Boarding Schools for Girls

What your children fight about may have an impact on the relationship, according to a new study from the University of Missouri.

• If the children are fighting over physical and emotional personal space, such as becoming angry when a brother borrows a shirt without asking or when an older sister hangs around the friends of a younger sibling, the siblings will report less trust and communication.
  
• However, if the children are fighting about fairness and equality issues, such as taking turns and sharing chores, their fights had no impact on the quality of their relationship.

"Parents need to establish and enforce family rules about respecting privacy, personal space and property," she said. However, when children fight, parents should usually let them work it out because when parents stepped in, fighting usually escalates.

Professor Nichole Campione-Barr and her associates studied pairs of siblings ages 8 to 20 years old, in a report published in the journal Child Development.

Labels: relationships, siblings, parenting, fighting

Posted By: Aspen/CRC 0 Comments

Teenagers who have sisters are less likely to feel lonely, unloved, guilty, self-conscious or fearful, according to a new study from Brigham Young University. The same study found that having a loving sibling of either gender fostered charitable attitudes among teenagers, even more so than having loving parents did.

• Professor Laura Padilla-Walker studied 395 families who had at least two children, with one child or more ages 10 to 14 years old.
• Affection between siblings was associated with the children doing good deeds; hostility between them was associated with a higher risk for juvenile delinquency.
• Sisters protected adolescents from negative feelings, and it did not matter if the sister was younger or older, or if they were far apart in age.

"An absence of affection seems to be a bigger problem than high levels of conflict," wrote Dr. Padilla-Walker in her study published in the Journal of Family Psychology.

Labels: relationships, siblings, sisters

Posted By: Boarding Schools for Girls 1 Comment

The fear of having no friends (or being unpopular) can be a stressful experience for all children -- and for parents, the mistaken belief that "only children" are more likely to have problems with peer relations can be particularly troublesome.

However, according to a new study from the Ohio State University, children without siblings are just as popular in school as those from bigger families,

• The study included 13,000 children enrolled in the National Study of Adolescent Health.
• When the researchers asked them to choose five friends, "only children" were chosen just as often as children who have siblings.
• Only children had poorer social skills when they were in nursery school but they became equal to their peers as they grew older.

"As family sizes get smaller in industrialized nations, there is concern about what it might mean for society as children grow up without brothers and sisters," said Professor Donna Bobbitt-Zeher, lead author of the study. "I don't think anyone has to be concerned that if you don't have siblings you won't learn social skills you need to get along with other students in high school."

The study was presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.

Labels: relationships, friendships, siblings

Posted By: Jane St. Clair 1 Comment