a good education, it is not easy to reject the second child, and know or willing to communicate with parents when there is emotional distress, then this is easy to sibling conflict resolution.

3. Handle conflicts between siblings in an appropriate way

When children are in conflict, a more reasonable approach is used to resolve the conflict. There are three ways parents can resolve sibling conflict. The first way is for parents to stay out of sibling conflict and let their children work it out on their own. Research has shown that sibling closeness seems to be relatively high when parents use this type of conflict resolution, but only if there is originally better emotional attachment between the children; the second type is parental involvement in the conflict, which usually tends to exacerbate the sibling conflict and is not conducive to better sibling relationships. But this is a common type. The third type is parental guidance to children in conflict resolution, which is better for siblings who are learning new social skills in childhood and may be an ineffective approach for siblings in adolescence. Therefore, we need to use a more appropriate approach according to the different personality traits of children and different age stages, etc.

• by EmilySarah
• Jul 08,2021
• Topics
• 479

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