Parenting Thought #3: Siblings

I remember when I was pregnant with G I had a lot of mixed emotions one of which was concern that I was doing a dis-service to H.  With one child you can give them all your time and your love.  So why have siblings?? And secondly how should we respond to "sibling rivalry"? Do we teach them to ignore each other, to speak up, to not take it personally? I don't know if I fully understood the answers to these questions until recently when I watched G and H interact.  Here is what I have learned. Siblings can teach lessons to each other that no parent or situation can.  I believe that each child is hand picked for each set of parents, and that each child is picked to have certain siblings.  My oldest two are black and white on almost everything.  She plays princess and he plays bad guys attacking the princess, she likes her veggies cooked and he will only eat them raw, she likes the cake and he eats the frosting. They do fight.  Often. She cries, he cries, and often I cry too.  So why are these two siblings? I think for the same reason that P and I were meant to be married despite the fact that we were different in almost every way.  The differences in the siblings can act as learning experiences for them. Sometimes these differences actually compliment each other.  Children learn that there is more than one way to play games, eat food, and respond to situations. They learn from their sibling that sometimes people we love will say or do things that hurt us.  They learn to forgive and even forget.  Maybe if we learn why our children were meant to be in the same family we can promote learning from their different personalities and fostering growth, instead of accepting sibling rivalry and telling them to ignore each other.  We can treat their arguments as teaching moments and we can celebrate their differences.  Maybe if we can help them understand differences at a young age, they will be more likely to accept differences in others as they get older.  They will be more equiped to handle arguments that may arise in their lives. I have given H an unexpected gift by bringing G into this world for her.  And now I am starting to see what they are both learning from little Z.