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Nov. 9, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
29:44
How Siblings Can Get Along!
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All right, great question from a subscriber on locals.
Every now and then I ask subscribers for particular questions that are near and dear to their heart.
And so this one is near and dear to my heart.
And I will put the caveat up front that I do have, in fact, a brother, but I do not have a relationship with said brother.
And we have not talked in, gosh, I guess it's somewhere between 20 and 25 years.
I could get it in more detail, but it's something like that.
I will also put the caveat in that I have only one child.
And so I have not had a successful sibling relationship of my own.
And I have not managed a sibling relationship in my family just.
So you know, now I do have good friends who have many, multiple children, four, five, six.
And so I have seen a lot of sibling stuff in action.
And the parents, I'm thinking of one family in particular that I know have three boys who all get along famously well and a daughter.
And they are the peaceful parenting people.
They peacefully parent.
So I've sort of had conversations with them and observed that family, you know, kind of up close.
So just be aware of the caveats that I will speak with some theoretical beliefs, but I do not have tangible personal experience of successful sibling relationships.
And so just be aware of that.
I'm going to put that sort of caveat up front so you can put what I'm saying in context.
So before we can talk about how to have good sibling relationships, one thing I can tell you is how sibling relationships go wrong.
And I only laugh, of course, because it's been many years, long ago resolved for me.
But you can, a lot of us, if you've had difficult sibling relationships, we know what goes wrong with sibling relationships.
And the typical thing that goes wrong with sibling relationships is that the older sibling often perceives himself to be, I'm going to say older sibling male, younger sibling female, just because his or her makes it easier.
I don't have to say oldest and youngest all the time.
So we've got an older sibling, Bob, and a younger sibling, Sue.
So let's take a sibling relationship, Bob and Doug.
Bob is the older.
Let's say by a couple of years, Doug is the younger.
So where do these relationships typically go wrong?
Well, they go wrong if empathy is not shown from the older to the younger.
If the older child is not being treated with empathy by the parents, then the older child, Bob in this case, Bob the older child, doesn't know how to show empathy to the younger child, to Doug.
And if there's a competition for parental time, attention, and resources, then Bob is going to resent Doug.
And Doug, being younger and smaller and weaker, is going to have a tough time.
Or it's going to be kind of impossible for him to resist that.
So let's say they're three years apart, right?
So when Bob is six, Doug is three, which is a massive difference, a massive difference in abilities, in reasoning, in size, in strength, in weight, you name it, in development and so on, right?
So it's almost like a different species at that point, sort of between six and eight.
And even if you look at sort of, say, puberty, when Bob is 12 and Doug, the younger boy is nine, that is a world of difference.
Nine is a child and 12 is, you know, on the path to, or perhaps already has achieved, you know, the beginnings of manhood, of puberty, and so on.
And his voice went dropped down low and things started to grow.
So that is a huge gap.
15, you're dating, 12, you're not.
18, you're an adult.
15, you're dating.
I mean, there's just not that much that they're going to have in common.
Now, from the older sibling standpoint, the question is, how does my younger sibling benefit me?
Is my younger sibling an imposition?
Is my younger sibling in the way?
Is my younger sibling something someone that I have to be responsible for?
Am I sort of roped in as a substitute or surrogate parent?
And is there resentment?
And, you know, the sort of famous tag along.
My younger brother looks up to me and my younger brother wants to tag along with my friends, right?
So you're 10 and you want to go biking with your friends who are also 10 and your seven-year-old brother wants to come along and I can't do anything without him.
He's always tagging along.
And of course, the parents are wanting to appease the younger brother by saying, oh, take him along.
He really looks up to you.
He really respects you.
And then what happens, of course, even the difference between a 10-year-old and a seven-year-old in terms of stamina and balance and all of that.
So maybe the younger sibling is, he certainly wouldn't have the stamina and the strength.
So maybe he goes out, he gets tired, he wants to go home.
And then the elder sibling is non-plussed, let us say.
Or if there is going to be a sport, right?
There's a sort of pickup soccer game or a pickup baseball game, and there's a 12-year-old and a nine-year-old.
Well, that's a big difference in size, strength, and athletic ability.
And so the older sibling likes to win, wants to win, and the younger sibling is going to impede that winning.
And so that's negative as well.
There isn't much benefit to being the younger.
A famous story for me, and I've said this a bunch of times before, but I remember being non-plussed that I was the younger brother.
And even in boarding school, we would line up in front to back.
And it was by last name alphabetically and then first name alphabetically.
And my brother's first name comes ahead of mine in the alphabet.
So even in that alphabetical lineup, he was ahead of me.
So, but yeah, he got to stay up later.
He got more pocket money and more privileges and so on.
And yeah, it bothered me.
I mean, I shouldn't laugh so long ago now, right?
But I remember my brother was supposed to be up five minutes later than I was.
And I knew that that was counting to 300.
So I would count to 300 and then I would say, bedtime.
You know, it wasn't ideal.
And I'm not, you know, I'm not blaming anybody but myself for that.
I mean, the family structure wasn't great, but I was very competitive and very concerned with, I was very concerned with my brother having even more privileges because it feels unjust when you're the younger sibling.
You're existing in the same time continuum, right?
And, you know, why did they get extra privileges to stay up later, more pocket money, more privileges, and so on, right?
That's negative.
And there's nothing good in that sense about being the younger sibling.
So I remember being at my aunt's house when I was very young and said, you know, and people said the conversation was about being younger versus older.
And I said, well, I may be younger, but I get to live two and a half years longer.
And of course, I was informed that this was not at all certain I could be hit by a bus tomorrow.
And the fundamental injustice of the universe rolled against my bowling ball pins of belief and faith and hope with, well, I suppose the only thing I can say is a giant bowling ball of factual truth.
So the older sibling is just bigger, better, stronger, taller, and more competent as a whole.
And there's not much of a plus for the younger sibling.
What do you get as a benefit for the younger sibling?
You get hand-me-down clothes, you get left behind.
I remember walking, again, it's very, very young, but it's an early memory of mine of everybody, my mom and my brother and other people walking down a street in London very fast, or at least too fast for me, right?
And I was like, wait, you know, like it was like half whining, half complaining, because I'm like, they're getting swallowed up by people ahead.
And I'm like, y'all need to wait.
Like, I can't keep up, right?
There's sort of little toddler legs.
So as far as good quality sibling relationships go, it's tough.
I mean, I'll be straight up.
I mean, my family might have been obviously a bit more dysfunctional than your average bear, but it is tough to figure out what the younger sibling has to offer the elder sibling.
Now, one of the great challenges, of course, of being the elder sibling is the almost inevitable feeling of superiority because you are taller, stronger, faster, smarter, you know, more developed, and so on.
And your younger sibling looks up to you and wants to hang out with you and wants to hang out with your friends and so on.
And being in an accidental or artificial position of superiority, obviously through no hard work of your own, being in an accidental position of superiority by simply happening to have exited the maternal vagina before.
It's not like something you earn.
It's just a primogenitor.
It's something that happened to you.
And so the big tough thing with the elder sibling is to try to instill a sense of humility, to push back and fight back against the vanity of the accidental birth order.
That's pretty important.
Now, on the same, in the same problem or in the same vein, the younger sibling has to be cured somehow of worship and resentment, of envy and resentment.
To look up at the older sibling as taller, cooler, stronger, more developed is natural.
And there is resentment as well, because children exist in a time contemporaneous to each other.
So for me, the fact that my brother got to stay up later and have more pocket money, more allowance, seemed unfair because we exist in the same time frame.
Well, he's older.
It's like, but, you know, you kind of get that as a kid, but you kind of don't get that.
I mean, when you're very little.
I'm talking like, I don't know, five or so, right?
So that's a challenge.
Saying to the older sibling, you exist to help your younger sibling is not ideal.
It's not ideal.
The older sibling has more resources, certainly has more parental resources, right?
So let's say that, again, we're sort of talking about Bob and Doug.
The older sibling is three years older.
So he gets three years of direct and focused parental attention, no distractions, no substitutes, no split focus or anything like that.
And then the baby comes along and the parental attention is significantly withdrawn from the elder child and devoted to the baby.
Is there resentment in that?
Absolutely.
Often.
Not always, not always.
I've seen it not happen.
And that takes a particular amount of management on the part of the parents.
Parents will often take the path of least resistance, which is to say that if the kid is three and there's a new baby, well, the three-year-old can amuse himself for a certain amount of time.
That's just a sort of fact, right?
You can leave them with some building blocks or puzzles or something like that.
And the three-year-old is walking around and so on.
And if they're in a sort of safe room, it's sort of childproof, then they can have toys and you can leave them alone for a certain amount of time.
Not much, but, you know, a certain amount of time.
And so what parents do is they say, well, a lot of parents, they say, well, the baby is not someone who can defer gratification.
The baby is someone who has to have his needs met now, whereas the older child is more self-sufficient and can wait.
This is, of course, true in particular if the baby has any health issues.
I'm not necessarily talking serious health issues, but if the baby has health issues, then the fact that the parental time and attention is taken away is tough, right?
So the parents are just learning how to rest better because the older kid is sleeping hopefully through the night at that age or before sort of two, 18 months, too.
And so the parents are now tired again.
They have no time and no energy.
And what they do is they follow the path of least resistance and they focus on the child who needs them the most.
And they, to some degree, ignore the child who needs them less.
Now, of course, what this teaches the older child is the way that you get parental resources is you demand them, you need them, you require them.
You make it an absolute.
Because of course, the older child sees that every time the baby cries, the parents go.
Every time the baby needs something, the parents go.
And then he's left to play with his blocks for, you know, what feels like a long time as a little kid.
So he learns that you have to make a lot of noise and you have to have tantrums and you have to fuss and you have to be difficult in order to get parental resources because the parents are taking the path of least resistance.
And what that tells the older kid a lot of times is that if I don't kick up a fuss, I get bubkas.
I get nothing.
I get nothing.
And that's why you end up with older siblings who become difficult and who become have tantrums and become obstructive.
If the parents, you know, sort of explain, well, the baby does need some resources, but we're going to make sure to carve time out for you.
It's one of these things where it feels like it's not a good use of your time because the older child is more self-sufficient and you want to spend your time on the younger child.
But of course, if ignoring your older child and only responding to the absolute needs of the younger child of the baby, then you're training the older child to be more intrusive and to kick and scream until he gets what he wants, which is going to cost you more time in the long run.
I mean, not only is it not particularly nice to ignore your older child for the sake of appeasing the baby, but it also is not efficient in terms of time.
And because if you can get the kids to play together in a relatively positive way, that frees up a staggering amount of time as a parent, right?
Because if your kids are fighting all the time or they don't want to play with each other or they're fussing or kicking each other's blocks over or whatever it is, right?
Then you end up losing a massive amount of time.
So, of course, the goal of parenting from a morality standpoint, of course, but also from just a general practical standpoint is to have the kids enjoy each other's company as much as possible.
But to do that, you have to have the elder sibling not resent the younger sibling.
And in order to do that, you have to find some way in which the older sibling perceives the addition of the younger sibling not as a net negative, not as a net negative.
Now, it's kind of tough to say to the older sibling or to find, to give the older sibling the impression that, hey, yay, the younger sibling has come along.
You get Bob to say, yay, I'm glad Doug is here, the baby, or whatever, right?
It's possible to do it, which of course means to involve the elder sibling in the care of the baby and also to make sure that quality time, solo time, single time is still spent with the older, with Bob.
Sorry, but Doug.
No, Bob, Bob, sorry, Bob, Bob.
I'm back.
I'm back.
So having one-on-one time, going to the park just with Bob and talking to Bob about the baby, listening to Bob's thoughts about the baby and so on, right?
All of that is there to, it's really tough to sell the baby as a positive to the elder sibling, but at least don't have it be a negative and don't have it be like night and day when the baby comes along.
Like you're just kind of tossed out into the outer wilds or into the outer wilderness and good luck.
You now go from close intimate cuddle time with mom and dad to kind of sitting alone with your blocks for what feels like an eternity while everyone takes care of the baby, right?
So the best way to ensure that you're going to have the most productive and harmonious and peaceful time as a parent is to make sure that the elder sibling is not massively losing out as a whole, but the younger sibling, right?
To make sure that you stay connected and you still have that quality time and, you know, to make sure that you still get that one-on-one time with the elder sibling, even if you've got a sort of hot potato with parenting, make sure that you still get that one-on-one time because, of course, otherwise the elder sibling looks at the younger sibling and says, well, this is just a net negative.
I hate that baby because it took away mom and dad and they're always tired.
They've got no time for me.
And of course, as a kid, you can't just be mad at your parents.
You can't just dislike your parents.
So what you do is instead of blaming your parents' choices, taking the path of least resistance in the short term while causing massive problems in the long term, you can't just get mad at your parents.
So what do you do?
Well, you get mad at the baby and you resent the baby.
You don't sit there and say, well, my parents are making bad decisions.
It's not the baby's fault, right?
That's not how kids' brains works.
Kids' brains are also taking the path of least resistance.
And it's way easier for the kid and way safer for the kid to blame the baby rather than blame the parents for bad decisions, right?
So you lack maturity and lack understanding and the baby can't do you any harm, right?
So your parents can do you harm, right?
They can get mad at you, yell at you, hit you, abandon you, whatever, right?
The baby can't do you any harm.
And as we all know, it's a whole lot easier in general to hate the person who can do you the least harm and conform to those who can do you the most harm.
And that means hating the baby and conforming with the parents.
So then, of course, the baby is fascinated with the older brother.
The younger baby is fascinated by the older brother because it's cool.
It's kind of neat, right?
And not a kid.
I mean, not a baby, not a parent, right?
It's kind of fascinating, right?
Closer in size to the baby.
And so the baby becomes fascinated by the brother.
And the baby wants to spend time with the brother and wants to engage with and interact with the brother.
But the brother, well, you know, in functional families, there'll be some level of interest and all of that.
But, you know, the brother, the older brother is going to get bored.
That's kind of inevitable.
It's going to get bored.
You know, I can only do this so many times and so on, right?
And that's natural.
And that's healthy, in fact.
That's healthy.
They should get bored, right?
If the four-year-old is not bored with the one-year-old, after a while, the four-year-old might not be developing in quite the right way as a whole.
So then how do you deal with the boredom?
That's always a big question, right?
How do you deal with the boredom?
Well, one of your kids is going to be bored.
And of course, it makes sense to do some appeasement to the baby or the toddler, the one-year-old versus the four-year-old, because the one-year-old has less capacity to engage with himself.
The one-year-old isn't going to have a whole lot of luck with a bunch of blocks and creating things.
Lego is just going to be stepped on and howled about.
And so there's just not that much.
You know, the four-year-old might be reading a little, or at least can have more interest in sort of paging through a book and so on.
And so you have to find something that they can all do together, right?
So you go to the park and it's tough, right?
Because the, well, you got to push the, what can a one-year-old do?
You put him in the swing and that's about it.
And then how can you play with the four-year-old when you're just pushing the one-year-old on the swing?
Well, the four-year-old is resentful because, of course, the four-year-old remembers when you would play with him, or at least has sort of basic body memory when you would play.
But you can't now and you can't, and it's a negative and a problem and so on, right?
So it's tough to sell the baby to the older sibling.
You can do, and it has some, because I did work in a daycare for a while, so I have some sense of this.
And there were siblings, of course, in the daycare.
I worked in, you can do some of the, look, you happen to be older.
Like it's just, it's just an accident.
You just happen to be older.
And I get that it's a drag.
Empathize with and understand the elder sibling's issue, that the baby is kind of a drag.
I mean, I totally understand that for my brother, I was somewhat of a drag.
And if the competitive stuff kicks in, it gets really brutal.
So we don't sort of have to get into all of that because that was really a mess in my family.
But to sort of understand and ask, you know, what's the pluses, what's good and bad about having your brother around, right?
And don't take it personally, right?
Because it's not like the older brother.
I mean, maybe the older brother begged the parents for a younger brother, but probably not.
Maybe.
It does happen, right?
But even if the older brother begged for a younger sibling, there's still things to be adjusted.
So, you know, point out the plus and the minus and be honest about the plus and the minus for you.
I love having the new baby.
I'm a lot more tired.
And, you know, I have to feed the baby, which sometimes can hurt my body.
And I miss time with you.
I love having a baby.
I loved having you as a baby.
I love having for the new baby.
But there's negatives too.
And here are my negatives.
What are yours?
And just have that.
You know, what is spoken loses its power.
It's just an amazing thing.
What is spoken loses its power?
And just having the kid verbalize the negatives takes the pressure off.
Whereas, of course, a lot of parents would be like, oh, you can't, like, how could you kind of have any problems with your brother?
There's nothing love.
It's positive.
I was saying, well, you know, I loved becoming a father.
I wouldn't trade it for the world.
But there were times where I was a little tired.
There were times when I was a little bored.
I'm not inhuman.
It's crazy to think otherwise, right?
So you have to find a way to reduce the competitive element.
So with your sibling a couple of years apart, there's neither competition nor cooperation.
They can't cooperate.
I mean, unless they're twins, right?
But there can't really be competition because it's kind of unfair, because the physical abilities are just so different.
It's like having a competition between the 16-year-old and the 13-year-old on who can get a date first, right?
I mean, it's just not particularly fair, right?
So understand that there's not going to be cooperation.
There can be play together, right?
But there's not going to be cooperation.
I mean, I remember my brother, you know, nicely teaching me how to play chess.
And I was a bit of a, well, I was a bit of a, I mean, I was a sucky loser.
I was not a good or graceful loser until into my teens.
And that was I was a, I threw tennis rackets.
And, you know, I remember one of the early games of chess my brother and I played.
I was staking my entire game because I thought that the king could move two squares.
And it turns out the king could only move one square.
I didn't understand that.
And we had an old encyclopedia.
So my brother took it down and we looked it up and he was right.
And it was, but it was the, you know, Smuggins triumphal stuff that was sort of annoying to me.
But, you know, so, but it wasn't a huge amount of fun for my brother to play chess with me when I was, you know, kind of confused about the rules, right?
So I, you know, there's some, you know, it's kind of cool to teach a kid something new, but it's really not super fun because I can't really compete with him in terms of playing chess.
Like, when I was young, what could I do better than my brother?
When younger siblings, what can you do better than your brother?
Well, you can't.
And that's going to feed your brother's vanity and it's going to feed your frustration.
And if the competition thing kicks in, it's really brutal.
It's really, I tell you, that's really brutal.
You just cannot get along.
And that stuff with my brother lasted into my teens, for sure.
He was better at me than most things.
I mean, the stuff that I was better at was hived off from him completely.
Like I wrote stories and he didn't.
And I programmed computers and he didn't.
And so there was no particular competition there.
But athletically, he's very athletic.
And athletically, he was better than me in most things.
I think the only thing that I could do was I could run faster in some circumstances.
I had a short-term speed burst that could outpace his, but that was about it.
I mean, honestly, that was pretty limited.
But in everything else, he was better.
A very athletic guy, you know, very good tennis player, very, very good at soccer.
I mean, the only thing I could do in soccer was goalie compared to my brother, very good at soccer, very good at tennis, and just athletic as a whole.
Highly competent.
And so it just wasn't that much, much fun for him.
We did end up kind of even matched in tennis.
I think he was a little better than me in tennis.
The only thing that was even was that I was a more cautious player, whereas so he'd be a bit wilder.
He called it wibbly tennis, where you're just kind of cautiously hitting the ball back over and waiting for the other person to make a mistake.
He preferred to sort of pound it.
And so I would sort of win by attrition.
It was not the most honorable win, obviously, to be having, ding, ding, ding, wham.
Oh, it's out.
Ding, ding, ding, wham.
Oh, it's out.
And so that wasn't that much fun for him either because he wanted to hit harder and faster and improve his skills.
Whereas I was just like, ding, ding, ding, very cautious, very cautious.
I may have lost some of my caution as I aged.
Maybe I should add more.
It's entirely possible.
But so you have to find something.
It's not going to be cooperation until they get older.
And it is the competition stuff is really toxic because it's unfair, right?
The competition stuff breeds frustration and anger on the part of the younger sibling, who often can't compete in any meaningful way, and breeds vanity and superiority on the part of the older sibling because it's relatively easy for them to win.
And this can escalate to like direct, direct violence.
I mean, my brother once punched me so hard, he almost dislocated my jaw.
It was sort of hanging loose and hurt for quite some time.
So yeah, it can really escalate to violence.
And you don't want that.
Obviously, that's really, it's really bad.
Really not good.
So try and find some way in which they can enjoy the difference and remind them that the difference is going to narrow, right?
The difference between 20 and 17 is not huge.
The difference between six and three is huge.
It's going to narrow.
And then just remind, of course, the siblings that you can go through your life together and you're the only people who can, right?
Your parents are going to die.
Your kids don't know you when you were young.
But your sibling is the only person who can go through all of life with you.
And that is a very, very good and important thing to hang on to that is really important.
And they won't understand that till they get older.
But nonetheless, it is super important because if you can get people to go through the whole life journey with you, you gain a huge amount of wisdom.
And also, because your siblings know you so well, they can really help you avoid problems or issues.
And that also is super important and a great benefit.
So just keep reminding the siblings of all the great benefits they can get from that.
And I hope that helps.
Lots of love.
Take care.
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