Being Siblings

Having Thai Food one day after school.

There are these pair of boys in Nigel’s school whom the teachers have to pay special attention to each morning as they get out of the car. On some days, they open the door, walk out together hand-in-hand to the school foyer. On other days, there is pushing, shouting and sometimes tears. One day I was there when I heard one of them say to the mum, very loudly, “I wish I didn’t have a brother!” before he stormed off. His brother came out and shoved him and a fight almost broke out. One traffic volunteer pays special attention to the pair each morning, helping to usher them out before the punches start to fly.

Our kids aren’t as violent (although I’ve seen that look of danger in Amber’s eyes) but every day you will hear verbal abuse being thrown around in the house, backseat of the car and so on. These can be in the form of:

• Calling each other weird names
• Copying what the other one says and trying to mimic their voices and tone
• Telling on each other (e.g. “Daddy, Gege called me the S word”, “Mummy, Jie Jie said I farted when I didn’t”)

So what do we do? Celest and I have very different approaches to dealing with this.

Celest would step in a put a stop to the squabbling. I think mainly because it drives her crazy and irritates her very core.

I would let it carry on and listen to all the nonsense they spew out. Given I chose to mentally let it carry on, I am not annoyed and in a certain way, enjoy the pleasant conversation. Imagine sitting on a super-scary rollercoaster while listening to soothing classical music. Did you watch Vacation?

In my approach, I save my hair and at the same time, let them strengthen their sibling bonds – as long as nobody gets (physically) hurt.

To be honest, the "mimicking" of each other that they do can get pretty annoying. That's when I practice the Art of Zen's yoga/mediation/ignoring. Shoving tissue paper into my ears sometimes helps too.