How To Help Siblings Get Along For Good

If you’re looking for Ideas To Strengthen Homeschool Family Relationships you are probably wondering how to help siblings get along for good.

Are siblings always fighting? Do they never get along?

If you’re looking for ways to help your kids get along, read on.

In this post we’ll discuss some tips that may help your kids develop a better relationship with each other.

Brothers and sisters can be the best of friends, but it takes work from both parents and children.

So let’s get started!

How To Help Siblings Get Along Once and For All

Every parent of multiple children has asked at least once, “How do I help siblings get along?” or, “How do I nurture this sibling relationship?”

If we’re being honest with ourselves, most of us ask this question weekly (if not more).

I have seven kids. I am definitely no stranger to this question. And even though I often talk about how lucky I am that my kids are the best of friends, that doesn’t mean we don’t have our fair share of sibling fighting.

Every time you put a group of people together for extended periods of time, particularly a group of young children and/or emotional people, you will end up with at least a few squabbles, tantrums, arguments, and fights. This is just the nature of humans.

It is our job as parents to figure out raising kids who get along with each other, regardless of disagreements or annoyances.  

We need to teach kids these crucial problem-solving skills so that when they are grown-up, they can handle relationships and interactions with people who are different from themselves.

It is our job to teach kids how to get along.  Parents, it is your job to teach your children how to get along!

But how? How do we do that?

In this article, I will go over 4 proven methods to help siblings get along. Older siblings, younger siblings, it doesn’t matter.  These are tried and true methods for family member conflict resolution.  

This article may contain affiliate links. Please see our disclosure policy for more details.

Get ready to truly nurture the sibling bond.

4 Easy Methods to Help Siblings Get Along and End Sibling Rivalry

• Five Things I Like About You
• Repentance Stairs
• Touching Noses
• Puffball Jar

Read on and I’ll tell all about each of these methods for solving sibling rivalry!

How To Stop Sibling Fighting – Instantly!

First, my current favorite method. This is the method that we are currently using with great success in our house.

My favorite way to stop sibling fighting is with a method I call ‘Five Things’.

Let me tell you how it works.

‘Five Things’ – My Secret to a More Peaceful Home

When siblings are acting like they don’t love each other (i.e. fighting, quarreling, tattling, etc) have them do five ‘I love you’ things – meaning five things that show the person they were fighting with that they love them.

This is one of my favorite parenting tips for families who want to encourage better relationships and live in a peaceful home.  

This has worked well in our household.

We have two kids in particular who tend to fight more than the other kids. (or at least, they did before we started implementing this method)

Eugene is my seven-year-old and Jennifer is my six-year-old.  They are at that age where they just get on each others’ nerves. All. The. Time. 

Eugene LOVES to tease his sister, and Jennifer is headstrong with little patience for nonsense.

This leads to bickering, fighting, and YELLING.  Oh and tattling.  Did I mention tattling?

So how do I combat this problem?

One Simple Method to Ending Sibling Rivalry

Every time I catch them yelling and fighting with each other, I have started pulling them aside.

Sometimes I ask them what they’re fighting about.

Sometimes I don’t. It doesn’t really matter because the next step is the same, regardless.

I tell Eugene and Jenna that I know they love each other. I also know sometimes it is hard to remember we love somebody when we are fighting.

So to help them remember that they love each other, I tell them to do 5 nice things for the other person.

This can be as little as filling up the other person’s water bottle, to as big as cleaning the other person’s room (or whatever chore) and a million ideas in between.

Usually, this is met with more whining and wailing. If there is too much whining, I tell the kids they may go sit in their room until they can think about 5 nice things to do for the other kid.

Before too long, I have a couple of kids running around trying to serve and love their siblings.

And by the time they are done with their 5 nice things, they have forgotten all about fighting.

These can be small or big things but when you dilute one fight with five loves, the kids tend to not feel the need to fight as often or at all.

I really love this method because it not only distracts the kids from their fights and squabbles, but it also redirects their focus onto what is more important – strong sibling relationships.  

This method will help kids learn to look outside themselves and focus on helping and serving those around them.

More Ideas for How to Help Siblings Learn to Get Along

This is an idea a friend told me about the other day and I immediately thought it was a brilliant idea! I definitely plan on trying it one of these days.

The idea of the Repentance Stairs goes something like this:

When your kids are fighting or bickering, you pull them apart and have them both go sit on the stairs. But not just the top or the bottom of the stairs– they have to sit on a particular stair that has been picked and assigned by you.

You pick the stair for them to sit on based upon the severity of their transgression. This could be stair 3, 4, 5, or so on. Or even a different stair for each kid, depending on their contribution to the fight. You decide.

The kids sit on their stair, both younger sibling and older sibling. The goal is for them to move up the stairs one-at-a-time until they reach the top.

But they can only move up the stairs by telling the other person something they love about them – a genuine reason they are glad the other person is their sibling.

“I love you because…” or “I’m glad you’re my brother/sister because…”

When they have both reached the top of the stairs, they give each other a hug and say “I love you” and then they can get up.

By the end of this experience, each kid usually ends up laughing (according to my friend) and they run off to play together happily.

Fight forgotten and problem solved.

Touching Noses

Touching noses is another method recommended to me by a friend. Some people have had great success with this method.

The idea is for kids who are fighting to end up standing across from each other, close enough that their noses are touching. They must stand there while they take turns telling the other person what they like/love about the other person.

Not much time goes by before each kid is laughing and giggling and no longer worried about whatever it was they were fighting about in the first place.

This method might work really well for your kids, or it might backfire horribly. It really depends on the dynamics of your kids’ relationship. But it might be worth a try.

Puffball Jar

The puffball jar is the first method we ever had true success within our family. 

We used this method with great success for many years before we finally outgrew it.

I highly recommend this method to anybody with a consistent fighting problem in their family.

Even though my kids have moved beyond this method, this is still a beloved parenting tip of mine.  Raising kids with a puffball jar will make your life a million times easier, I promise.

Now, this method is more of a long-term solution to a long-term problem. This is not a quick fix-all.  But the benefits of the puffball jar not only include a more peaceful home and stronger sibling relationships.  

Your kids will also benefit from stronger problem-solving skills and better interpersonal skills that will greatly bless them as grown-ups.

Only use the puffball jar if you’ve had problems with fighting for several months and your kids have really developed a habit of being mean.  Because it will take several weeks to months for them to really get the hang of this method.

For the puffball jar, we got an old canning jar and bought a bag of those craft puff balls. You can buy them at local craft stores or online. (They’re actually called pompoms but whatever.)

These things

The process worked like this.

We had the bag of puffballs next to the jar.

Whenever we caught a child being kind to another child, we put a puffball in the jar.

It didn’t matter which child was being nice or what they did. If we thought they were behaving appropriately towards their siblings, we gave them a puffball.

This was an easy and visual way to point out positive behavior in the kids so that they would feel praise and recognition for being good.

When the kids were mean or got into a fight, we removed a puffball from the jar.

If the jar was emptied, each kid was grounded from screens and friends until there was at least one puffball in the jar. And once the puffballs reached the top, the whole family earned a great big party!!

We usually did something like popcorn and a movie (a special treat at our house) but sometimes we did a pizza party or some other family fun activity.

The idea was that the kids were working together as a cooperative team towards a common goal of courtesy, kindness, and love.

Sometimes we had a rogue child who just didn’t care about participating and would let the rest of the kids carry her weight. If that happened too much, that child was excluded from the family fun party.

But for the most part, the kids were happy to work together and even helped each other make good choices before I could catch them.  See?  Problem-solving skills!

They also stopped feeling the need to tattle all the time, which was a big win for me.  I don’t know about you but tattling kids sure make me crazy.

It was a really great system for our family!

So there you have it! 4 of the best ways to get siblings to stop fighting, end sibling rivalry, and get along once and for all.

 I hope one of these methods works for you and your family!

To recap:

4 Easy Methods to Get Siblings to Stop Fighting

• Five Things I Like About You
• Repentance Stairs
• Touching Noses
• Puffball Jar

Now, this is not an all-inclusive list.  There are other parenting tips and methods out there for stopping bickering and fighting amongst family members.   

For example, there’s the sibling get along shirt.  That is a popular method that makes the rounds on social media once in a while.  

I did not list that method here because that silly get along shirt actually caused my kids to fight MORE.  They’d end their time in the shirt with more bruises and tears than they had going in.  

Maybe that method for teaching kids to get along works for other families, but it certainly did not work for us.

If you found one (or more!) of these techniques helpful, then I’d love it if you would share them with others!

[socialpug_share]

Let’s see how many families we can positively affect with these great methods.

Printable Love Coupons

Another way to help siblings get along is by encouraging them to show love towards each other.  Learning to love and care for each other is one of the best ways to encourage great sibling relationships and to nurture the sibling bond once and for all!

I made a couple of Love Language inspired printable love coupons to help my kids learn how to show each other love using the concept of love languages.  These love coupons work well for many different ages.  Older siblings and younger siblings can all learn to go out of their way to show those around them how much they care.

The idea is that the kids print off the coupons that correspond with the love language of the person they are trying to show extra love to. They give the coupons to the person and then the person has a whole book of coupons that speak directly to his/her love language.  The simple beginnings of better relationships and a more peaceful home.

They’re really a very cool concept!

These printable love coupons are a subscriber gift I am currently offering to those on my VIP subscriber list.

Click the button below to find out how to access your own printable love language coupons!

If you want to read my post about teaching kids about love languages, feel free!

Related Posts

Teaching Kids How To Show Love
Teach Kids the Importance of Helping Others
Teach Kids About Being Grateful