Sibling closeness

[Jadefeather7]

Was discussing this with DH the other day. His parents were asking DH if he could somehow help two of his siblings with their difficult relationship. His parents have great relationships with their siblings and we are guessing that they feel upset seeing their kids not getting on. We both understand and in fact DH was saying he sometimes feels a little sad that it isn’t like that for them. For example his best friend is one of the three brothers and they are super close. They see each other often, partners all get on well and holiday together once a year. DH and I were discussing why it’s like that for some and not others. Is it just that some get lucky with having similar values, being in close proximity, close in age or do parents have a role to play in encouraging closeness? If you are close to your siblings, why do you think it is? Will you be trying to encourage your children to be close or are you happy for them to not have a relationships with each other in the future?

@hushnowthanks Interesting. That’s what I was thinking about... making a conscious effort as a parent to encourage a close and supportive relationship between siblings from a young age. There’s obviously no guarantee that it would work out but if it did that would be lovely.

I have a friend whose DS is so fond and protective of his little sister. It’s so heartwarming. On the other hand I have another friend whose DD is very jealous of her younger brother (hopefully just a phase she will grow out off).

Ugh hit post too soon

As teens we couldn’t stand each other and I was NC for over a decade.

There are weird similarities though, like interests we’ve picked up as adults completely separately. When we were thrust together by a family emergency a couple of years ago, and I found myself playing the big sister role both checking on her and being irritated by her.

I know my parents would love us to reconcile. I know at least one parent blames me for the fall out, which is actually harder to live with than the fall out itself.

It’s now at a point where we can be civil. But I have no desire for her to be a big part of my life.

My siblings and I are really close, there's 5 of us altogether. Each one of us have different personalities and different perspectives in some things but also many similarities. I'd say I'm closest to my third sister and then our other two sisters are closer but altogether we love eachother and mesh well. I was very close to my brother too until he got married to a very toxic woman, now we're OK but not as close as before.

Tbh, my siblings are the best gifts my parents could have ever given me!! I don't really have many friends per se as my siblings are my best friends, apart from my dh they're the first people I contact for everything and we're always just there for eachother, even after fall outs and arguments we just carry on as normal after a couple of days as of nothing happened because we know that it's petty silly stuff.

My dh is one of 10 siblings and they're all close too, I guess it's our culture too. We're from a middle Eastern culture where family is everything really, including wider family like cousins, aunts, uncles etc so we're all pretty tight knit.

That's not to say we never argue, but we always sort it out in the end, cos we're family and can't get away from eachother so gotta get on or life would be pretty miserable!!

Right now my eldest two can either be best friends or worst enemies, there's no in between, I hope they're all close when they grow up too...

I am NC with all of my siblings, not through my choice. I blame my parents who did the whole 'golden child' and 'scapegoat' thing and threw in some nasty misogyny too.

It's a shame but it is what it is.

I'm one of 7 surviving siblings. I'm very close to a brother 4 years older because we share the same hobbies, I'm pretty close to my sister 2 years younger although we did not become close until I had kids in my late 20s. I've always been close with my brother 2 years older, we even lived together at university out of choice :) my brother 22 years older I am pretty close with. My oldest brother and my oldest sister and I get along just fine but make no effort to communicate between family gatherings every 2 years.

I think some of it is hands-on fair parenting and some of it is sheer personality and hobby loves. Luck. I hope my 2 kids are close as adults and I'll be sad if they aren't.

I have two sisters and get on with one a lot better than the other. Difficult to put it down to parenting as I they are both half sisters (one we shared a Mum and the other we shared a Dad). So in my case it's just purely personality that me and the one 18yrs older than me get on great.

I have two boys 3yrs apart, aged 5 and 8 now, and they are very close (they call each other best friends). I like to think my awesome parenting has a part to play as I'm very loving, try my best to treat them fairly, divide my time equally and foster a strong and loving bond between the two of them. If they have a minor problem I ask them to work together as a team to solve it, then praise loads when they do.

I really really want them to be close when they're older and sometimes say "don't forget you two are friends forever".

@hush

I really resonate with what you say. I am one of three. I wish we were close but really aren't . My brother is a recluse and wants nothing to do with us really. I live in the same area now but he won't visit us and has no interest in having a relationship with my children. He visits my mother about once a year when there is something in it for him.
My sister and I are not close. We are very different in some ways but in others quite similar and live some distance from each other now. She is quite a bit younger. We have a wary and tense relationship with a lot of hurt feelings on both sides. She doesn't confide in me and vice versa. We never phone each other as she has made it clear she doesn't want that. She enjoys visiting, but is quite selfish and narcissistic so I find it a strain to have her family around for too long. i don't enjoy visiting her for various reasons, so we see each other once a year for a day or so.
I really wish we could all be there for one another, but we aren't at all close. The whole family never gets together.
Two of my adult children had a big fall out about two years ago and have't spoken since. I have tried so hard to get them to reconcile but they won't engage with each other. It makes me incredibly sad, as having a close family is very important to me, given the way my own family is. My parents were hopeless grandparents and so were my in laws, so they haven't had experience of loving family relationships within the wider family. It really gets me down actually.
I used to want a Waltons family when I was younger, and hoped that I could build that through my own children, but it hasn't worked out.
i am having to accept that i can't change the status quo. Fortunately two of my children are close, and phone and text each other a lot, despite living at different ends of the country.

I am one of 6 siblings. The relationships between us are varied and complex but on the whole we are mostly very close. One brother lives quite far away but when he comes home every few months it's like he never left. We often pair off in certain ways, as in pairs of us have similar interests. I have one brother I would go to comicon with, one who likes the same books as me, one sister who shares my taste in clothing, one who enjoys the same music etc. We pair off in a lot of these things.

Some things (paintballing and family meals for example) can get all of us together and other things can pull in a majority but not all.

I wouldn't be without them. I see people who dont have the group dynamic we do, the closeness with their siblings, or any siblings at all, and I am always glad for mine. Our parents were basically useless and we relied heavily on one another growing up.

I wish I could have given DS this gift, but as many say, it's really potluck how well siblings will get along. We got very lucky. My DS and his older sister (my DSD who is 8 years older) don't get on particularly well at the moment but maybe when they are adults they will.. I couldn't have more children after him. If I could, I would have had another two or maybe more because the sibling thing genuinely means that much to me. I feel sad for my little boy that he doesn't have anyone close in age to him that he can play with and connect with but who knows if he would have got along with any younger siblings anyway?

I have two sisters. Barely have a relationship with my eldest and honestly I think it's hard to be close to someone as controlling and disrespectful as her. I get on great with my other sister. My eldest sister moved to Australia and makes very little effort to stay in touch but still expects everyone to 'support her' despite offering nothing to anyone else and being entirely unreliable on the occasions when she does visit on we try and arrange to talk to each other.

My two kids are really close. They argue sometimes, but are much more likely to cuddle up together (they are 10 and 12) and look after each other. I'm hoping the trick is to teach them to care for and respect others, even when opinions differ - hoping because this is what we're focusing on to try and create a different future for them. I can look back on my childhood and see how my sister got to be so uncaring about anyone else, so I do have some sympathy but that doesn't mean I have to put up with her verbal assaults when she does not get her way.

It's really great to read about the way so many people on this thread are actively trying to teach their kids to be close and supportive of one another. Thinking of my OH , he is one of four and his parents pitted them against each other all the time . It has damaged them and their relationships .

I really wish I had a close relationship with my brother but he is very unemotional. I do think my parents played a role in this, he always got "your the oldest and she is little" growing up and even I knew at the time that this was unfair on occasions and I was being a brat, so I think he may harbour some resentment, my mum was also very emotionally involved in me and I think she kind of left him more alone thinking boys were my dad's area but my dad was very detached with both of us. He has got right-wing as he has got older, encouraged by his wife and so we have very little in common. I do wonder if age gap played a part and if we are just wired differently as well. I really hope if my child has siblings I can encourage closeness. I'm envious of those who have a close sibling relationship.

I feel so lucky reading this. I'm close with my 2 brothers, we will all do anything for each other. Potentially as our mum is so shit and I being the eldest looked after them from a young age. Despite one of them often living on the other side of the world we are still close.
We fought as kids and teens, sometimes as adults and have amazing debates but none of us holds a grudge with the other ever.
One brother took me too hospital when I was miscarrying, the other took me in the night to hospital with extreme sickness all while my useless ex was "ill/ working/ sleeping after a night shift" whatever.

My brother and I are close. Not in a sense where we speak on the phone every day or anything but we support each other when needed and always available to each other. There is 5 years between us and I'm the eldest.

Our parents never forced us to get along, our relationship feels pretty organic and we have worked on it ourselves.

DH on the other hand is the eldest of four brothers. PIL have effectively used him as a second father for the youngest two. Forces them to interact. They're all very, very different people and their relationship is very one sided, they call DH when they need help be it emotionally or financially but we wouldn't be able to rely on them if it was the other way.
MIL seems intent on them not ending up like her siblings who are all pretty much low or no contact but by doing this has created a false relationship which is strained and always teetering on collapse.

I have two sisters one older by 10 years and one younger by 14 months.
I fell out with the older one so the younger one said she’s going to stop talking to me. I just cannot deal with all the drama so nc with both now. They seem to get on together now but only I think because I used to get on with younger one and older one has gone in and seized the chance to replace that as we didn’t do a lot with her before as she lived far away. Since they decide now every Mother’s Day and birthday to go out with my mum etc without inviting me and without me having a chance to do anything with my mum I decided I may as well just leave them all to it and get on with my own family.

One thing that was very annoying though is my parents always used to insist my younger sister was attached to me by the hip at all times. That was very annoying and I see other mums doing this to their dc and think surely you realise you can’t force a relationship. My sis also had to be invited to every party I went to days out with friend etc and I did find that very suffocating when I just wanted my own friends.

There is only 13 months between my brother and I. We are not close and never have been. My parents think it's 'a shame' even though they did nothing to nurture any sort of decent relationship between us growing up.

We have never fallen out as adults, we just don't have anything to say with each other, and you know what, that's completely fine!

My dh is the same with his sister. Only a few years between them but they just don't have anything to say to each other. There is no closeness there.

This is why I don't see why people get obsessed with sibling age gaps or worrying about having only children. I know siblings that are 15 years apart who are the best of friends, ones who are so close in age but are practically strangers as adults and everything in between.

There is no magic formula for strong sibling relationships