Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

Are you good friends with your siblings? Did any of your parents have any strategies to promote that? Any specific experiences that helped? Shared rooms, specific age gaps, lots of road trips?

My kids don't have a problem - they're actually great together so far - just been on my mind lately.

You know, when I was first thinking about how to space kids, I asked a lot of people about being friends with their siblings. And I found it really had more to do with personality than anything else. They were friends with the ones that their personalities meshed with, and clashed with the ones that they clashed with. My husband likes hanging out with his closest brothers a lot - and I can't stand my closest brother. So I don't think specific age gaps help or hurt.

As for experiences, I've given this some thought just because my husband's family is generally more close than mine is. I think one of the factors is not encouraging competitiveness. My family is very competitive, to the extent that no one does the same thing. The oldest brother was the star football kicker, so the next one did soccer so he could be the best at something. I was the nerd, and so my younger brother avoided school at all costs and played his sports so he could be known for other things. But in my husband's family, if the oldest one did something, they would all do it. They all ran a marathon at some point. They all played in the all state band. They all love computers and technical things. They all do things together all the time because of it. Part of that was my MIL encouraging unity. But I know in my family, it was a bit destructive how much my mom liked to brag about how amazing ___ was at ____ because we each wanted that - and so we separated out to do it.

Lessee.

- Brother #1 (14 years older) was my favorite brother growing up. He even baptized me. Granted, he moved out (mission) when I was 5, so I'm pretty sure he was my favorite because he was the nicest to me. But because of that age gap I didn't ever really spend much time with him and despite living less than 5 miles from me for the past many, many years, we rarely talk and most of that talking is on chat.
- Sister (9 years older) was jealous of me taking away her only girl status and thus hated me. When I was old enough to climb, she pretended to be asleep while watching me almost climb out of the second story window. Luckily my mom caught me just in time. For our growing up at home time, she tried to be my second mother and that just led to all sorts of conflict. Now that we're both grown and out of the house, we're best friends and we help each other through parenting woes and delight when we get to visit each other. (She's a 9-10 hour drive away from me.)
- Brother #2 (8 years older) I don't really have any bad memories of, but nor do I have any good memories. He was just quiet and off making his own mischief all growing up. We ended up being the only single kids for a long time and both lived in Provo. We started doing game nights together and he went to the Holy Land with me. We lived a mile apart for the past year and have gardened together. I'd say he's one of my best friends right now.
- Brother #3 (5 years older) was the only one that I lived with for an extended period of time. He didn't move out until I was almost in high school. We had a very bittersweet relationship. We fought like wild cats, but also were the best of friends. And we got into a LOT of trouble together. But when my parents did their monthly initiatory trip, he bought me pizza and root beer and we hid the evidence from my parents. We get along well now, but we're not as close any more. Probably because he will be forever a child and I like to think I've matured some. haha.

So… in general, the siblings I didn't like or know much as a child ended up being my best friends as an adult and those that I got along well with as a child I've fallen out of contact with.

My parents mostly tried to keep us from killing each other by keeping us working really hard. (Farm kids, remember?) As for shared rooms, I shared a room with my sister until I was 5 and my brother moved out and my parents decided it would be better for my other brothers to share a room than my sister and I to continue, lest she killed me. (I clearly remember reading her diary, so maybe I deserved it?) So I had my own room most of my life. Age gaps were completely unintentional. They never used any birth control. We just ended up being spaced far apart. (Though, the space between me and Brother #3 is due to a stillborn child 2 years older than me. My mom was in a car wreck at 8 months pregnant and the baby died.) And we did a fair share of road trips from Idaho to Utah, but not much other than that.

Yellow's family, on the other hand, are all really close growing up (though the two sisters are often at each other's throats) and I'm willing to bet that they'll stay really close their whole lives. But I'm guessing that's largely because their family has a lot of traditions that brings the kids home. Christmas at Island Park. Lake Powell in the summer. 4th Sunday dinner with the whole family. Stuff like that. They all live close enough that that's possible. Even though one brother is currently in California, he's making a point to be at Lake Powell this summer. They also fight a lot less than my siblings did. But I can't quite figure out why that is… I'd like to, though, so that I can make it part of my parenting...

TheAnswerIs42 wrote:You know, when I was first thinking about how to space kids, I asked a lot of people about being friends with their siblings. And I found it really had more to do with personality than anything else. They were friends with the ones that their personalities meshed with, and clashed with the ones that they clashed with. My husband likes hanging out with his closest brothers a lot - and I can't stand my closest brother. So I don't think specific age gaps help or hurt.

As for experiences, I've given this some thought just because my husband's family is generally more close than mine is. I think one of the factors is not encouraging competitiveness. My family is very competitive, to the extent that no one does the same thing. The oldest brother was the star football kicker, so the next one did soccer so he could be the best at something. I was the nerd, and so my younger brother avoided school at all costs and played his sports so he could be known for other things. But in my husband's family, if the oldest one did something, they would all do it. They all ran a marathon at some point. They all played in the all state band. They all love computers and technical things. They all do things together all the time because of it. Part of that was my MIL encouraging unity. But I know in my family, it was a bit destructive how much my mom liked to brag about how amazing ___ was at ____ because we each wanted that - and so we separated out to do it.

I had a similar experience concerning the competitiveness, and with a similar result. It's not that I don't like my brother and sister, it's just that we're so different. We have completely different tastes and personalities, so we just don't have much common interest.

I was a really shy, nerdy, middle child. I loved studying, reading books, and playing video games. All of these activities worked better on my own than with another person, so I tended to prefer isolation. Also, my brother and sister can be very bossy, demanding, and argumentative, so I stayed away most of the time.

My brothers and I have never been close. My oldest brother is 10 years older than me, the next is 7 years older. I shared a room with the younger one until I was about 7, he was 14.

I think my brothers are closer than I am with either of them, but they still aren't terribly close. I imagine we are all sort of... independent, maybe "into ourselves," probably as a result of how independent we had to be growing up. I don't really know why. We don't have a lot (any?) family traditions, and we only talk occasionally. The only reason I've become closer with the middle brother is because his wife is only a few years older than me and we are sort of friends.

Anyway, I think maybe our personalities were/are such that it is hard for us to really open up to each other. At least, that is how it is for me.

Glad to hear some other people don't have beautiful, perfect friendships with their siblings. I mean, it's too bad we can't all have great family dynamics, but it makes me feel a little better about my own family's dysfunction.

I am one of eight children and we are all very close to each other (both emotionally and age-wise-- my mom had 8 kids within 12 years). While many factors contributed to our closeness, there are four main factors I can think of. My parents really wanted to make sure we were cohesive as a family and so they made sure that we did 4 things:

1. Work together. I think a lot of families miss this one. There is just something about working together with someone that creates a bond between you. And since we had anywhere from 4-10 rental units at any given time, plus a large garden and 100 tree fruit orchard, there was always plenty of work to be done. Many of my early memories include gardening, painting, pruning, etc. together, often with music blasting and singing along at the top of our lungs. Also under this topic I should mention that when I was a kid, my parents would give us the opportunity to work together as a team to earn different items. One time that comes to mind particularly was when they set up a system where we could earn points for going a certain amount of time without fighting (I don't remember exactly how much time it was). When we earned a certain number of points, we were rewarded with a TV that could plug into the car (a godsend for our car trips to visit my mom's parents in CA every summer).

2. Serve together. Service also brings people together in a unique way. It allows you to forget about your differences as you focus on helping someone else. My family took a trip down to Guatemala for a month and did a service project together there, and it was an unforgettable binding moment for us. If you don't have the means to do something on such a large scale, it's okay-- any level of service is good. I also remember growing closer together as we took dinner to people, visited family/friends in rest homes and hospitals, etc.

3. Play together. You can't be close if you don't spend time together. We took family camping trips, played softball together at the park, went swimming, and went on many other outings. Just spending the time together helped us grow close.

4. Have FHE and daily family prayer and scripture study. There's a reason we've been commanded to do those things. My parents were very diligent about never missing those things and I fervently believe that they brought us closer together as a family.

I am more or less in the exact opposite situation from Rifka. (2 kids, almost 10 years apart, and family circumstances did not really allow for engaging in any of the 4 activities mentioned above.)

Nevertheless, my brother and I are very close. I think part of it is that we only have each other. If there had been another child closer to my age or to his age, we might not be as close as we are. Another factor that came into play are the fact that I'm very introverted, so I was home a lot of the time during my teenage years, when another person might have been out with friends. I also lived at home during most of college, so I was around for those years, as well. (We actually used to carpool one year when he was in elementary school, because his school was really close to BYU.)

I think the biggest factor (and the least controllable one) was that I really just liked him. He could be annoying, of course, but I took the time to play with him almost every day and I've always enjoyed explaining things to people (shocker!), so we'd have long conversations from the time he was very young and that has turned into our present relationship, where we enjoy analyzing things together and bouncing ideas off each other.

My family's also been through hell, in a number of ways, and that's made some of our bonds tighter (although it's also strained some relationships, as well).

I just have one brother, and he's three years younger than me. We always had similar enough interests and friends to be involved in each other's lives, but we were also different enough because of the age difference that we didn't ever have too much to fight about. I think that's why we've always gotten along fine.

For me, my relationship with my siblings wavered between solid and rocky until I left home after high school. I always looked up to my (3 years) older brother, and he was always nice enough to me that we got along great. I sometimes thought my younger siblings were annoying, but got along with them more often than not. Now they're all among my closest friends. I've spent more time around those three than around anyone else, probably even my parents, which has helped a lot.

As a third, I think I definitely wanted to be different from my older siblings in some way. So I played flute and got into classic literature instead of fantasy.

Whistler wrote:As a third, I think I definitely wanted to be different from my older siblings in some way. So I played flute and got into classic literature instead of fantasy.

You rebel!

My closest brother and I never liked each other and I don't know that we ever will. We are unable to grow out of the immature, childish relationship we've been in since we were tiny because at any given time at least one of us wants nothing to do with the other.

My next brother I get along with better. He has a temper, but I enjoy his off-the-wall humor and he looked up to me some when we were younger. Our relationship can best be described as "amiable."

My sister, now 17, is one of my best friends. We've shared a room for most of our lives, including right now; we have similar talents; we are the only two siblings in relationships; and we are the most corrupt in the family. (Cor-rupt: adjective. 1. is more liberal than the far right. 2. would wear a tank top in public in a non-swimming or exercising situation. 3. enjoys worshiping with other religions. 4. thinks that Obama is a pretty cool dude.)

My next brother I am taking pains to get to know better. Though we have never been close, and our personalities and interests don't match up, I fear he has depression and want to be there for him. I don't think we will ever be very close, but we do get along better now.

The three youngest (all girls) were all far apart, so the youngest is the adored baby of the family, and the other two still remember what it was like to be the baby and are not the happiest of creatures. Those two hate each other and make it difficult for any of us to like them.

I think that aside from the relationship between me and my 17-year-old sister, none of the relationships are very steady or deep. One likely culprit is that we hardly do anything together as a family. We all still live together, and yet still manage to not spend any time together. Most of us make it to scriptures and prayer each morning at six. I think most of them manage to eat dinner together on Sundays, but I wouldn't know, because I'm always with Marduk. I also spend most holidays with Marduk's family and my parents hardly care (they did demand most of Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve). We've never had any sense of family togetherness. I think that if we were just used to hanging out together and getting along, we would not divide along the personality and interests lines we do now.

We were all squished together like Rifka's family -- 6 kids in 10 years. We were all 2 years apart, give or take a few months.

My older sister and I were a lot alike as little kids. We both started reading early, skipped second grade, and became pretty good at the piano. As we got older, we still did some things the same, like taking all the same AP classes. When I saw that my ACT score was the same as my older sister's, it never even occurred to me to take the ACT again because that was good enough in my mind. I think where we competed most was piano (at least, that's where I felt like it, probably because I wasn't as good as her).

As far as I can remember, we got along well as little kids. I think from about the time she became a teenager to when she left for college, we didn't get along fabulously. Like, we didn't fight as much as other sets of sisters we knew, but we weren't great friends either. I wonder if it was because we were competitive or if it was just a function of age and personality. Once she left for college we became better friends, and now we gchat several times a week.

My first younger sister and I have the biggest gap between us both in age (a whole 2 years and 3 months) and grade (since she didn't skip a grade, she's 3 grades younger) out of all of the kids. I don't think I played with her as much as I did with my older sister when we were younger (she's the only one of the girls who never seriously played Barbies), and I think our personalities clashed a bit. By the time we became teenagers we became very good friends. We're still good friends and I talk to her frequently. (Incidentally, she plays flute, just like Whistler. )

My second younger sister is 4 years younger, and I think we've always gotten along pretty well. Fought a bit of course, but I think we were good friends. Nowadays I don't talk to her as much as I do to my "adjacent" sisters, so we've sort of drifted apart. I like to think that after she graduates we'll become better friends again because we'll have more in common with each other.

My third younger sister is 6 years younger. I think we got along well, but by the time I became a teenager I don't think that we interacted too much. These days I don't talk to her much either.

My brother is 8 years younger. He seems to miss me the most out of my younger siblings now that I'm married and out of the house (I'm the only one not currently living at home), though that may be in part because I gave him a new brother to wrestle with. The few phone conversations I've had with him have been great.

So, I think we all got along decently. Probably fought about as much as other kids, but as we've gotten older we've all become nicer.

I think the things that helped most were spending lots of time together. We didn't share rooms very often, but most every night we'd sleep together anyway. We went on lots of road trips, were forced into musical numbers together, read scriptures, made up dances and plays, and mostly just had fun together. Since I've been out of the house so long I feel sort of out of the loop when I do things with my family, but luckily we do enough with them that I don't feel entirely left out.

Defy V wrote:I think the things that helped most were spending lots of time together. We didn't share rooms very often, but most every night we'd sleep together anyway. We went on lots of road trips, were forced into musical numbers together, read scriptures, made up dances and plays, and mostly just had fun together. Since I've been out of the house so long I feel sort of out of the loop when I do things with my family, but luckily we do enough with them that I don't feel entirely left out.

This, basically. I don't remember fighting very much with my little siblings when I was younger, just spending time with them. There was simply the expectation that we did things together and things would go a lot nicer if we got along while doing them.

I also felt out of the loop when I moved out; my family did all sorts of things without me but while I felt left out I didn't feel like the relationship was damaged at all. We had the basis of 17 years before that to help.

However. I've come to the conclusion recently that we're kind of an unusual family. When we had a friend stay over with us for a few months, she commented with shock how much nicer we were to each other than she was with her siblings -- it wasn't just a public thing, we were legitimately nice. Not sure how that happened.

I stopped being friends with most of my siblings when I became a teenager, but we're for the most part friends again now, especially since we're all teenagers (or older). So I dunno. I don't think we're very helpful because we're so nice and loving naturally.

C is for wrote:However. I've come to the conclusion recently that we're kind of an unusual family. When we had a friend stay over with us for a few months, she commented with shock how much nicer we were to each other than she was with her siblings -- it wasn't just a public thing, we were legitimately nice. Not sure how that happened.

My mom was always quick to enforce the family rule that we had to treat each other with respect. (That includes everyone. Parents and children as well.) We didn't have to like each other all the time, but we couldn't sass or insult each other. But, in the absence of a "control family," I don't know if this rule is what made our family members be nice to each other or if we're just generally nice to each other, for other reasons.

I love this discussion. There's a lot I hadn't considered in here. Thanks, everybody.

I've been thinking a lot about your answer, Rifka, and maybe this is an extension of "Play together," but looking back over some of my fondest memories with my brothers and sisters were when we had nothing to do and so had to create our own fun. So I'd throw in "Be bored together," I think. A lot of the stuff we did on Sundays while our parents napped, in airports during layovers, during summer months before any of us could drive...we had to create that fun for ourselves, and it was organic and very silly. Making up card games, making home movies, building a working four-foot trebuchet. Creative stuff. Maybe "unstructured play" is a better way to put it.

Genuine, if you're reading this, I'd love to see your input. Your relationship with your family is the envy of the town, or at least my small section of it. You know that I believe your house is just like the Weasley's.

I think my biological sister and I are close at least partially because we had to bond together against our stepsiblings. Not necessarily a model you want to emulate, though. *shrug*

I played a lot of pretend games with my friends and siblings. We'd pretend we were spies, orphans, elves, hobbits, whatever. But we didn't do a lot of cool things like making card games/trebuchets.

krebscout wrote:I've been thinking a lot about your answer, Rifka, and maybe this is an extension of "Play together," but looking back over some of my fondest memories with my brothers and sisters were when we had nothing to do and so had to create our own fun. So I'd throw in "Be bored together," I think. A lot of the stuff we did on Sundays while our parents napped, in airports during layovers, during summer months before any of us could drive...we had to create that fun for ourselves, and it was organic and very silly. Making up card games, making home movies, building a working four-foot trebuchet. Creative stuff. Maybe "unstructured play" is a better way to put it.

I completely agree with you, krebscout. When I said play together I meant both bigger things (vacations, etc.) and unstructured play. I just lumped it together in my mind. Probably because we learned quickly not to say "I'm bored" around my mom. If we did, she'd hand us the broom or send us out to weed, etc. But yes, some of the best times we spent together were in unstructured play. We'd make pots of "stew" in the backyard, we colored an empty refrigerator box once and made it into a spaceship, we caught butterflies, rode bikes, etc. There's something about that simple un-planned time that allows kids to really be kids together and brings them close to each other.