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A couple of months ago, a friend revealed to me the secret to ridding my home of sibling rivalry.
As a parent of three children who frequently tear each other down in breathtakingly cruel displays of shoulder-shrugging disdain, barbed comments, and malevolent singing, I was all ears.
“Do they need help, or is this a vent?” is one question parents should ask themselves, says Adelaide clinical child psychologist Kirrilie Smout.
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Her parents, she explained, were finally getting along with their siblings after decades of sniping. The key was that they no longer competed for their own parents’ attention or obsessed over who was the parental favourite.