“He took my toy!”

“She pulled my hair!”

“I hate the baby! Can you please put her back?”

The cries echo through your home, each syllable grating on your nerves. At first, you try to be sweetly reasonable…but as the fighting, bickering, and whining continues and actually escalates, you not only get more shrill and unreasonable in your replies, you start seriously wondering WHY you had more than one child in the first place. If you’re dealing with an older child and a newborn addition to the family, it can be heartbreaking: they loved the baby when he or she was in your tummy and right after you brought the little bundle home. Now, once the older child has started realizing their “mommy time” has been effectively reduced, the green-eyed monster of jealously rears its ugly head.

So how do you defuse sibling rivalry?!