How do you know if you suffer from adult sibling rivalry? Here are the symptoms.

You rarely see you adult sibling and you really are not sure why.

You do see your adult siblings at family events and try to ignore them

They did something to you in the past that you did not want to happen. You know what it was.

It might make you seething sibling because that incident really hurt you over and over again. Or it might make you irate siblings because what happened not only hurt you but involved physical valentine like beating or even incest.

This adult sibling rivalry might be happening just at the time when you need to become a sibling team to get needed care for your parent. This giant adult sibling elephant is taking up miles of space in your midlife family room. What ever happened you feel like a victim and your sibling is the villain.

Listen to the show and find out what type of sibling you are.

How do you know if you suffer from adult sibling rivalry. Here are the symptoms. You rarely see you adult sibling and you really are not sure why. You rarely see them and you know excatly why. They did something to you in the past that you  did not want to happen. You know what it was. It might make you a seething siblings because that inclident really hurt you over and over again. Or it might make you a  siblings because what happened not only hirt you but involved psysicak viloentnce like beating or even inceast.  This type of sibling wound might be happneing just at the time when you need to become a sibling team to get needed care for your parent and this giant elephant has appeared in your midlife family room. What ever happneed you feel like a victim and your sibling is the villiam. Listen to the show and find out what type of sibling you are are

Twins Kristina and Karissa Shannon  were the playboy identical favorites aging fetish of Hugh Hefner. But the Olsen, twins, of Full House fame- and most twins- do not want to merge their personas and make slip -strike shift under their other twins’ identity. They want their own individual personalities. This is warbled in Olsen twins “ Identical Twin “lyrics- “  I am not a zerox or a clone.

Every parent is tasked with guiding their children as they grown into individuals. Where parents of twins face an extra challenge is in helping their children become individuals in spite of — and in support of — their status as a multiple. Despite parents’ best efforts to treat their twins as individuals, to avoid comparisons and labeling, it’s a constant fight to fend off society’s views. Twins face a barrage of stereotypes and are constantly confronted with comparisons because of their twinship. Their friends, neighbors, teachers and even well-meaning family members will attempt to label and categorize them. (She’s the good twin, the smart twin, the pretty twin… If one likes baseball, the other one must also… He’s outgoing, so his twin must be shy.)

Where singleton siblings often feel the sting of sibling rivalry, the effects are offset by birth order and by the passing of time. They have years (or in some cases many months) to achieve the milestones set by older siblings. For twins, the milestones are expected to be simultaneous.

Therefore, it’s very important for parents of twins to overcome the stereotypes, labeling and comparisons by offering continual guidance and encouragement to their children, supporting them as they develop as individuals within the context of their relationship as twins.

My daughter Kali, co-author of Mom Loves You Best, had twins Liam and Dylan   last April and is trying to raise them as individuals. Since the birth of twins has increased 76 % since 1980 this is something a whapping 1 out of every  30 parents today needs to consider. Do they want their twins to be a zerox or each an original copy ?

Why the sibling mess? If you are Generation X  and your parents were divorced- you might point your finger at your baby boomer parents – how they approached marriage and family relationships. These changes were a domino effect cascading down on Generation X and Generation Y, leaving them leery of commitment and endless angry with siblings

If you are Generation X or Y kid who grew up with divorce- did you yourself get divorced?

If  (bloods, steps and half’s) are heading down the road to writing their own sibling “I Hate You” story, make a New Year’s Resolution.

If you are Gen X write a paragraph or two about the generational changes that occurred in your own family (like divorce or remarriage) that might have contributed to the strife between your own children -leading to sibling “I Hate You” stories.

If you are a  baby boomer grandmother or grandfather watching your children grandchildren reel from divorce-, write a paragraph about how the generational values, both positive and negative, how they had an impact on your children and grandchildren and perhaps how you would like to change them.

Consider unraveling your sibling tale as a New Year resolution and make forgiveness part of the solution. .

You may be worried that someday your kids will lob their own grenades at each other with the battle cry “Mom loved you best.” If you do not want to be that toxic mom or dad yourself, and avoid those scars on your kids, post the New Year, you might look into raising your kids to avoid life long wounds.

Parents are like turtles. They carry the carapace of their childhood sibling clashes with them into their own parenting. Moms and dads re-create their own brother and sister issues- once again- with their own children. How?? – With old family rules.  Your kids may well re-create your own historical parental conflicts and rules.

Learn to nurture your family in a way to help your children avoid future wounding attacks on each other

Help your children work together as a better team for the rest of their lives. Find your old family rules from when you were a kid -to help you better parent your own kids and guide them to a better sibling relationship with better rules.

Look into your family rules- your original family and present families rules – and see how you can break those rules.

Find out how you can be a parent who reaches out for support by involving Dad’s and extended family more    to support you

more to support you

Make each child special  by reaching out to extended family to help you spend special time with them and even create that baby book that never got made because you were so busy raising multiple children or even blood and step siblings.

More tips to come on raising your family without sibling rivalry- as a united team.

If the main villain in the family tragedy is a sibling or step sibling – here’s a post holiday quiz to see if you need help.

Did your brother or sister do something long ago that’s still  a weeping  wound in your mind? Does it keep you apart-  or on other sides of the room- especially awkward- during the holiday season when families were  flocking together under mounds of discarded wrapping paper.

Find out if have a sibling ” I Hate You ” Maybe you did not think you needed this test a few weeks ago . Post holiday – if you know you need it now- here it is again.

Take the test below.

1. Have you told your sibling story more than once to the same person?

2.  Do you play the sibling events more than two times in a day in your mind?

3. Do you find yourself speaking to the sibling who hurt you even when the person is not there?

4. Have you made a commitment to yourself to tell the sibling  story without being upset then found yourself agitated anyway?

5. Is the sibling who hurt you a central character in your story?

6. When you tell your sibling  story does it remind you of other painful things that happened to you?

7. Does the  sibling story focus primarily on your pain and what you lost?

8. In your sibling  story is there a villain?

9. Have you made a commitment not to tell the  sibling story again and then broken your vow?

10. Do you look for other people with similar sibling  problems to tell your story to?

11. Has your sibling  story stayed the same over time?

12. Have you checked the details of your  sibling story for accuracy?

If you answer yes to five or more the  questions, there is a good chance you have a sibling  I Hate You “ story. To end brother or sister  blood step or half sibling  blood feud  and make peace make forgiveness as a gift to yourself.

Try to make a New Year’s resolution  to take the – ten steps to forgiveness  to heal yourself and hopefully make the next holiday PTSD free.

Family rules about how siblings and family behave are passed down from generation to generation. Look at your grandparents and parent’s era and family laws to find the key to those miserable holidays.
If you watch  AMC’s Mad Men , you might find your parent’s or grandparents set of rules in Don and Betty’s Draper’s era- the silent generation
Don Draper is modern depiction of a typical post early 1950′s Dad. The wildly popular main character in Mad Men fought during the Korean Conflict and came out of that conflict determined to ruthlessly scale the 50’s corporate ladder. Both his bizarre TV plotline experiences during the Korean War and his tortured Depression era childhood created the iconic mid -century television plot of Mad Men.

Don Draper’s icy wife, Betty though a graduate of prestigious Bryn Mawr College does what 1940’s and 50’s wives did with degrees, plot how to get married. She ended up a fur model that then raised a brood of children, while smoking and drinking through pregnancy and keeping in runway shape for Don.

For young women like Betty Draper, a career position was seen as un -attainable. Creating your own nuclear family remained a primary focus. Loyalty to the American way was expected. Most people who came from this generation were affluent quiet, conventional, happy members of the post-World War II corporate culture.

Children were seen not heard- like poor Sally Draper. Mom Betty has a nasty strained relationship with her three kids, particularly with her poor daughter Sally. Silent Generation kids mutely accepted what their parents said, yet Sally becomes a circa James Dean and Natalie Wood rebel With Sally’s buddy preteen rebellion, Don’s cheating and Don & Betty’s ripping sheet of a divorce in the series you can see the beginning dissolution of the family and the beginning of the Baby Boomers  Sally Draper and the 1960’s then shattered all family rules.

Find out more about Don Draper’s or maybe your family’s Silent Generation rules in my You Tube segment on Mad Men- The Silent Generation

Literature, stage and film get their lifeblood and scripts from the dysfunctional families. One insane crisis after another keeps us reading, watching and musing, “ my families a mess but look at this one .” Holiday films with sinister sides can be number one on your December netflicks list.

A Christmas Carol

If you must attend a Hanukah or Christmas event this month and dread the drama – the sibling snipes, drunken digs, mom theatrics and ultimately ruined meal- feast on films.
Forbes best Christmas movie this year  is 1970’s  A Christmas Carol.   I personally  like the version   starring George C. Scott. Scrooge,  and all of the other characters are terrific including  David Bowie- the blue haired ghost of Christmas past.

Dickens classic is the best tale of the chains that will clank through all generations without forgiveness.

The Christmas Carol has old Scrooge, parsimonious and downright mean, sleeping in his gloomy bedchamber. He has spent the day browbeating his employee Bob Cratchit, complaining that he will have to pay him for the holiday, ignoring the penurious plight of Bob’s family and little son, poor crippled Tiny Tim.
In the middle of the night the cellar door creaks, an ominous bell starts to toll, and the ghost of his old counting house partner, Marley, lurks into his crypt-like bedchamber.

Marley, clanking his loud chains made of cash boxes, ledgers and very bad deeds, drags toward Scrooge, now awakened and terrified. Warning Scrooge about the consequences of his miserable behavior, rattling the padlocks and metal chains that bind him, Marley says he has been lugging these painful shackles since he died, wandering the earth as punishment for his ungenerous life.

He says he has come to save old Scrooge from that same fate. Scrooge will be in those irons in his next life if he doesn’t give up the past and live a more humane life in the present, and see his way to changing his foul behavior and learning to live a kinder much more openhanded life in the here and now.
Scrooge is made to look back at what started this life of anger and penury. He travels to his childhood with the ghost of Christmas past to see the once sweet little Scrooge who had a nasty father who left the child alone at Christmas in his dilapidated boarding school, reading by a flickering fire.

We forward through the three ghost stories to a kind of Dickensian life review, where Scrooge can see that there was also good in his life in old Fezziwig and Scrooge’s sister Fan. His life did have joy, but poor Scrooge kept retreating to his gloomy self, the lonely, neglected child who inhabited Victorian England’s broken-down boarding school system.

Scrooge has an epiphany. He calls all three ghosts—the past, present, and future—together and finds redemption. He discovers, as his nephew Fred says, a holiday season that wants to be a “forgiving, charitable time.”
The next morning he throws opens the window of his bleak London brownstone and yells for all to hear. He has transitioned into the here and now, lets the past go, and sees a happier family future. He rushes out to buy that mammoth turkey for the Cratchit family, and has a great holiday dinner with his nephew’s family.

Take that story as a warning tale. Family members , especially sibings ,  who pass on their anger, hurt, resentment, and scars to the next generation are dooming those family members, like poor old Scrooge, to a future in Marley’s chains. Forgiving your midlife siblings can release you from being bound by childhood neglect, or cruel behavior, that gets passed on from one generation to the next.

There are many reasons why it  is a great time to consider absolution for your parents or siblings.
If you have a sibling ” I hate you story” -  this holiday season is a time when you might want to think about forgiveness.
But first take a look at the red flags below. Check out if you really have a sibling ” I Hate You” story.

Red Flag Number One

The first red flag you can see pointing to a sibling  “I Hate You” story is that you repeat this brother or sister story over and over again.

Red Flag Number Two

The second red flag you can see pointing to an “I Hate You” story is if something transpired in the story that you did not want to take place. In your story does something come to pass that you did not want to happen?

Red Flag Number Three

The third red flag pointing to an “I Hate You “ story is if you believe are the victim in the story and your sibling is the villain. You are the helpless person, and your sibling has all the power. Your “I Hate You” story not only makes you feel like the injured party but also allows other people who know you to see you as a victim.

Red Flag Number Four

The fourth red flag you can see pointing to an “I Hate You” story is if you think about this story repeatedly.

Red Flag Number Five

The fifth red flag you can see pointing to an “I Hate You “ story is based on types of sibling  If you are a listless, seething or irate sibling you may have an “I Hate You” story.

If any of these red flags point to you, there is a good chance you have a sibling” I Hate You “story. Before the holiday gathering of this coming two weeks, you might consider taking steps towards forgiveness  and letting this “ I Hate you” story go.

Christmas Day is my second holiday as a stepgrandparent. My daughter’s second marriage added two-step grandchildren to my two blood grandchildren, in her family. Blending families means multiple parents, two houses and myriad grandparents .My daughter’s revamped family has a total of four parents. Each kid has a divorced Mom and Dad plus their newly remarried Mom and Dad. Each set of children will spend Christmas twice- once with their divorced father and once with their divorced mother but in different houses. It is worthy of an excel spreadsheet.

Merging families means blending rituals. If one family celebrates Christmas on Christmas Eve and the other Christmas day -it’s a clash of cultures. In my daughter’s case everyone does Christmas day, so no collisions. But all the kids still do just half with one parent and half the other.

My blood grandson will spend Christmas week with his Dad. My daughter’s new husband ‘s children spend the holiday with their Mom. My blood granddaughter will spend Christmas week with her Mom and grandfather- my ex husband. So she will have an early Christmas with her step grandfather and Christmas week with her grandfather. As all these bloods and steps are teens, time with friends and boyfriends must be allowed. So all four children will gather with their blended parents and three sets of grandparents on Christmas. The complications are myriad.

The festive season takes a genogram to map.

But in our case it’s a joint venture. The second set of grandparents my ex husband, my husband and I have become friends. We understand our supportive role and have all worked to shore up our adult children and grandchildren. . My ex husband and my present husband get along well.  The five grandparents will be anchors to this rebuilt ship

On the bright side of the exponentially exploding numbers, I have four piles of gifts, instead of two, for the grandchildren I love to give and this answers a deep need on the holiday and all year round

I look myself as a gift this Christmas. Stay steady, stay married, stay the same grandmother, the same steady presence, the counterpoint to incredible change.

I have to be the background, the supporting cast; the backstage crew that helps the play go on. For the new cast members, I am the green room, the welcoming place for the nervous new stars.

Did your  blended family mix like oil and water over Thanksgiving?

Do you now expect by Christmas or Hanukah they will be the Sharks and the Jets  straight out of West Side Story?

Do your blood children have a strained relationship with your stepchildren ?

Do your half siblings hate their whole siblings? Are your bloods and  steps in an endless war ?
If yes is the answer to any of these- approach the holidays in a new way.

Write a paragraph or two about the generational changes that occurred in your own family that might have contributed to the stain between your kids and extended family.

For example, if you are Generation X kid who grew up with divorce- did you yourself get divorced? If you’re a baby boomer did your own divorce create steps and bloods who lost half of their room and most of their faith in marriage?

If you are a Baby Boomer  grandmother or grandfather -watching your children grandchildren reel from divorce and new stepparents- write a paragraph about how your generational values, both positive and negative, had an impact on your children and grandchildren. Think about how you would like to change those values as a grandparent , during the holidays .

Consider sibling forgiveness as an approach to the Christmas and Hanukah .