Good Inside with Dr. Becky - Can’t They Just Get Along?! Let’s Talk Siblings

Episode Date: September 30, 2025

Your kids are arguing again, and you’re exhausted: “Can’t you just get along?!” As a mom of three, Dr. Becky gets it. And in today’s episode, she shares a powerful reframe: Sibling rivalry isn’t a problem to fix - it’s an opportunity to build relationship skills for life. Here’s how to help your kids share space, navigate conflict… and, yes, stop hitting each other, too.Get the Good Inside App by Dr. Becky: https://bit.ly/4fSxbzkYour Good Inside membership might be eligible for HSA/FSA reimbursement! To learn more about how to get your membership reimbursed, check out the link here: https://www.goodinside.com/fsa-hsa-eligibility/Follow Dr. Becky on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drbeckyatgoodinsideSign up for our weekly email, Good Insider: https://www.goodinside.com/newsletterFor a full transcript of the episode, go to goodinside.com/podcast.Thank you to our sponsor Hot Wheels. Check out our full series with Hot Wheels at hotwheels.com/challengeaccepted.Thank you to our sponsor Chomps. Check out all the sizes and delicious flavors at Chomps.com/DRBECKY for 15% off plus free shipping!Thank you to our sponsor Skylight. Head to SkylightCal.com/BECKY for $30 off 15-inch calendars! This offer expires December 31st of this year.Good Inside gives you expert advice, practical tools, and a community that’s truly in it with you - and right now, memberships and upgrades are 20% off from September 22nd through September 30th. Go to goodinside.com to get started, some exclusions apply. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The universal moment, both of your kids want the same toy, and they both insist that they had it first. What do we do? And what happens when these arguments and these moments of bickering actually go on over and over about every small thing that could be a comparison, that could be a competition? Your kids find ways to compete about things that shouldn't ever be a competition. If this is what it feels like sometimes in your house, you are not alone. Sibling rivalry is normal. Sibling rivalry is actually healthy in a lot of ways. And sibling rivalry is never actually about the toy or the seat in the car.

Sibling rivalry is often about insecurity, about connection, about attachment, about confidence, about figuring out your place in the overall family system. system. In today's episode, we're going to talk about what's really underneath sibling rivalry. When your kids are arguing about the toy that they haven't played with for a year and only care about now that their sibling has it, what's really happening when your kids whine it's not fair. And you're going to end today's episode with a much more nuanced understanding of these moments and with a feeling of empowerment and hope because you're going to have a better sense of what to do when these moments arise. I'm Dr. Becky, and this is good inside.

We'll be back right after this. Why do siblings argue so much, and why do they bicker about the most meaningless things? Okay, I think the best way to actually understand this is through a metaphor. This was a brilliant metaphor by Adele Faber and Elaine Maslisch, authors of one of my favorite parenting books, Siblings Without Rivalry. And here's how they explain it. Okay.

So imagine you come home. For me, I would come home to my husband. And this is what he says to me. Becky, I have amazing news to share with you. Okay. I'm getting a second wife. Okay. Okay.

You're going to be big wife and she's going to be little wife. And you guys are going to be best friends and it's going to be amazing. And we're going to be one big, happy family. I'm sorry. What? Like, first of all, I think, am I living in the twilight zone? You have a second wife on the way and am, am I happy about it? This is a good thing for me. What?

And then I walk around my neighborhood and every time I'm with my husband, the only thing people say to me is, you're so excited about the second wife coming. And you're so excited to be a big wife. then the second wife arrives everyone continues to ask if i'm excited lots of people visit and ooh and ah over this little baby wife who's not even that impressive there's presents all of a sudden my husband is way less available than he used to be because he's spending so much time with his other wife honestly he's with that wife multiple times in the middle of the night for hours while I'm expected to sleep through the night on my own.

And then one day, you know what I do? I take one of her t-shirts, right? Kind of like our kid takes a toy from a sibling. And everybody comes to me. Becky, what is wrong with you? Why would you take a t-shirt? And I'm here thinking, I took a t-shirt. This woman took my life.

This woman took my world and threw it up in the air and cracked it. And I'm supposed to swallow this with a smile. Okay. That is what it feels like for a first child to welcome a new sibling. And one of the reasons this metaphor is so powerful, it's not because everyone needs to only have one child. That's often what parents think, oh, so I'm not supposed to do that.

That's not the point of the metaphor. If you want to have more than one child, the point of the metaphor is to to actually understand what the sibling relationship is like and what the sibling kind of transition is like. You can imagine that if nobody ever said to me, and I bet it's hard to go from being the only wife to being one of two wives. I bet you're going to have a lot of different feelings

about this other wife when she arrives. I would understand if there's times that you wish it was just how it used to be. hmm well what are you going to do when you get jealous what are you going to do when you get mad because becky you're going to feel jealous and mad let's be honest that's just par for the course let's figure out how you can manage those feelings if nobody ever said that to me i bet i would spend the next decade maybe the decade after that acting out and yes bickering about irrelevant things and getting in fights all the time and stealing not just one t-shirt probably lots of item from that woman

as a way of saying, does anybody see me? Does anybody recognize my experience? Anybody hold the multiplicity here? Sure, sometimes it's nice to have another woman around, but in other moments, it's really, really hard. Can anybody name that so I can even understand myself and then better tolerate the range of feelings that come up for me? This is what it means to have a sibling. It means a big transition. It means a change in what you thought your world look like. And it means, to some degree, fighting for the most precious commodity there is. Your parents' attention.

Your parents love. Your parents' connection. This metaphor has been so helpful in my own life. And it doesn't mean I think about the metaphor and then say, well, my kids are just arguing, whatever. it makes sense. That's not the point of the metaphor. The point of the metaphor is to give me an understanding of what's really happening underneath the fight about who gets what seat at the dinner table or who gets the red cup, which by the way, nobody liked last week. And when I intervene from a place of understanding, I can be a lot sturdier and a lot more effective. So let's break down

what sibling rivalry is really about and what sibling rivalry is not about. And let's actually start there. Because I know for me, when I see my kids arguing, the first thing I think about is the least generous interpretation. My kids are arguing. They don't appreciate me. They are selfish. They are never going to get along or just more generally. This is bad behavior. This is bad, annoying behavior. And I know for me as soon as I see it that way, my kids both become my enemies. And then I intervene as if they are my enemies, which means screaming, random threats I don't even intend to keep and I'm just kind of adding fuel to the conflict fire. Here's another way to think about sibling rivalry. Sibling rivalry is actually often about connection and attachment. So often when our kids

are kind of doubting their place in the family or feeling not as confident as they want to or maybe feeling a little disconnected from us, their sibling starts to. to look like their enemy, not their teammate. And so when you think about sibling rivalry through that lens, a more most generous interpretation lens, now all of a sudden the sibling rivalry behavior is just kind of a symbol of what might be going on for each individual kid

and is actually not a sign of who your kid is. Here's something I've learned from my own journey with my kids along the lines of sibling rivalry. The more I looked for days where there was no arguing, where my kids were always getting along, where there was perfect sharing, where there was never bickering about something silly, the more I felt frustrated and honestly I kind of felt like a failure. The more I remembered that every day will have some form of conflict where sibling rivalry is actually normal. Then when that turbulent moment came instead of being the pilot who feels like turbulence

is a sign I'm doing something wrong, I could be the pilot who said this turbulence is expected and I can learn what to do to be effective and to keep everyone safe. Now, ironically, sibling rivalry was a time for me to find. flex kind of my parenting skills or my sturdiness or it was a way for me to show up to help my kids learn the skills they need not only to manage that in the moment conflict but those are actually the same skills they're going to need when they get older and they're going to need to manage conflict with a partner with a friend with the boss and guess what still with each other because when our kids are in their 20s and 30s and one of them gets married

And one of them is having a successful career. And one of them has some very big house. And the other one doesn't have those things. You know what's going to happen? There's going to be jealousy. There's going to be hurt feelings. There's going to be discomfort. And if all we're trying to do when our kids are younger is kind of optimized for peace all the time,

they're actually not going to have the skills they need to negotiate even bigger sibling issues when they're older. which is usually the time we really want our kids to be able to lean on each other and have that really special adult sibling relationship. So what I want to leave you with along that line is that when your kids are arguing when they're young, that's not a sign they're never going to be close. That's not a sign you're a failure. It's actually just an opportunity for you to teach them the skills when they're young that they can draw on forever when they're older.

I can't really talk about sibling rivalry without thinking about birth order. And if you're like me, you could think about birth order, maybe in your own family, in your kids today, forever, because it's so fascinating. Here's one of the things I want you to think about with your first kid. I know for me with my first kid, and it's been true for so many families I talk about. First kids get noticed for everything they're doing. Think about your first kid when they were a baby. rolling over tummy time pulling up walking all of these moments how often did that baby have eyes on

them where they gazed at now i'm not trying to say there's an amount of that that's right or wrong or better or worse but most first kids are gazed at all the time i actually remember when i had my third kid and I was kind of humble bragging to a friend about the age he was at when he pulled himself up to start to be able to then work toward walking. And she said to me, Becky, you know that's actually like kind of delayed. That's how it happened with my third kid. It was my third kid by that point. I was running around.

I was busy. I thought he was doing something at an early age. Turned out he was a little delayed. I wasn't even aware of it. With my first kid, you better bet it was a completely different experience. I was aware of the second and minute that I thought he was supposed to do something. I watched him roll over like it was the most amazing thing in the world. I don't know if I saw my third kid the first time he rolled over, right?

It isn't even stored as the same memory. We are so different. And our kids' experiences related to her birth order are so different. So many first kids become very conscientious, become a little bit of a people-pleaser. Well, that actually makes sense relative to the amount of hours they're gazed at. They do kind of feel like someone's always watching. Someone could always be noticing. And so part of their personality develops in that way to know even when they're older

and we're not watching them roll over, someone could be watching me. Let me be on my best behavior. I'm probably a little bit more contained, right, because of those early experiences. Now let's think about birth order with a second kid or a third kid. Well, one of the things I find really interesting to think about is that in a system, there's only a hundred percent of a quality to go around. Let me explain what I mean because I promise you this is going to make you think about your kids differently, your marriage differently, even maybe your workplace differently.

So let's talk about big expressive feelings, right? we all know the kids who have no problem expressing the full range and the full intensity of their feelings. Now, let's say you have two kids in your family. And let's say your first kid is kind of contained, people pleasing. They're kind of the kids we call easy, right? And I put easy in quotes because they can look easy, although sometimes later in life those kids actually do struggle because they feel very anxious and they feel like their job is to make other people happy and they actually have a hard time expressing their feelings because they're worried. it will be off-putting to others.

But let's come back to the early years. Let's pretend your first kid is very contained, not a lot of protest, not a lot of tantrums. Then you have your second kid come along. Well, let's think about this quality of intense emotional expressiveness. If your first kid, let's say only has picked up 5% of that quality,

there is 95% of that quality left for your second kid. Let's think about another dynamic. Why don't you share with your brother? He always shares with you. Interesting. We're actually talking about flexibility, let's say. Well, if one of my kids is 100% flexible,

you know how much is left for the other kid? Zero. Now, here's what I find really interesting about this idea. the intervention I always talk about with parents is very kind of paradoxical because if you think about that sharing example my kid always shares with his brother his brother never shares with him and then we say things that almost harden or reify the dynamic why are you so selfish why can't you be generous like your brother i'm almost saying your brother has 100% generosity you have zero you have 100% selfishness your brother has zero we're actually just

splitting them. An amazing paradoxical intervention is to actually think, in order for my kid to share more with his brother, there has to be some percentage left for him to pick up. Change actually isn't going to happen from my kid sharing more. It's actually going to start to happen by my other kids sharing less. I actually need to help that kid say, no, I'm not giving you these blocks right now. I'm playing with them. That is actually a necessary condition, meaning that kid has maybe not 100% flexibility now, but 80%. And all of a sudden, there's kind of 20% left for your other kid to pick up. And so when you think about birth order, I want you to think about just the early days in terms of, again, how much kind of attentiveness, how much gazing, right, was there. But also I want you to

think about this idea of different personality qualities and how they work in a system. And to then take it a step further, is one of my kids hogging a certain positive personality trait? Oh, I guess they're so generous, but maybe they're too generous. Maybe it's actually getting in the way of the sibling being so generous. Does one of my kids kind of get labeled as the academic one and the other one is the athletic one? I don't know if I want one to be 100% athletic and the other one's zero percent and 100% academic and zero. That's just very rigid. And I think thinking about it that way will change how you see the dynamic and it'll definitely change how you intervene.

One last tip I want to share before I move on to a Q&A about siblings. The word should comes up a lot with sibling rivalry. And I have found in my personal experience, it always ends up making me feel worse and it makes the situation worse. Here's what it sounds like in my head. My kid should just be getting along. My kid should not be arguing about this topic. My kid should be able to figure this out with their sibling. What happens when we hear a should is there's often a morality there.

There's like a right, wrong, there's rigidity, this is the way it needs to be. Everything besides that is failure. And then all of a sudden I'm intervening based on that rigid stance and based on my frustration that my kids aren't kind of conforming to some standard in my head. Now, it's okay to have a certain standard. I also want my kids to be able to navigate conflict in a healthy way. but should usually doesn't get me closer to that reality. It usually makes things stay further away.

Let's jump into some questions from parents. First, my older child says I favor the younger one. I know that's not true, but I also don't want her to feel that way. What should I do? Okay. I actually think the best thing to do is lead with curiosity, not proving. Now, I have a tendency to leave with proving too. it would sound like this.

What are you talking about? Tell me an example. Wait, I took you to ice cream today. I haven't taken your younger sibling to ice cream in a long time. It's not true. I'm proving that I don't favor my younger kid. If I lead with curiosity, it sounds totally different. Oh, tell me more about that.

Or, ugh. Well, that must feel bad to feel that way. Okay, tell me more. I want to better understand. We're going to figure this out together. Now, we often mistake something. We feel like if I don't say to my kid, that's not true. Then I'm saying to my kid, it's true.

I favor your sibling. That's actually not the case. I mean, think about it for yourself. If you were talking to a partner or a friend. And if you said to them, I feel like you never help out at night. And they say, well, that's not true. I helped out two nights ago and I helped out on this date. let me show you my calendar, not that helpful.

If they say to you, oh, well, tell me more about that. That's actually what we're looking for in that moment. All right, let's move on to the next question. My kids fight constantly. When do I step in and when do I let them figure it out? To me, what guides this decision is the fact that as parents, our number one job is to keep our kids safe. Now, safe doesn't mean happy.

safe doesn't mean comfortable safe doesn't mean easy safe means i'm going to make sure my kid isn't in a dangerous situation like getting hit like having a block thrown at them to me what's also dangerous is bully and name calling it's just not something i'm ever going to allow in my house so when am i going to intervene in a more strong-handed way when any of that is happening. It's actually a boundary I'm going to say, I'm not going to let you talk to your sister that way. We need to separate the two of you. I'm not going to let you hit your brother.

And then, yes, I would intervene. And whatever I needed to do to help them figure out how to handle that better, that's going to happen way later. This is a 10 out of 10 situation. Now that's different from overhearing in the other room. My kid's arguing about who gets the red marker or who is picking a TV show. that they're trying to watch together. I'm going to wait a little bit. Hopefully I'm still scaffolding the skills they need

because they're not just going to learn how to handle conflict in a healthy way by getting older. But I am going to give them some time. Also as a message that I have faith in them and that they don't always need me in situations that are actually safe. All right. Last question for today. Every time my kids are arguing, they scream, mom, from the other room. How can I get them to figure things out on their own? I love this question. And here's something that I think might be hard to hear, but I always promise to share something that's true, even if it's a little uncomfortable. So often we end up locking ourselves.

into a job that we actually want to work our way out of. Let me explain what I mean. Let's say your kids are arguing about, I don't know, who's holding the remote control or who gets to choose the songs on the family trip. And then you hear, mom, right away. The fastest thing to do is to resolve the conflict for them. Chose the music last time. You choose the music this time.

I'm going to take the remote so nobody holds it. And again, if there's a dangerous situation, intervene in that way. But if when our kids are having conflict with each other, the next thing they learn is mom comes in and solves it for me. The circuit they're building is argue with a sibling, call mom, mom solves the problem. And if that gets reinforced over and over, because I get it, there are moments we just don't have time or we're at our wit's end and we just need to make the situation better. But if that's always what's happening, we are actually locking ourselves into a job we don't want. We want to work ourselves out of the job of conflict resolution on our kids' behalf.

We want our kids to learn conflict resolution skills that they can use with their sibling and they can use with all the other people in their life they're going to have conflict with. which is everybody. And so, if our kids are constantly yelling mom every time or dad or whoever the adult is, I think we have to say to ourselves, okay, how can I start to work myself out of this job? What skills do I need to teach my kid so they can get better at resolving conflict without me? And when I am called into a room, if I can tell myself, I'm not in a rush, I have a couple extra minutes now, instead of solving the problem for them, what could I do differently? So they start to solve their problems for themselves. Sibling rivalry isn't a parenting

failure. I wouldn't even say it's a huge problem we have to avoid. It's an opportunity to understand what's going on for your kids and to help them build the skills they're going to need in so many different areas of their life. If this episode resonated, please rate, review, and subscribe to Good Inside. This ensures you get each episode as soon as I drop it. Also, if you're listening on Spotify or YouTube, I just realized you can comment on each individual episode. So if there's something from today

that made you think differently or really stuck with you, please let me know. I will actually go read every single comment. Now, let's end how we always do. Join me in placing both feet on the floor putting a hand on your heart and reminding yourself even as we struggle on the outside

we remain good inside. I'll see you next time.