“
And you, Percy, are my favorite son.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Battle of the Labyrinth (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #4))
“
Desire is both imitative (we like what others like) and competitive (we want to take away from others what they have). As children, we wanted to monopolize the attention of a parent, to draw it away from other siblings. This sense of rivalry... makes people compete for the attention.
”
”
Robert Greene (The Art of Seduction)
“
What are we doing with him?" Briec asked eagerly. "Are we throwing him out a window? Let's throw him out a window! Or off the roof!
”
”
G.A. Aiken (What a Dragon Should Know (Dragon Kin, #3))
“
Many toxic parents compare one sibling unfavorably with another to make the target child feel that he's not doing enough to gain parental affection. This motivates the child to do whatever the parents want in order to regain their favor. This divide-and-conquer technique is often unleashed against children who become a little too independent, threatening the balance of the family system.
”
”
Susan Forward (Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life)
“
Love is close to hate when it comes to sisters. You're as close as two humans can be. You came from the same womb. The same background. Even if you're poles apart, mentally. That's why it hurts so much when your sister is unkind. It's as though part of you is turning against yourself.
”
”
Jane Corry
“
are you because of me?
am I me because of you?
the lines have long since blurred.
if, that is, they ever existed."
from "The Complication of Sisters
”
”
Katherine Mariaca-Sullivan
“
In truth, I did not have to wonder. She would be feeling that disturbing mixture of emotions that she always summoned from me: admiration and envy, pride and a furious rivalry, a longing to see a beloved sister succeed, and a passionate desire to see a rival fall.
”
”
Philippa Gregory (The Other Boleyn Girl (The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels, #9))
“
My mom wasn't home to arbitrate, so he forced me to try to strangle him with a phone cord.
”
”
Felicia Day (You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost))
“
Lorelai smirked at Leo, who raised a brow and then glared up at the sky. "The two of you are conspiring against me again, aren't you?"
"She just wants to share her lunch with you."
Leo blanched. "Last time she shared, I got a face full of rabbit guts from above. Tell your bird to keep her victims to herself.
”
”
C.J. Redwine (The Shadow Queen (Ravenspire, #1))
“
It’s important to make a distinction between allowing feelings and allowing actions,” I replied. “We permit children to express all their feelings. We don’t permit them to hurt each other. Our job is to show them how to express their anger without doing damage.
”
”
Adele Faber (Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too)
“
Sometimes opposites attract, or so they say, but Paloma and Rocío were like arroz and mangú: they didn’t really mix well.
”
”
Raquel Cepeda (Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina)
“
INSTEAD OF DISMISSING NEGATIVE FEELINGS ABOUT A SIBLING, ACKNOWLEDGE THE FEELINGS.
”
”
Adele Faber (How To Talk: Siblings Without Rivalry)
“
That's the difference between you and Greta. She has better things to do. She gets involved in clubs, activities. She has friends. But you? You slump around in that room of yours--
”
”
Carol Rifka Brunt (Tell the Wolves I'm Home)
“
Solidarity was admirable; loyalty was the person standing next to you when the devil came to call.
”
”
Suzanne Elizabeth Anderson (Mrs. Tuesday's Departure)
“
Sibling Rivalry
Yes, my mother was a better mother
To my sisters and brothers,
But they were better children
Than me, the prodigal who yearned
And spurned and never returned.
”
”
Sherman Alexie (You Don't Have to Say You Love Me)
“
I'm beginning to wish that you were an orphan, love. Can you both manage to focus on the task at hand without trying to catch up on fourteen years of sibling rivalry?
”
”
Maria V. Snyder (Magic Study (Study, #2))
“
I always thought my intellect would keep me alive, but now I shall be killed by my own baby brother with a rock. The ultimate sibling rivalry.
”
”
Eoin Colfer (The Last Guardian (Artemis Fowl, #8))
“
I told my mother he looked like a deflated balloon. Greta said he looked like a small gray moth wrapped in a spider's web. That's because everything about Greta is more beautiful, even the way she says things.
”
”
Carol Rifka Brunt (Tell the Wolves I'm Home)
“
The two of them were like oil and water. Her older sister was forever stuck in surrogate mommy role. But Viviana had never needed, nor wanted a replacement mother. Fate had seen fit to remove her biological mother, so she figured that was the way it was supposed to be.
”
”
Tirumalai S. Srivatsan
“
But I'm in the water, too, I wanted to say. And there are plenty eyes on you. No one's watching to see if I stay afloat.
”
”
Kawai Strong Washburn (Sharks in the Time of Saviors)
“
Ah, such a good pretty one.' There was a pause, 'You even got yourself dressed up.
”
”
Charlotte Munro (The Lockharts)
“
More people would be depressed, if parents tried to please their children as frequently and as badly as children try to please their parents.
”
”
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“
Burial is just another recipe
”
”
C Pam Zhang (How Much of These Hills Is Gold)
“
The eldest child is the golden one, the middle child invisible, and the youngest child is loud.
”
”
Stewart Stafford
“
To be loved equally,” I continued, “is somehow to be loved less. To be loved uniquely—for one’s own special self—is to be loved as much as we need to be loved.
”
”
Adele Faber (Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too)
“
Even after Sonja graduated secondary school at the top of her class and matriculated to the city university biology department, their parents found more to love in Natasha. Sonja's gifts were too complex to be understood, and therefore less desirable.
”
”
Anthony Marra (A Constellation of Vital Phenomena)
“
Your relationship with your brother will be, in many ways, the most complex and bewildering of all the interpersonal connections you will form. An older brother is both authority and peer, friend and bitter enemy, partner and rival, and will play these contradictory roles to varying degrees throughout your life. At this point the rivalry is most prominent, owing to the difference in age and the resentment your brother feels toward you monopolizing your mother's attention. Try to remember, in the face of the poor treatment you receive at his hands, that more than a pure desire to cause you harm or pain, this is an effort on his part to win back some of that attention, even if it's only through being scolded and punished.
”
”
Ron Currie Jr. (Everything Matters!)
“
I thought a polished appearance and stellar behavior would be the passport to belonging. And when I inevitably failed at perfection, I could at least wilfully do everything in my power to be kicked out before anyone left me.
”
”
Mary H.K. Choi, Yolk
“
One only has to watch aging siblings scrap over the worthless pots and pans and scuffed furniture of a deceased parent's estate- like toddlers over toys- to see how desperate is the need to wrest some last, pathetic, tangible measure of their parent's devotion.
”
”
Victoria Secunda (Women and Their Fathers: The Sexual and Romantic Impact of the First Man in Your Life)
“
The doppelganger nature of the country’s identity is embedded in the dualistic language used to describe it, in which everything is double and never singular: Israel-Palestine, Arab and Jew, Two States, The Conflict. Based on a fantasy of symmetrical power, this suturing together of two peoples implies conjoined twins in a state of unending struggle, an irresolvable sibling rivalry between the two peoples, both descended from Abraham. For Rooney, Israel as doppelganger exists on two levels. First, it is a doppelganger of the forms of chauvinistic European nationalisms that turned Jews into pariahs on the continent since well before the Inquisition. That was Zionism’s win-win pitch to anti-Semitic European powers: you get rid of your “Jewish problem” (i.e., Jews, who will leave your countries and migrate to Palestine), and Jews get a state of their own to mimic/twin the very forms of militant nationalism that had oppressed them for centuries. (This is why Zionism was so fiercely opposed by the members of the Bund, who believed that nationalism itself was their enemy and the wellspring of race hatred.) Israel also became a doppelganger of the colonial project, specifically settler colonialism. Many of Zionism’s basic rationales were thinly veiled Judaizations of core Christian colonial conceptions: Terra Nullius, the claim that continents like Australia were effectively empty because their Indigenous inhabitants were categorized as less than fully human, became “A land without a people for a people without a land”—a phrase adopted by many Zionists and that originated with nineteenth-century Christians. Manifest Destiny became “land bequeathed to the Jews by divine right.” “Taming the wild frontier” became “making the desert bloom.
”
”
Naomi Klein (Doppelganger: a Trip into the Mirror World)
“
The last image I registered was Ethan and my hand – linked, bound and unbreakable.
”
”
Erica Sehyun Song
“
No one else in the world could strike a nerve in [her] quite like her sister.
”
”
Andrea Lochen (Versions of Her)
“
Was this what being an older sister was like? Wanting to yell at someone most of the time but still be willing to jump in front of a car for them? If so, it was awful.
”
”
Roshani Chokshi (Aru Shah and the Tree of Wishes (Pandava, #3))
“
They say sibling rivalry isn't about siblings but parents.
”
”
Matt Haig (The Midnight Library)
“
Get done with the damn sibling rivalry and let's get back with the task at hand here so we can figure out what we're going to do.
”
”
Pixie Lynn Whitfield (Darkness Comes This Way (The Guardians of the Night, #1))
“
'Still too thin. You've let your hair grow out a bit, though. Trying to look pretty for your prince? I've told you time and again you're far too ugly to be saved.'
'You've got no room to talk of ugly. Your poor wife, always having to wear a blindfold to bed. If I'm too thin, it's because you've got all my weight. Palace life is making you into a unicorn.'
”
”
Megan Derr (The Engineered Throne (Unbreakable Soldiers, #1))
“
It’s not at all what I thought it would be. Nothing is. No matter how much I love it, it doesn’t love me back. If I weren’t so broken, it would fit. I feel like I don’t have a home.
”
”
Mary H.K. Choi, Yolk
“
The passion and excitement you feel about a child’s achievement should be saved for a moment when just the two of you are together. It’s too much for the other siblings to have to listen to.
”
”
Adele Faber (Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too)
“
When he heard his father call out for Abel and he saw his borther go forth, it made him feel like he was nothing. He couldn’t even say that he felt like Cain anymore. One could not feel like Cain because it had no flavor. Cain was the absence of flavor. Cain was like saliva or a Wednesday.
”
”
Jonathan Goldstein (Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bible!)
“
Tell Anne..." I broke off. There was too much to send in one message. There were long years of rivalry and then a forced unity and always and ever, underpinning our love for each other, our sense that the other must be bested. How could I send her one word which would acknowledge all of that, and yet tell her that I loved her still, that I was glad I had been her sister, even though I knew she had brought herself to this point and taken George here too? That, though I would never forgive her for what she had done to us all, at the same time, I totally and wholly understood?
"Tell her what?" Catherine hovered, waiting to be released.
"Tell her that I think of her," I said simply. "All the time. Every day. The same as always.
”
”
Philippa Gregory (The Other Boleyn Girl (The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels, #9))
“
Sibling abuse is underreported and it goes under the radar. The concern with sibling rivalry is when it turns into sibling abuse. The core root of sibling abuse is the intent to harm and control the other sibling.
”
”
Dana Arcuri (Soul Rescue: How to Break Free From Narcissistic Abuse & Heal Trauma)
“
My cheeks are hot when he stalks right up to me, eyes narrowed. Pinched between his bloody fingers is a piece of scrap metal laced with seilgflùr from the blunderbuss—a shot that would have killed any other faery.
“Really?” he says.
“You were traipsing around in a low-visibility field while enemy fae are afoot,” I say defensively, hoping he can’t tell I’m blushing. “What is wrong with you?”
Aithinne snickers and Kiaran casts her a sharp glance. “It’s not funny.”
His sister tries to hold back a laugh, but doesn’t quite succeed. “I’m sorry,” she says. “But you just . . . I’ve never seen you look like such a complete mess.”
Kiaran studies her with a narrowed gaze. “And both of you look like you’ve gone three rounds with a roving band of feral cats. I’d say we’re even.”
“Even? Oh, please.” Aithinne ticks off each finger. “Thus far the Falconer and I escaped through a forest of spiked trees, fought off the mara, fled from Lonnrach’s soldiers, and defeated two mortair. You were shot by accident with some weapon composed of a wooden stick with a barrel on the end—”
“A blunderbuss,” I correct helpfully. Kiaran gives me a pointed look that says, Whose side are you on?
“—so I’d say I win this round.” She finishes with the sort of arrogant grin that makes it very clear that this must be an ongoing competition.
Sibling rivalry, it seems, is not just for humans.
If Kiaran’s glare is any indication, he’s contemplating about fifty different ways of killing his own sister. “Just remember,” I whisper to him, “murder is frowned upon in most societies.”
“Not mine,” Kiaran says shortly. “She’s lucky I love her.
”
”
Elizabeth May (The Vanishing Throne (The Falconer, #2))
“
Now, glancing over...as she knelt with her eyes closed, her fingertips touching and pointed to Heaven, and her lips shaping soft words of devotion, I had to pinch myself to keep in mind that I was sitting next to the Devil's Hairball.
”
”
Alan Bradley (The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Flavia de Luce, #1))
“
Everything in all the books I once pored over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach. T. Berry Brazelton. Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education, all grown obsolete. Along with ‘Goodnight Moon’ and ‘Where the Wild Things Are,’ they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories. . . . The biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make. . . .I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of [my children] sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4, and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.
”
”
Anna Quindlen (Loud and Clear)
“
Sibling rivalry is further reinforced in dysfunctional families by the fact that all the children are subsisting on minimal nurturance, and are therefore without resources to give to each other. Moreover, competition for the little their parents have to give creates even fiercer rivalries.
”
”
Pete Walker (Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving)
“
Merry Christmas," said George. "Don't go downstairs for a bit."
"Why not?" said Ron.
"Mum's crying again," said Fred heavily. "Percy sent back his Christmas jumper." [I guess that's a sweater, though my jury is still out on it until I get a future confirmation.]
"Without a not," added George. "Hasn't asked how Dad is or visit him [in the hospital] or anything..."
"We tried to comfort her," said Fred, moving around the bed to look at Harry's portrait. "Told her Percy's nothing but a humongous pile of rat droppings--"
"--didn't work," said George, helping himself to a Chocolate Frog. "So Lupin took over. Best let him cheer her up before we go down for breakfast, I reckon.
”
”
J.K. Rowling
“
Only a sister, an alternative self, could inspire such a sordid mix of disgust and envy.
”
”
Namwali Serpell (The Old Drift)
“
Insisting upon good feelings between the children led to bad feelings. Acknowledging bad feelings between the children led to good feelings.
”
”
Adele Faber (Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too)
“
Having a sister who tried to act like the Virgin Mary was not easy for a girl who felt as Ramona did.
”
”
Beverly Cleary (Ramona and Her Father (Ramona, #4))
“
Sisters never stand a chance to be friends. We're pitted against each other from the moment that we are born. A daughter is a treasure. Two is a tax.
”
”
Mary H.K. Choi (Yolk)
“
She was quit a handsome man, my sister.
”
”
Wataru Watari (やはり俺の青春ラブコメはまちがっている。1)
“
...he hasn't spent his whole life playing catch-up. He was born in the lead. I don't have that luxury. I swallow hard. "You wouldn't get it. You're the older one.
”
”
Allie Reynolds (Shiver)
“
Not till the bad feelings come out can the good ones come in.
”
”
Adele Faber (Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too)
“
You know, I don’t think your brother dislikes you as much as you think. After all, he gave up a kingdom to stay with his family.
”
”
C.J. Milbrandt (Inside the Tree: A Ewan Johns Adventure (Byways, #5))
“
Evelyn is a drawing in sharp black and white, and I'm - I'm just a subdued pastel.
”
”
Georgette Heyer (Pastel)
“
Kingsley used to tell the following anecdote about sibling rivalry – how he found me, when I was four or five, lying on the stairs in an ecstasy of grief, how he worriedly knelt at my side and, after several minutes, managed to quell my hiccuppy gaspings, my heaving chest. Then he said, ‘Easy now . . . What is it?’ When at last I could find and shape the words, I said, ‘Philip had a biscuit’ . . .
”
”
Martin Amis (Experience)
“
To help everyone better understand the difference between giving equally with measured amounts, and giving uniquely, in terms of each child’s legitimate needs, I handed out the following illustrations:
”
”
Adele Faber (Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too)
“
Insisting upon good feelings between the children led to bad feelings. Acknowledging bad feelings between the children led to good feelings. A circuitous route to sibling harmony. And yet, the most direct.
”
”
Adele Faber (Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too)
“
Imagine,” I thought, “a world in which brothers and sisters grow up in homes where hurting isn’t allowed; where children are taught to express their anger at each other sanely and safely; where each child is valued as an individual, not in relation to the others; where cooperation, rather than competition is the norm; where no one is trapped in a role; where children have daily experience and guidance in resolving their differences.
”
”
Adele Faber (Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too)
“
But until you’ve experienced the incredible mix of emotions that a sibling brings to your life it’s really very hard to imagine. The love and the hate, the fun and the fights, the rivalry and the kinship. No one else knows your world like a sibling does. They’re there, every crap summer holiday, every day off school, every time your parents argue, every boring Christmas Day, every birthday party, they’re there. And they are a part of you.
”
”
Lisa Jewell (Watching You)
“
You’ll never go wrong if you describe what you think the child might be feeling (‘You must be so proud of yourself!’) or what the child has accomplished (‘A lot of practice and perseverance went into winning that medal’).
”
”
Adele Faber (Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too)
“
The family bully takes sibling rivalry to a whole new level; sibling abuse. While it’s common for families to have sibling rivalry, what stands out the most with the bully is their intent to hurt others badly, especially the family scapegoat. They can physically harm you. They will mentally torture you. In some cases, they will sexually violate you. They have evil motives to control their family members, manipulate them, and gaslight them.
”
”
Dana Arcuri (Soul Rescue: How to Break Free From Narcissistic Abuse & Heal Trauma)
“
...that secret hostility natural between brothers, the roots of which --little nursery rivalries--sometimes toughen and deepen as life goes on, and, all hidden, support a plant capable of producing in season the bitterest fruits.
”
”
John Galsworthy (The Forsyte Saga (The Forsyte Chronicles, #1-3))
“
Children often experience praise of a brother or sister as a put-down of themselves. They automatically translate, ‘Your brother is so considerate’ into ‘Mom thinks I’m not.’ It’s a good idea to save our enthusiastic comments for the ear of the deserving child.
”
”
Adele Faber (Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too)
“
There was another matter which caused much disturbance in our mind: the viciousness of sibling rivalry. We knew that kingship knows no kinship. No bridge of affection spans the abyss that separates a monarch from his sons; no bonds of affection exist between the sons of kings. Sired though they may have been by the same loins, lain in succession in the same womb and suckled the same breasts, no sooner were they old enough to know the world than they understood that they must destroy their siblings or be destroyed themselves.
”
”
Khushwant Singh (Delhi: A Novel)
“
1. Start by acknowledging the children’s anger towards each other. That alone should help calm them. 2. Listen to each child’s side with respect. 3. Show appreciation for the difficulty of the problem. 4. Express faith in their ability to work out a mutually agreeable solution. 5. Leave the room.
”
”
Adele Faber (Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too)
“
Valentine’s concept of introversion includes traits that contemporary psychology would classify as openness to experience (“thinker, dreamer”), conscientiousness (“idealist”), and neuroticism (“shy individual”).
A long line of poets, scientists, and philosophers have also tended to group these traits together. All the way back in Genesis, the earliest book of the Bible, we had cerebral Jacob (a “quiet man dwelling in tents” who later becomes “Israel,” meaning one who wrestles inwardly with God) squaring off in sibling rivalry with his brother, the swashbuckling Esau (a “skillful hunter” and “man of the field”). In classical antiquity, the physicians Hippocrates and Galen famously proposed that our temperaments—and destinies—were a function of our bodily fluids, with extra blood and “yellow bile” making us sanguine or choleric (stable or neurotic extroversion), and an excess of phlegm and “black bile” making us calm or melancholic (stable or neurotic introversion). Aristotle noted that the melancholic temperament was associated with eminence in philosophy, poetry, and the arts (today we might classify this as opennessto experience). The seventeenth-century English poet John Milton wrote Il Penseroso (“The Thinker”) and L’Allegro (“The Merry One”), comparing “the happy person” who frolics in the countryside and revels in the city with “the thoughtful person” who walks meditatively through the nighttime woods and studies in a “lonely Towr.” (Again, today the description of Il Penseroso would apply not only to introversion but also to openness to experience and neuroticism.) The nineteenth-century German philosopher Schopenhauer contrasted “good-spirited” people (energetic, active, and easily bored) with his preferred type, “intelligent people” (sensitive, imaginative, and melancholic). “Mark this well, ye proud men of action!” declared his countryman Heinrich Heine. “Ye are, after all, nothing but unconscious instruments of the men of thought.”
Because of this definitional complexity, I originally planned to invent my own terms for these constellations of traits. I decided against this, again for cultural reasons: the words introvert and extrovert have the advantage of being well known and highly evocative. Every time I uttered them at a dinner party or to a seatmate on an airplane, they elicited a torrent of confessions and reflections. For similar reasons, I’ve used the layperson’s spelling of extrovert rather than the extravert one finds throughout the research literature.
”
”
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
“
But a vague jealousy, one of those dormant jealousies that develop between brothers or sisters almost unnoticed until maturity, only to burst out when one of them marries or has a stroke of good fortune, kept them constantly on the alert in a fraternal, unaggressive hostility. They did love each other, yet they kept an eye on each other.
”
”
Guy de Maupassant (Pierre et Jean)
“
Why don’t you just go run to your room and cry little girl or better yet kill yourself?” Cora spat out ferociously.
“Oh honey, if I was going to kill myself I’d do it right here out of spite just to see you get down on your knees and wash the blood off the tiles and haunt your ass til kingdom come.” Sienna spat back with even more ferocity.
”
”
Ali Harper (Breaking Bedlam (Beautiful Bedlam #2))
“
Jake eyed his brother. "I never forget. All data is stored in my memory banks. And one day, candy pig, you will pay."
"You 're such a geek."
"Thesbo."
"That's Jack's latest insult."
Seth gestured with his wine-glass. "A play on thespian, since Kev's into that."
"Rhymes with lesbo," Jake explained helpfully while Anna stifled a groan. "It's a slick way of calling him a girl.
”
”
Nora Roberts (Chesapeake Blue (Chesapeake Bay Saga, #4))
“
In Eudora Welty’s masterful story “Why I Live at the P.O.” (1941), the narrator is engaged in a sibling rivalry with her younger sister, who has come home after leaving under suspicious if not actually disgraceful circumstances. The narrator, Sister, is outraged at having to cook two chickens to feed five people and a small child just because her “spoiled” sister has come home. What Sister can’t see, but we can, is that those two fowl are really a fatted calf. It may not be a grand feast by traditional standards, but it is a feast, as called for upon the return of the Prodigal Son, even if the son turns out to be a daughter. Like the brothers in the parable, Sister is irritated and envious that the child who left, and ostensibly used up her “share” of familial goodwill, is instantly welcomed, her sins so quickly forgiven. Then
”
”
Thomas C. Foster (How to Read Literature Like a Professor Revised: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines)
“
When we were children, Bapi used to dress us up in the same clothes, going to Apsara for ‘Titanic’ or reruns of ‘Dadar Kirti’ and we used to be so embarrassed by that, even at six. Day before yesterday when I saw Neev and you wearing matching purple shirts, I encountered envy for the first time. You had taken on his colors, as though you were in his house already. I felt as though that moment you had stopped needing me to make you feel whole and nothing was ever going to remain the same.’
('Left from Dhakeshwari')
”
”
Kunal Sen
“
Schedule family meetings. You wouldn’t expect your car to run without periodic refueling and maintenance, yet we expect our family unit to run without regular checkups. The most enthusiastic endorsement for family meetings comes from parents and children who have experienced them. One teenager told us, “It’s a great way to make sure tensions never build up. We sit around and talk about family activities, chores, who wants to do what, who wants to trade off what, who’s bothered by what.” His mother added, “It’s a time for all of us to think creatively about what we need for ourselves and how we can be supportive of each other.
”
”
Adele Faber (Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too)
“
I thought of Emily's legs hanging down as Mother carried her. I thought about the empty look on her face as Mother hugged her. I thought about never being able to play in the forest alone, or make a friend, or spend more than a few minutes by myself. I thought about not having even the privacy of my own bed at night. I thought, for the first time in a long time, about how those things had made me feel, when Mother slept with me. But to Lilith I said, "She doesn't know how good she's got it," and for a moment she and I were united once more in our disdain for our little sister, our parent's favorite, who couldn't understand how lucky she was.
”
”
Heather Young (The Lost Girls)
“
On Christmas Day her mother gave her an envelope with five hundred euro in it. There was no card; it was one of the small brown-paper envelopes she used for Lorraine’s wages. Marianne thanked her, and Denise said airily: I’m a bit concerned about you. Marianne fingered the envelope and tried to arrange her face into a suitable expression. What about me? she said. Well, said Denise, what are you going to do with your life? I don’t know. I think I still have a lot of options open. I’m just focusing on college at the moment. And then what? Marianne pressed her thumb on the envelope and smudged it until a faint dark smear appeared on the paper. As I said, she repeated, I don’t know. I’m worried the real world will come as a bit of a shock to you, said Denise. In what way? I don’t know if you realize that university is a very protective environment. It’s not like a workplace. Well, I doubt anyone in the workplace will spit at me over a disagreement, said Marianne. It would be pretty frowned upon, as I understand. Denise gave a tight-lipped smile. If you can’t handle a little sibling rivalry, I don’t know how you’re going to manage adult life, darling, she said. Let’s see how it goes. At this, Denise struck the kitchen table with her open palm. Marianne flinched, but didn’t look up, didn’t let go of the envelope. You think you’re special, do you? said Denise. Marianne let her eyes close. No, she said. I don’t.
”
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Sally Rooney (Normal People)
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I couldn't see her, a blackness hung before my eyes, but I felt her fall back and I felt her skin beneath my nails, her bones beneath my fingers, my beloved sister, my enemy, my protector, my betrayal-(you sent him to me!)-and then she was hitting me, shoving me to the ground, kicking my stomach, my side, my ribs, my head. She was screaming (I saved you, all those years it was me, I saved you, I was the only one who saved you, nobody but me) and above it Emily was wailing, stop it! stop it! you're hurting her! Then her small body was between Lilith and me, pushing Lilith away, but Lilith's hands were on her throat, (not you, you got none of it, ever, you were safe, safe, safe, SAFE) and I couldn't get up, my ribs were in agony, the world was spinning, but I got to my knees and I shouted, "Let her go!" because Lilith was shaking Emily back and forth so that her hair whipped and flew- and she did stop, for just an instant, Emily's pale, fragile throat in her hands, and the whole dark earth held its breath.
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Heather Young
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In some circumstances, the puppy views the child as another puppy to bite and bully. At other times, a child becomes jealous of the attention the new addition is getting, which leads to sibling rivalry between the child and the puppy.
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Sarah Hodgson (Puppies For Dummies)
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Na segunda-feira seguinte, na fábrica, todos já sabiam. Marfiza era um diabo-espalha-fatos, que inferno. Quando ouvi o primeiro comentário na fábrica, fiquei com um vermelho-roxo no rosto. Ela jamais seria capaz de enxergar. Se estivesse na minha frente, faria escorrer do pescoço dela. Boca aberta. Futriqueira. Venenosa. Rouba-vida. Mexeriqueira. Língua de escorpião. Maldosa. Ressentida. Vilipendiadora. Sonsa.
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Paulo Salvetti (Cara Marfiza,)
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Describe what you see “I see a brand new jacket on the floor.” or Describe what you feel “That bothers me.” or Describe what needs to be done “This jacket belongs in the closet.
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Adele Faber (Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too)
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treating our children, not as they are, but as we hoped they would become.
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Adele Faber (Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too)
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Sibling rivalry is considered the most common form of bullying.
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Angela Marsons (Deadly Cry (DI Kim Stone #13))
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Mia is the bane of my existence. The apple of not only her father’s eye, but my mother’s too; she’s spent the last fifteen years soaking up every ounce of their attention and being a serious pain in my ass, and while I’m far too old to complain about sibling rivalries now, I’m perfectly content just pretending she doesn’t exist.
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Sara Cate (Eyes on Me (Salacious Players Club, #2))
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Why do siblings argue so much? Well, let’s start with a brilliant analogy from Elaine Mazlish and Adele Faber, authors of one of my favorite parenting books, Siblings Without Rivalry. They remind us that when a child gets a sibling, it feels to them similar to how it would feel for you if your partner got a second spouse. Imagine your partner comes home and says, “Amazing news! We’re getting a second wife! You’re going to be a big wife and now we’ll have a little wife and we’re going to be one big happy family!” If you’re like me, you’d look around the room thinking, “WHAT? Am I in an alternative universe? Why is this good for me?” All of your relatives and neighbors ask you if you’re so excited about this new wife, then nine months later everyone showers her with gifts and hugs, and forever after, you’re expected to love this woman and get along swimmingly. Imagine one day you take one of her items—something that used to be yours—out of her hand and everyone yells at YOU about it, saying, “You can’t do things like this! You can’t take a toy from a little wife! Look how small and helpless and innocent she is!” By this point, I think we’d be beyond confused . . . we’d be filled with the rage that comes from feeling unseen. This. Is. Siblinghood.
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Becky Kennedy (Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be)
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Sibling abuse is underreported. It’s common for it to go under the radar. Typically, in early childhood, sibling rivalry can start out with squabbles, disagreements, name-calling, and competition between brothers and sisters. The rivalry is reciprocal. The motive can be for parental attention. Or a dozen other reasons.
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Dana Arcuri CTRC (Toxic Siblings: A Survival Guide to Rise Above Sibling Abuse & Heal Trauma)
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According to an article, Sibling Abuse and Bullying: The Hidden Epidemic on Psychology Today by Darlene Lancer, “Often labeled rivalry and ignored, sibling bullying and abuse cause real trauma. Sibling abuse is the most common, but least reported abuse in the family. Prevalence is higher than spousal or child abuse combined with consequences well into adulthood similar to parent-child abuse. Up to 80% of youth experience some form of sibling maltreatment; yet it’s been called the forgotten abuse.
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Dana Arcuri CTRC (Toxic Siblings: A Survival Guide to Rise Above Sibling Abuse & Heal Trauma)
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The concern with sibling rivalry is when it turns into sibling abuse. The core root of sibling abuse is the intent to harm and control the other sibling. Instead of it being a periodic incident, the abuse becomes a repeated pattern. This could carry on for months, years, and even decades. Or it could last a lifetime.
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Dana Arcuri CTRC (Toxic Siblings: A Survival Guide to Rise Above Sibling Abuse & Heal Trauma)
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This gives a whole new meaning to ‘family mobbing.’ According to author and survivor, Stephanie A. Sellers, Ph.D, who wrote the book, Daughters Healing from Family Mobbing: Stories and Approaches to Recovery from Shunning, Aggression, and Family Violence, “Family Mobbing is a group act of aggression that targets a family member. It can be typified by a single act of violence or a pattern of abuse over years. Whether isolated or long-term, mobbing enforces the family’s domination and control over another. As family members continue to tyrannize their target, the aggressive group may expand to include friends, neighbors, business associates, and clergy. Family Mobbing encompasses varied acts of aggression that cannot be understood by examining one motivation or cause. The pattern of behavior always isolates one family member and inflicts as much emotional pain as possible. Unlike sibling rivalry, the intention is to establish superiority or to provoke fear and distress. Factors to consider include the motives, the degree of severity, a power of imbalance, victimization element, physical injuries, and trauma.
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Dana Arcuri CTRC (Toxic Siblings: A Survival Guide to Rise Above Sibling Abuse & Heal Trauma)
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But until you've experienced the incredible mix of emotions that a sibling brings your life it's really very hard to imagine. The love and the hate, the fun and the fights, the rivalry and the kinship. No one else knows your world like a sibling does. They're there, every crap summer holiday, every day off school, every time your parents argue, every boring Christmas Day, every birthday party, they're there. And they are a part of you.
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Lisa Jewell (Watching You)
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they say sibling rivalry isn’t about siblings but parents, and I always felt my parents just encouraged his dreams a bit more.
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Matt Haig (The Midnight Library)
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Though there had always been rivalry between the pair (not just as siblings but as members of the royal family), true cracks began to appear in 2016, when Prince Harry brought the California sun into the gray skies of his royal life.
November 30, 202
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Omid Scobie (Endgame: Inside the Royal Family and the Monarchy's Fight for Survival)
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My son never seems to be able to see things from his sister's point of view. Lately I've been asking him, “How would you like it if she did that to you?” But he never answers me. Why is that? The question puts him on the spot. Were he to answer you honestly, he'd have to admit that he wouldn't like it. If you want your son to be able to consider another point of view, make a simple statement that gives him credit: “I'm sure you can imagine how that would feel if that were done to you.” Now he has to think, “Can I imagine it? What would it feel like?” But he doesn't have to answer to anyone except himself. And that's good enough.
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Adele Faber (How To Talk: Siblings Without Rivalry)
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Living life on purpose, one page at a time.
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Dawn Kasperski (A New Baby, How Can This Be?)
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So you think someone is going to shoot at me twice in one campaign cycle?"
Sticking out her hand, she started counting off on her fingers. "Reagan, Johnson, Nixon, Carter. They've all had over fifty assassination attempts. Some over a hundred!"
His sisters were the earth's most annoying creatures. "Those are all presidents. And they all survived the attempts."
"William Goebel, gubernatorial candidate. George Wallace, gubernatorial candidate."
"You're in the wrong century."
"And you're underestimating the power of racial hatred," she snapped.
"Bill Richardson, Deval Patrick, Bobby Jindal, David Paterson, Susana Martinez, Michelle Grisham-"
"And listing all the minority governors from this century proves what?" she snapped again.
"It proves that we can run for elections without ending up dead.
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Sonali Dev (Incense and Sensibility (The Rajes, #3))
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You found me a female bodyguard? And you thought that would somehow make the job of bullying me into it easier?"
She had the gall to grin. "Bingo. Wait here while I text her. We've made her wait long enough."
He sank into a couch off in a private corner of the hospital waiting area. "I really pity poor Neel, you know that?" he said with all the spitefulness of a sibling who'd lost an argument.
Her grin widened, a damn whoop of victory if he'd ever seen one. "You're so easy."
He narrowed his eyes at her, deploying one of her own favorite strategies for getting her way. "You know Ma loves me more than you, right?"
"Sorry, buddy, I'm the favorite by miles. Substantiate your claim by getting her to admit it, or shut up.
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Sonali Dev (Incense and Sensibility (The Rajes, #3))
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There is something about sibling love that is greatly overlooked due to the talk of sibling rivalry, a phenomenon characterized by competition, jealousy and fighting between brothers, between sisters, and even between a brother and a sister. An older sibling’s love for the younger sibling starts when the younger brother or sister is in the crib. That love evolves into a rivalry that can be silent or overt as the siblings grow older. But do not be mistaken by all the appearances. The older sibling subconsciously retains his or her protective instinct whenever the younger sibling pursues a dangerous path in life, just like in the old days when the younger sibling was a helpless baby and the older sibling assumed the role of a protector even without being asked to. It is that protective instinct of the older sibling that eventually overcomes his misgivings about the ways of his younger sibling.
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Janvier Chouteu-Chando (The Girl on the Trail)
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To be loved uniquely—for one’s own special self—is to be loved as much as we need to be loved.
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Adele Faber (Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too)
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By 2001, however, India was decoupling from its long rivalry with Pakistan. India’s economy was booming. Its generals and foreign policy strategists professed to be more concerned about China than about their dysfunctional sibling neighbor to the west. Yet the Pakistan Army used fear of India as a justification for dominating Pakistan’s politics.
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Steve Coll (Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001-2016)
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You haven’t lived in your sibling’s shadow, struggling to gain the approval of your father and the rest of the mage community. And… you won’t be forced to marry someone you don’t love.
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L. Starla (Winter's Maiden 2 (Winter's Magic #2))
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When I told you I wanted to keep our relationship casual—which I will regret until my dying breath—it was simply self-preservation. You scare me, Elizabeth Mae Thomas, with your big green eyes and larger-than-life personality.
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Jacquie Biggar (Finding Me: An Estranged Sisters Young Adult Romance Novel (The Defiant Sisters Duet Book 2))
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they say sibling rivalry isn’t about siblings but parents,
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Matt Haig (The Midnight Library)