Preventing Sibling Rivalry: Six Strategies to Build a Jealousy-Free Home - Hardcover

Hart, Sybil

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684871785 ISBN 13: 9780684871783

Publisher: Free Press, 2001

Synopsis

Using groundbreaking research into the emotional world of infants, the author reveals the psychological underpinnings of sibling rivalry and shows parents how to overcome and prevent this common family problem. 25,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Sybil Hart, PH.D., is assistant professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Texas Tech University. Previously, she has been a childcare center director and consultant, school psychologist, and therapist. She lives with her three children in Lubbock, Texas.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One: Infants

Four Myths about Infant Jealousy

Jealous (adjective). Fearful or wary of being supplanted; apprehensive of losing affection or position. From Latin zelus, zeal. See zeal.

Zeal (noun). Enthusiastic devotion to a cause, an ideal, or a goal and tireless diligence in its furtherance. Synonym: passion.

-- The American Heritage Dictionary

Nothing good comes from jealousy. Indeed, jealousy and goodness are mutually exclusive traits. To most of us, jealousy is the essence of malice and evil. This most reviled characteristic represents the antithesis of kindness, compassion, and virtue. Jealousy is usually suffered by those whose inner lives have been corrupted by harsh early emotional experiences rendering them vulnerable and insecure, or those who have had the misfortune of being born with unredeemably jaundiced souls. To some, jealousy represents mental illness, neurosis, or perhaps a character defect or immaturity. To others, jealousy is a sign of immorality stemming from inadequate religious conviction. For anyone afflicted with jealousy, love relationships are destined to be anything but wholesome or pleasurable, because inevitably, jealousy's poisonous tentacles will dissipate love and turn it into hatred. The relationship most tainted by jealousy is that in which it first arises: the sibling relationship.

None of this is true. STRATEGY ONE toward preventing sibling rivalry starts by understanding what jealousy is, and what it isn't.

Myth Number One
Jealousy Starts with the Arrival of a Second Child

Anna scrutinizes her three-month-old son, Jonathon, fresh from his bath, sweetsmelling and glowing with dreamy-looking calm. She waits patiently for his unfocused eyes to find her adoring gaze. Two seconds, then a third, pass until Jonathon's eyes catch and finally lock onto hers. His face lights up. His eyes and lips widen into a broad expression of surprise, delight, and focused intelligence as if greeting his mother for the first time with, "I recognize you. You're Mommy. Hi, Mommy!" In the blissfulness of this instant, two thoughts cross Anna's mind -- wonder at its sheer perfection and doubt about its future. She asks herself, "What would it be like to have another child?"

As parents ponder their firstborn child's adjustment to the arrival of a sibling, they imagine various scenarios. Dad coming from the hospital with the "news." Visiting Mom at the maternity unit. Finally, the big day arrives; baby comes home to stay forever. Sometimes parents foresee their firstborn child reacting like a bomb going off -- with an explosion. In other fantasies, the timer goes off more slowly. After a period of adjustment to the newborn, the older child calmly calls a meeting with her parents and in a civilized tone of voice announces that the baby must be returned to the hospital -- immediately. Then she explodes. Many of us have imagined the best and the worst outcomes, at one time or another, but one thing for certain is that apprehension over a firstborn's reaction to the arrival of a younger sibling causes parents so much anxiety, even dread, that they actually put off having another child. Most parents assume that the only way to find out how a particular child will respond to a newborn's arrival is to actually walk through the door carrying the newborn baby.

But anguish over how a child will react upon a newborn's arrival is quite unnecessary. The quandary stems from the popular, but erroneous, notion that jealousy is nonexistent until a sibling arrives. If we think carefully about this assumption, we'll see how absurd that is. If it were true that jealousy is nonexistent until the arrival of a sibling, then children who do not have siblings would never become jealous. Yet jealousy is readily apparent in only children and in children from large families alike. Studies on adult jealousy also show that having a phlegmatic or fiercely jealous temperament is unrelated to having siblings. Knowing if an individual is a firstborn or a later-born child, whether he is from a small family or a large family, if he has sisters or brothers, close in age or many years apart, whether he even has siblings, tells you nothing about how jealous he might be.

The arrival of a sibling does not actually cause jealousy. Rather, it simply represents the first occasion on which jealousy is typically displayed. In fact, the emotion of jealousy has been firmly formed since the infant's first birthday, usually well before the little rival's appearance on the scene. In my laboratory studies, my colleagues and I induced jealousy by simulating a domestic situation in which mothers simply attended to another child. Twelve-month-old infants were disturbed, and they protested. They did so even if they did not have siblings and despite never having seen their mothers behave in this manner toward another child.

Consider a related emotion, anger. Experts know that young infants are capable of experiencing and expressing this emotion. Most parents also know this, often better than we care to admit. But if you are somehow unacquainted with the phenomenon of anger, see what happens to a baby when you offer him his favorite toy and then withdraw it just as he is about to reach for it. Try putting a baby in a swing but do not give him a push. Refuse to pick him up so that he cannot see his mother's smiling face as she approaches him after a long day's separation.

These events provoke anger in infants, but only if they have matured to the point where they are intellectually capable of having expectations. Having an expectation requires months of growth during which time infants develop cognitive, or intellectual, skills that gradually enable them to think abstractly. Memory develops so that an infant can think about ideas in his mind, not merely tangible objects in his hands.

Once an infant is able to expect the enjoyment of having an object, such as a toy, he will be enraged by being deprived of it. If he is accustomed to pleasurable experiences, such as being rocked in a swing or observing his mother's approach, he will be angered if they are denied him. Anger ensues from instances where expectations of pleasurable events are violated, or what we call frustration. So infants old enough to have expectations are also old enough to be frustrated and to get angry. Now consider the situation where an infant does not express anger and has not been frustrated. We don't infer that he is incapable of anger; instead, we can only gather that he has not been frustrated.

Jealousy works in much the same way. Frustrated expectations precipitate jealousy just as they might precipitate anger. In the case of jealousy, however, the expectations associated with jealousy are specifically related to what psychoanalysts have named a "love object," such as a spouse or parent, and how she gives out attention to other individuals. This holds true for adults as well as infants. Infant jealousy is usually a response to a parent's directing attention toward a sibling. Firstborn children are upset by this because they develop the expectation of receiving exclusive parental attention since there are no other children present during the course of the day. Later-born children also develop expectations that spark jealousy. Even though they have not received exclusive parental attention, they have enjoyed the special status of being the youngest child in the family and of receiving preferential treatment, because parents tend to give the youngest child the most attention. Thus, regardless of whether an infant is a firstborn or a later-born child, during early infancy he becomes accustomed to being treated as the "number one" baby. For the "number one" baby, parental attention toward another baby violates her expectations, which leads to a

Edition details

• Publisher: Free Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0684871785
• ISBN 13: 9780684871783
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224