To have siblings in your life is a true blessing from your creators (Parents). Your parents basically provided you with a lifelong friend that you can share potentially your entire life with. You share parents, DNA, living quarters, and life experiences. These shared factors can help to form a bond that is unlike any other, a unique relationship that requires almost no effort at all to stay strong and thrive. Now if all this is true, why in the hell do we often times look to our siblings as our competitors, or fight them to be viewed equal or better than each other? Why do we so often see sibling rivalry? After more than 30 thirty years on this earth I think I am figuring out why.
Our siblings are like us, but at the same time are not us at all. Each being on this planet is unique, even identical twins, and it’s almost our mission in life to discover this uniqueness and learn to love and appreciate it. However, this process of self discovery usually involves jealousy when we see someone who is better, stronger or wiser than us. Someone who should be equal to us given who they are, but yet they may already have something that we feel we should have as well. Sisters get jealous when one gets to fill a training bra with real tissue (not the Kleenex kind) before the other. Brothers get jealous when one gets armpit hair, honor roll or the pretty girls. Competition is a part of life, so sibling rivalry goes hand in hand with life’s growing pains. Siblings love each other, hurt each other, are brutally honest to each other, or lie to each other. We put each other through a lot of shit when we are growing up.
Now when we have come of age, and start adulthood, these shared experiences will be the foundation of an unbreakable bond. I guess for lack of a better word, I will call it a friendship, but the English language does not suffice, so forgive the laymen term. Those memories of teasing each other, racing and fighting each other, or snitching on each other, turn into “the good olé days” and give you reasons to share gut busting laugh sessions. Well, this is possible if we do my AAA concept: accept, acknowledge and appreciate. In my opinion these three things are mandatory.
Accept your sibling for who and what they are, good and bad, because you can not change them, no matter how hard you try.
If they are a loud mouth, then just accept that you need ear plugs around them sometimes. If they are dramatic, then always carry a bag of popcorn for when they want to put on a show. If they are a compulsive liar, then get prepared to see their nose grow all the time. Accepting a person for the good and bad will brace you and almost immune you from being offended or hurt by them, because it will not come as a surprise. If your loud mouth sister calls you out at a restaurant, yes you may be embarrassed, but chances are you would have picked a place that can drown her out, or that has a quick turnaround and you all are done eating before she even gets a chance. If an older sibling always seems to talk at you like a parent, just accept the fact that they are older and are trying to look out for you like a parent, just not as effective. Accept these people, it makes life easier.
Acknowledge your past with one another.
Acknowledge the laughs, the fights, the pranks, the teasing, the late night talks, everything that shaped who you all are now. Acknowledge it so that you may move forward, recognizing that what is in the past, is done and happened at a different phase and time in your life. Yes your older siblings probably made fun of you, or set you up for pranks when you were younger, but chances are they were just acting out while they were trying to find out who they were and love themselves. They were just trying to have fun at your expense, lol. When a younger sibling steals your clothes, or eavesdrops on all of your conversations, it’s because they are trying to mimic the person they aspire to be like and are very interested in your life and want to be a part of it, by any means necessary.
Appreciate your relationship, because it is unlike any other.
Appreciate the fact that you have people walking this earth with your DNA makeup and sharing your experiences. Appreciate that your loud mouth sibling uses it to defend you when you need him/her the most. Appreciate that your older brother always tried to tell you what to do, and continues to do so in your adult life because he cares about you surviving in this world. Appreciate that your siblings love you so much, that they are willing to be brutally honest in a world where many people prefer to lie.
Sibling revelation, not rivalry. I love you CJ, AL and Laura. We are in this together.
You are the best and I am so proud of you Jeanette!
I’m just trying to be as awesome as my Aunt B 🙂
I am a middle child and was Grandma’s best snitch! I absolutely loved the power of snitching for Grandma’s cinnamon buns!