Fed up of your children fighting all the time? Use these real parenting tips for tackling sibling rivalry

Children squabbling all the time? Use these tips by real mothers.

I am very close to my sister, and we both share pretty much everything, but my mom tells me that as a child, I had not taken it very well when my sister was born and had come home. I kept asking my mom when the baby would be leaving. I remember, growing up, we use to fight over toys, clothes, space on our shared bed and a few squabbles here and there. Now, when I see my friends with more than one children playing referee all the time, I can imagine the plight of my mother when my sister and I were young. Sibling rivalry is something a lot of parents go through and try their best to deal with. When you have multiple children, you want them to get along and play together. Trying to keep them away from tearing each other's hair out is definitely not the idea. So what can you do to iron out the creases and help your children love and appreciate their siblings? Here are some tips that have helped parents in similar situations.

Meera Khattar, mother of three boys.

"With three boys in the house, you have no idea how crazy and loud it gets in my house. Since they are all under the age of 6, I literally have to be on my toes constantly. There are fights over video games, the TV remote, what show to watch, who wears which shirt and who gets to sit where in the car. The only trick that has helped me is to teach them to take turns. No matter what it is, you have to wait your turn. And each child gets a preference for whatever we are doing, so for example, if one child gets to decide what to watch on TV, the other one gets to decide where to sit in the car, etc. They still quarrel at times, but it's more manageable with this system in place."

Ayesha Sanyal, mother of one girl and a boy

"The age difference between both my children is huge, so there's not much of rivalry between the two, but when my boy was a baby and I used to feed him, my daughter used to get very jealous and want all the attention on her. She would want to snatch the baby away and hit me when I saved the baby. What helped me was I used to offer to feed her too, and tell her that she was ini-charge for the baby. The more I got her involved with the baby, helping me dress him, change nappies, playing with him, etc. the more she became accepting of him."

Shumayla Shoaib, mother of two girls and a boy

"My children had the sibling rivalry of the strangest kind. Both my daughters are way older than my son, and they used to fight over who gets to play with the baby brother! I had a tough time keeping them away from the baby, as they would get a little frisky and hard with him. What I did was I would let the older one play with him when the younger one was in school and vice versa. When both were at home, it was a 'no-hands' time. They could look at the baby, show him toys but keep their hands off him and each other. It was better after that."

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