siblings Archives - Happy Healthy Kids

Cooperative Board Games: A Cure for Summer Squabbles?

May 25, 2017 by Kelley Leave a Comment

Summer is fantastic and all, but there are two problems that always seem to heat up with the weather around our house: boredom and sibling squabbles. School vacation ensures more downtime, together, which is awesome until my three boys decide there’s nothing to do but bother one another. It’s times like these when I often suggest that they play a game—we have tons, from classics like Stratego to sports-themed ones like Foosball. But these competitions don’t always end well.

Recently, a friend introduced me to the world of cooperative games when her son gave my 5-year-old a board game called “Race to the Treasure” for his birthday. In it, players work together to create a path to a treasure before mean ogres do. The excitement was not in the competition, but the thrill of choosing cards and working together toward a common goal, and it was, surprisingly, an instant hit in our house. I’ve since done a little reading about cooperative games, and found out that it’s a growing trend, and not for nothing: Academics have studied these activities and discovered there are some very real benefits, including decreasing kids’ aggressive behaviors both during, and after, play.

Check out some really excellent examples of the genre, below. While many cooperative games exist online, too, I’m sticking to board games here, because I see this as a great opportunity to break from electronics—and as it happens, many of these games have super-rich graphics that are almost as eye-popping as what you’d see on a screen. Consider stocking up in time for summer “break”…at press time, Amazon was running a promotion in which several cooperative games were deeply discounted.

Race to the Treasure
Best for ages 4 and up
By drawing cards with various-shaped pathways and using their spatial relation skills, children must find their way to the treasure before a mean ogre does. Additional cards representing keys and “snacks” for the ogre add some strategy challenges to the game.

Dinosaur Escape
Best for ages 4 and up
The dinos need to get back to Dinosaur Island; can kids work together using their memory and collaborative skills to return them safely?

Outfoxed
Best for ages 5 and up
A pot pie is missing, and children need to gather clues to crack the case. The cool “special evidence” scanner might be kids’ favorite part of the game.

Jenga
Best for ages 6 and up
There’s a debate out there about whether this is a competitive or cooperative game, and the answer is that it can be either. Instead of tagging the person who topples the tower as the loser, spin the game as a challenge to see how high the group can build the tower.

Forbidden Island
Best for ages 8 and up
A Mensa award winner, this pioneer among cooperative games challenges players to work together to capture sacred treasures before the island under them sinks into oblivion. My 8-year-old got this as a birthday gift last year, and the boys love not just playing the game, but also simply checking out the cool illustrations and game pieces.

Mysterium
Best for ages 10 and up
Slightly spooky and definitely exciting, this game has a strong storyline about a crime that’s been committed at an old castle. Players are divided between a ghost and psychic mediums who need to interpret signs to solve the mystery.
Best for ages 10 and up

Freedom: The Underground Railroad
Best for ages 13 and up
Combining history, social consciousness, strategy, and collaboration, this game pretty much has it all. Players assume the role as abolitionists who must evade slave catchers to raise money and shepherd people to safety. The game has variable difficulty settings, but it’s pretty complex nature does make it best for older kids.

Top photo: Forbidden Island game shot by Derek Buff via Flickr.

Does Birth Order Matter (Really)?

July 21, 2015 by Kelley Leave a Comment

Admit it: You’ve bought into the idea, at one time or another, that birth order really matters. It’s fascinating to consider the idea that the reason your children’s personalities are so different has to do with where they’re positioned in the nuclear family tree. And the stereotypes, so often on-point anecdotally, can be convenient. Your oldest is so (studious, responsible) because that’s the way firstborns just are. Your baby will always be (vivacious, goofy) because she’s, well, the baby. As for your middles—forget it. They may be making their own pancakes by age 2, but their (feelings of isolation, neglect) might cause them to fly the coop and never look back at age 22.

But a big new study deflates some of the most common beliefs about the effects of birth order on children. Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign studied 377,000 American high school students, a massive sample size relative to other birth order studies to date. The study was controlled for such potential confounders as family’s economic status and number of children. The team found:

-Firstborns do have a higher IQ than later-borns, but by just a single point—a statistically significant but, according to researchers, meaningless difference. The strongest association in terms of cognitive trends was for higher verbal ability in firstborns, but the correlation—of just .08—was still too small to matter much.

-Being born first was also associated with being slightly more extroverted, agreeable, and conscientious, as well as (surprisingly) less anxious, according to their data. But these personality correlations are, like IQ, too tiny to matter in real life. “You are not going to be able to see it with the naked eye,” one researcher explained. “You’re not going to be able to sit two people down next to each other and see the differences between them. It’s not noticeable by anybody.”

The researchers’ takeaway? “The message of this study is that birth order probably should not influence your parenting, because it’s not meaningfully related to your kid’s personality or IQ,” the study’s lead author, Rodica Damian, Ph.D., said. In other words, we shouldn’t expect—or explain away—certain behaviors due to our kids’ position in the family. This provides some helpful perspective for me, as the mom of three boys with very different abilities and personalities. There have been times when I’ve attributed one kid’s strengths or weaknesses to birth order; and other times when I’ve wondered why my oldest isn’t more detail-oriented, or my youngest isn’t “easier” (i.e., living up to the more positive birth-order stereotypes). Fact is, they’re all delightfully complex—and life is, on all but the craziest days, all the more interesting because of it.

Photo credit: J.K. Califf via Photo Pin, license cc

Playing is Learning: Alphabet Tag

September 30, 2014 by Kelley Leave a Comment

Last night, as I rinsed the dinner dishes, I watched out of my window as my three boys played soccer in the backyard. Well, the 8-year-old and 6-year-old played soccer; the 2-year-old ran back and forth, always three steps behind both his brothers and the ball, shouting into the wind. His one attempt to get a kick in resulted in a Charlie-Brown-esque back-plant, at which point it was time to drag him inside for bath time, howling the whole way.

It’s hard to find games that all ages of children can play together, without the older ones getting bored and the little kids getting frustrated (or vice versa). An exception is tag, which most kids under 10 can get into, especially if you have some sort of wacky variation up your sleeve. A surprising crowd-pleaser is Alphabet Tag. You can vary the rules to suit children’s literacy level, but in the end, it gets everyone running, with a learning component to boot.

You need:

-Chalk. (You can’t beat Crayola’s, for its color selection and smooth-writing angled top):
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-A sizable and smooth asphalt or cement surface (like a driveway or blacktop)

How to play:

-Write letters A-Z, spacing them out and varying orientation and placement throughout the playing field
Big-kid variation: Encourage kids 5 and up to write the letters themselves.

-Designate a person who’s “it.” The person who’s “it” calls out a letter, and runs around the perimeter of the playing area once. The other players need to find the letter and try to beat whomever is “it” to the letter that was called. Big-kid variation: Choose a category for every round, such as fruit, countries, ice cream flavors, etc. The person who’s “it” calls out a word in that category, and runs around the perimeter of the playing field once. The other players find the first letter of the word and try to beat whomever is “it” to that letter.

-When a person is tagged before reaching the right letter, he or she becomes “it.”

If your children balk at the not-so-sly educational component of this particular game, remind them that you could, instead, be inside doing chores or paying bills while they figure out a game for themselves. I find that kids value pretty much any dedicated playtime with the busy grown-ups in their lives, and so I might as well engage them in something at least semi-enriching (as long as it’s fun, too, of course). And this is just the kind of game that can bring you right into the colder months of fall and even winter, as long as there’s no snow or ice to contend with.

When the Bully is a Sibling

September 22, 2014 by Kelley Leave a Comment

Sibling rivalries are as old as Cain and Abel, and generally speaking, nowhere near so dramatic. It’s the rare parent of multiple children who doesn’t deal with squabbling or even screaming from time to time. But new research suggests that parents should scrutinize their kids’ relationships with one another a little more closely. A study by scientists at the University of Oxford found that kids who were bullied by their own siblings were twice as likely as other kids to suffer from depression and anxiety. “Forms of bullying where victims are shoved around the playground or targeted at work have been well documented,” says lead author Lucy Bowes, Ph.D. “However, this study uncovers a largely hidden form of bullying. Victims of sibling bullying are offered little escape as sibling relationships endure throughout development.”

Photo credit: Susan via Flickr, cc

That was the real eye opener for me. Sure, it’s hard enough for a child when there’s a bully in her class, on her bus, or at her lunch table. But what if the bully shares his toys? His dinner table? His bedroom? While educators are falling over themselves these days to implement bullying awareness and policies on school grounds, we parents tend to write off sibling-to-sibling struggles as a normal part of household dynamics. And yet, it makes perfect sense that when the power dynamic is lopsided enough, kids can feel there’s nowhere to turn, and the negative impact is lasting.

To be sure, bullying is different than garden-variety “fighting,” and the majority of sibling squabbles are just that. In the Oxford study, researchers defined sibling bullying as incidents of being ignored or verbally or physically abused by a brother or sister several times a week. Among 3,452 kids studied, 23 percent reported this level of bullying. (Interestingly, girls were more likely to be victims of bullying, and older brothers were most often the perpetrators.) Of the bullied children, 12% were clinically depressed, 16% had anxiety, and 14% attempted some kind of self harm (cutting, etc.) in the previous year. Those who said they were never bullied by a brother or sister were about half as likely to have these issues.

While it would be silly to freak out over every little battle your kids’ wage over the front seat or the remote control, it’s clearly important that we be a little more aware of the way they fight, and intervene when necessary (as exhausting as it can feel sometimes). HHK adviser Polly Dunn, Ph.D, a psychologist and mother of four who has seen her share of sibling squabbles, helped come up with some tips:

1. Watch how your kids interact. Look for power imbalances. When one child (typically the older sibling, but not always) is frequently starting the arguments, initiating physical fights, or talking badly about the other child, those are all red flags.

2. Treat sibling bullying as you would school bullying. Chances are, if you got a call from school and were told that your child is bullying a classmate, you’d take it seriously. It’s important to apply the same gravity to bullying at home. “I have a zero tolerance policy for bullying, both in and out of my home,” says Dr. Dunn. “If one of my children is exhibiting bullying behaviors towards someone else (sibling or not), I let them know that this is not acceptable behavior and that if they continue there will be consequences. And then I follow through. It’s important to make sure that the consequences reflect the seriousness of your zero tolerance policy and are of a currency that your children understand. For example, if one sibling is bullying another then the offender will be grounded from all electronic devices and extracurricular activities for one week. If they can’t shape up, then that will be extended.”

3. Teach your children to speak up if they’re feeling victimized. Often, we discourage kids from “tattling.” While it’s important that we teach children to stand up for themselves, that might feel impossible for a kid who’s cowed by an imposing brother or sister. Teach them the difference between a disagreement and a bullying situation, and make sure they feel comfortable coming to you or your spouse when they feel unable to stand their ground.

4. Foster situations in which your kids can work or play together peacefully. Whether they’re contending for the last roll at dinner or your attention after a long day, a sibling can easily feel like your child’s stiffest competition. Be careful not to stoke rivalries by comparing one to another, and make sure you build a little lighthearted communal downtime—walks, treat baking, family movie time—into their weeks. “Sibling relationships are so powerful because they know each other like no one else could,” says Dr. Dunn. “They grow up with the same parents, the same grandparents, the same homes, the same values, the same happy memories, and the same problems. Although each may be impacted differently, siblings can relate to each other in a way that no one else can.”

How Siblings Influence Kids’ Weight

August 15, 2014 by Kelley Leave a Comment

Lending new meaning to the term “big brother”: A recent study of more than 10,000 families finds that siblings are even more powerful than parents when it comes to predicting kids’ weight. Having an obese brother or sister makes a child about five times more likely to be very heavy too, say the study’s researchers, from Massachusetts General Hopsital, Cornell, and Duke University.

Photo by: Johan Sunin via Flickr

There are some obvious potential explanations: Siblings grab snacks out of the same pantry, and usually sit down to the same meals. They often play together, in either sporty or sedentary ways. But the data suggests that some psychological factors may also play a role. Younger siblings are most influenced by an older sibling’s weight if that big brother or sister is the same sex. Kids really do model themselves after the elders closest to them, in so many ways.

So if one child is gaining more weight than is healthy, what can you do to help him—and in turn, his impressionable brothers and sisters? Rather overhauling the heavier child’s diet, take a close look at what you’re feeding the whole family, says Suzanne Rostler, R.D., a nutrition specialist in the Optimal Weight For Life (OWL) clinic at Boston Children’s Hospital, and co-author of Ending the Food Fight. “All family members should be eating in a healthy way, regardless of where they fall on the weight scale,” she says. While sibs may be the focus in this study, she adds, the onus is really on parents, not children, to set family food trends, such as eating mostly fresh, whole foods and limiting highly processed snack foods. (A good rule of thumb: If a snack food has the shelf life of years, it probably isn’t good for your body, regardless of fat and calorie content, Rostler says.) “These habits will trickle down to the oldest child, which will trickle down to younger children,” says Rostler. “And the more you can model good habits, rather than talk about them, the better. A lot of kids we see feel ‘the more you tell me to do this, the less I want to do it.'”

And what if one child has developed a newfound interest in a healthy habit, like eating fruit salads or riding bikes? Excellent: Encourage her to let her sib join in. “Just make sure you don’t frame it as, you (or your sister or brother) need to do this to lose weight,” says Rostler. “Food is emotional, and a comfort for many kids and adults too. If a child is feeling bad because of weight, you risk making them turn to food to feel better, and the cycle continues.”