how do you deal with petty sibling rows...

[hatwoman]

because I'm so fed up with them...

I leave the room

All they want is an audience

OR if i'm feeling vile I banish them upstairs

if it is petty and noone is getting hurt...

ignore it

Agreed - they have to learn to resolve things themselves. My mother used to send my brother and I out of doors!

Hide my head in the garage reading a novel sand?
No no no, I'm sure that's not the PC response...

Oh, I have given up. I refuse any more to mediate or get involved unless they get very violent or I desperately need them to sort it out so we can get something else done.

Go into the kitchen, pour glass of wine and enjoy while they sort themselves out.

I leave them to it. Although do intervene if it sounds like blood is about to be shed.

It is so boring isn't it? I think that because there is a 7.5 year age gap between my sister and me we didn't have the sort of rows that DS and DD with a 22 month age gap have.

Increasingly, not at all. I don't want to hear details of them and refuse to allow them to tell me. If they look like they are about to kill each other I say that they have until I have counted slowly to 10 to resolve it, otherwise they are both in equal amounts of trouble - almost always works.

As Octaviapink says, send'em out.

We are very rural, no neighbours but a footpath. Once two women walkers walked past our garden as ds was having a very loud tantrum, screaming in the bushes. One remarked to me "So that's why you are so isolated!"