SelfhelpMagazine

by Lisa Perozynski, Ph.D. & Laurie Kramer, Ph.D.

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me" seems to be a believed-in axiom by many parents. In their study, "Parental Beliefs About Managing Sibling Conflict," psychologists Lisa Perozynski, Ph.D., and Laurie Kramer, Ph.D., examined two parental beliefs relevant to sibling conflict: First, which types of conflict management strategies did the parents believe worked best for resolving conflict between siblings, and, second, which strategies did the individual parent feel most confident in performing.

The authors studied 88 two-parent/two-sibling households all consisting of second-born children between the ages of three and five. The average age spacing between the two siblings was 2 years and 9 months. The authors visited families in their homes to observe parents' response to sibling conflict and to administer a set of self-report surveys to parents.

The authors found out that parents were not consistent in their appraisals of the type of intervention that would work and their actions when sibling conflict actually occurred. The intervention strategy parents used most often, not intervening at all, was not the one they believed would be the most effective nor was it the one they felt most confident in performing.

Contrary to parents' self-reports that techniques that involve helping the children to resolve conflicts on their own or the assertion of parental authority were the most effective ways to restore peace between siblings, parents engaged in passive nonintervention more than three times as often as they employed other, more active, management techniques.

When conflict between siblings escalates to pushing and shoving both mothers and fathers were more likely to endorse parental control methods as the appropriate intervention. However, when the parents' confidence in their ability to perform the disciplinary technique was factored in, a significant relationship was found between the parents' action and their gender.

For verbal conflicts, mothers felt more comfortable performing child-centered interventions than did fathers. Mothers felt equally able to perform child-centered or control strategies, whereas fathers reported that they were substantially more able to enact control than child-centered strategies. For physical conflicts, fathers felt more confident in performing both control and passive nonintervention strategies in comparison with mothers.

Reference:

Parental Beliefs About Managing Sibling Conflict by Lisa Perozynski, Ph.D. & Laurie Kramer, Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology, Vol. 35, No. 2.

This information received from the American Psychological Association (APA), in Washington, DC.