My younger brother and I fought terribly when we were little. Today, we couldn’t love each other more. We often laugh at the rotten things we did to one another. Like the time I tied my mother’s pantyhose – hung
My younger brother and I fought terribly when we were little.
Today, we couldn’t love each other more. We often laugh at the rotten things we did to one another. Like the time I tied my mother’s pantyhose – hung over the bathtub faucet to dry – into knots and then blamed it on him.
Four years apart, we were best friends and worst enemies all rolled into one.
I look back and wonder what it was we had to fight about. We had parents who loved us, food to eat, nice clothing to wear and toys to play with.
I think about my relationship with my brother a lot when I look at my kids. They argue and fight about absolutely everything.
This one won’t share. That one hit me. She took it away from me. He called me a bad name. He didn’t leave any for me. She won’t get out of my room.
It sometimes feels like the arguing is all day, every day.
No one ever asked me when I was growing up why my brother and I fought so much. I don’t know what my answer might have been back then.
But I thought maybe my kids could offer me some insight today. So I asked them why they fight. “I don’t know,” my 8-year-old son said.
“Because he’s mean to me,” my 7-year-old said of his older brother.
My 3-year-old daughter just stared at me.
“Don’t make her answer, Mom, she doesn’t know,” the 8-year-old said.
See, he is her protector. The oldest would travel to the moon and back for his little sister, if she asked. With the 7-year-old, it’s a completely different story. Perhaps it stems from his long stint as the family baby being stolen by this little girl that makes him irritate her so.
When the 3-year-old is screaming, you can bet it’s over something my middle child has done.
When the 7-year-old is screaming, you can bet it’s over something the oldest has done.
When the 8-year-old is screaming, it could be either of his younger siblings that have attacked him.
I just don’t get it.
It’s such a complicated mess, these sibling relationships of love and hate.
Because it’s also true that when one of the boys has a sleepover at a friend’s house, the other cries for him all night long. The next day they greet each other with shouts of joy and hugs. Ten minutes later they’re fighting over what Wii game to play.
And when my daughter was scared to go talk to Santa Claus at a Christmas party, my boys each took one of her hands and went up with her so she wouldn’t be frightened.
We sometimes catch them all singing along with the radio and holding hands in the back of the minivan.
And when all three are in trouble, you’ve never seen such a united front in your life.
So if they love each other that much, why do they fight?
Since I couldn’t get a proper answer out of my children. I turned to my little brother.
“Why did we fight so much when we were kids?” I asked him.
“I don’t know. Maybe because we were together too much,” he said.
“Together too much? We lived together!”
He laughed, then said, “I think we were normal kids. I guess it was just because we were siblings.”
Someone once told me that you should always make every effort to show your brothers and sisters how much you love them, because they are the only people who know your history almost as well as you do. They are the people who share family stories and memories. The ones who know where you are coming from, because it’s where they’re from too.
I tell my children this often, and can only hope that they begin to understand it sometime before they grow up and move out of my house.
• Mommy Talk is written by reporters Marci Laehr Tenuta and Janine Anderson.
