DEALING WITH SIBLING RIVALRY.

Now that I’ve been loaded with enough birthday things, I think it’s time to speak from my belly.

I have a set of twin sisters who are a year older and we got talking. 

Growing up for the twins was quite intriguing. Adaeze
was the sweetheart of both parents and Adaobi was just another child. I’m sure all parents know what I’m talking about. 

On this particular day, Adaobi was in tears. She was tired of what her parents were doing. When Adaeze made  a mistake, her parents looked the other way but when Adaobi made the same mistake, they flared up.

My cousin tried to commit suicide when she was 9+. Her reason was that everyone hates her. Tomike had a younger sister Tomisin who knew how to have her way and was the favourite child. The usual thing most parents do is to make the older child the parent.

Tomisin never liked to be ordered around. After several warnings and shouting, Tomike would eventually beat her sister who would run to her mother wailing. Her mother would spank Tomike for beating her sister and also spank her for not correcting Tomisin when she did something wrong. Their dad was the lion of the tribe of their house so he was a no-go area. 

On this day, they were looking for Tomike and someone found her behind the house trying to kill herself because no one loved her. No one mentioned it to her parents because they would flog sense into her. When she was 13, I saw a picture of her on Facebook with a man in his thirties. She captioned the picture “Me and My Boo”.

Next story: a colleague of mine told me that his uncles in their 60’s don’t relate. What his mum told him was that when they were less than 9, they kept having different fights but what broke the camel’s back was when the younger brother lost his umbrella and the mother wanted them to share the umbrella of the older one which was her usual practice. The older brother was apparently tired of his younger brother’s careless attitude since he always bore the brunt.

This time the older brother refused to allow the younger one to share his umbrella with him. Their mum got angry, scolded the older one and sent them to school without any umbrella.

Now to the way forward: while we were talking someone mentioned that her own sister had twins and when they were babies one seemed frail and they poured their attention on her. When they grew up, they continued with that attitude but they didn’t know. She was the one who corrected the mother who didn’t admit very easily but began to adjust as the years went by.

It’s somehow normal for parents to favour one child over another but there has to be a limit. And parents don’t know how to do this until there’s an observing eye that can help them see. If you’re the observing eye, please help them see before it gets too late.

Photo Credit: theparentport.com