Encourage personal goals. Sometimes it is helpful to encourage children to turn their competitive feelings into personal goals for themselves. For young children this may mean improving their skills in bouncing a ball, learning to skip, singing a song, building elaborate sand castles, or tying shoes. You also can use this opportunity to talk with your child about important values such as practicing, doing your best, trying hard, and so on. However, sometimes fighting between siblings can get entirely out of hand.
Parents often ignore, deny, or overlook cruel behavior between their children.
Yet thousands of adults have suffered serious emotional trauma from sibling abuse. Believe it or not, sibling violence is thought to occur more frequently than violence between parents and children or spouse abuse. Outside the home, much of this mistreatment would be considered assault. If someone else hit or abused a child, most parents would be outraged. But between siblings, it is usually ignored.