Yet another Frequently Asked Question : how do I deal with sibling rivalry between my children.  Well, my kids have not really reached a stage where they are competitive against each other, in terms of things like snatching toys, insisting on fair cut of everything, etc, yet.  So for all I know, the real challenge has yet to come!

I must stress that I am very blessed so far.  Firstly, the age gap (as I mentioned in Coping with Two) is God sent.  A child in his two’s still can be quite ‘me-focused’ and requires a lot of attention from the mother.  Hence, he will inevitably feel the competition from a baby brother or sister.  An older child would usually be at the stage where he starts to ‘detach’ from his mother and start becoming more independent.  There are also more things to occupy his time and attention, e.g. school, fun activities that he can do on his own.  Thus, he may not feel that he is short changed as much.

Secondly, I am blessed because Dominic is generally a very good boy and easy to deal with.  Oh, he does have his fair share of naughtiness, whiny-ness, tantrums and faults.  It is just part of his natural human trait.  I can safely say that he likes babies.  Before Damien was born, Dominic already liked babies.  Now, he even asked me for more!  Of course, there are times that he gets angry with his little brother, but it is nothing unmanageable.

These are important factors and I realise they are really beyond my control.  So before anything else, I would say, pray!  As much as we would like to have a list of ‘how to’s’, I think divine intervention is needed to set the condition right, like having good soil to work on. 

But as human as we are, we like to have specific steps that we can follow, specific ideas we can adopt, things that we can put our hands on to do.  So here are the ‘tangibles’.  These are ideas that other mommies shared with me.  I don’t profess to have achieved all of them.  I don’t even profess to be actively practising them.  All I can say is that I keep them in mind and try.  They are all sound, practical advice, which I hope you will find useful.  They are not in any particular order.