Siblings without rivalry

SIBLINGS WILL ALWAYS FIGHT? Well, that’s what we’ve always thought.

But a while ago, we came across a book (a battered library book that’d obviously seen some action). Called Siblings Without Rivalry, this New York Times Bestseller promised to reduce conflict and generate goodwill among brothers and sisters … and told parents how to have siblings without rivalry.

Really?

It sounded a little like a Tui billboard, or some dubious cure pedalled by a snake-oil-salesman. But we checked the skies for pigs, then flipped open the cover to find out for ourselves …

Thankfully, it was actually a great read – with some sharp insights on achieving precisely what the title suggests! It was a little like striking gold – and we had to discover more. A quick Google search, a few emails to New York, and we were talking to one of the authors herself. Adele Faber co-wrote the book with Elaine Mazlish, and Adele was very happy to chat.

She’s still very involved running parenting seminars and helping frazzled mums and dads with their combative kids, but she welcomed our questions. So to kick things off we asked: “This parental headache caused by battling sons and daughters – is it universal? Has it always been this way? Or is it one of these modern sicknesses infecting westernised countries?”