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. 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. A. Sometimes parents have the tendency to think that if their children aren't getting along, and they're exhibiting conflict, that means they don't love each other.