Question: Our 13-year-old and 15-year-old sons fell out over a month ago. Despite separate parental mediation, relations between them are still not great. They've gone from general horseplay and good-natured slagging to ignoring each other. The older boy has a tendency to invade the younger's space both physically and verbally. On this occasion the younger lashed out and boxed the older.
Both of them were a bit shocked.
The older felt he had to leave the room or real harm could have been done in retaliation. He is still quite annoyed over it.
It’s been explained to them, the longer something like this continues, the harder it will be to mend.
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Answer: Just as relationships with parents can go through a bumpy patch during the teenage years, so can relationships between siblings. As children become teenagers, they are in a process to become independent and to develop their identify separate from the family. This can lead to conflict and anger as family dynamics get shook up and change. As children a certain dynamic might have been established between your sons which reflected a hierarchy of the older being more dominant (most common in families). Your younger son was probably unhappy for a long period with the childhood "slagging and horseplay" and the tendency for his brother to invade his space.
However, it is only when he became a teenager that he was able to assert himself and unfortunately this came out in a physical outburst when he hit his brother. I can imagine that your older boy is upset and hurt by what happened and was probably unaware of how his behaviour had been impacting his younger brother.
While such physical confrontations in families can be shocking, they are very common and if handled well can be one-off events and a chance to reshape family relationships more positively.
Remove pressure to get back to normal
As a parent, it is understandable that you might want to get things back to the way they were and for your sons to quickly become “friends again” . However, it might be better to be much more patient and to listen carefully to them individually as they learn from what happened and work out their relationship. Most likely is that this is start of them developing a more adult relationship with each other as brothers. This might mean them finding new ways of getting on that are different than when they were younger and also include new boundaries (eg, respecting personal space, with no slagging and horseplay) and mutual independence with them having their own individual friends, interests and lives.
Be on both their sides
As you patiently help them resolve this dispute, it is very important that you don’t take a side. Don’t judge your older boy for his mistake of not respecting personal space or the younger for hitting out.
Instead, patiently listen to both their sides and help them see the other’s point of view as well. Continue to be patient mediators as you help them work out a new teenage relationship with each other.
– John Sharry is founder of the Parents Plus Charity and an adjunct professor at the UCD School of Psychology. See solutiontalk.ie