Dr. Beth Manke, Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Houston.
All families have their share of sibling rivalry and sibling squabbles.
The following tips are presented to give parents some guidelines for minimizing sibling conflict and encouraging sibling closeness. Q. First Question, Dr. Manke, many parents with more than one child in the family feel that they must learn to deal with sibling rivalry and sibling conflict. A. Well, I think probably the first thing is that conflict is not inherently bad. I think we have this misconception that conflict is necessarily a signal that the sibling relationship is negative or poor and really, conflict by itself, isn't necessarily bad. In fact, some people think that conflict may actually be good in that it helps children to learn how to learn compromise, and learn how to air their feelings.