211 Siblings and Their Friends - Connection and Communication

How can we navigate the delicate dance of nurturing family time/sibling relationships alongside the growing need for personal friendships in the lives of our children?

I'm often asked by extended family and friends, how is that my kids get along so well and have close relationships. 
Today we'll be looking at one thing we did in our family that made a big difference to cultivate unbreakable bonds. AND YET, as our kids get older, their need for other FRIENDSHIPS increases. Is it possible to grow and maintain sibling relationships while also growing friendships? It can be tough, but doable!
Let me share practical HELP for navigating your child's growing need for other friends while cultivating sibling relationships as well. 
We will use a LISTENER QUESTION to talk about balancing these facets of family life. I'll provide heartfelt guidance on a listener's dilemma about an older child's yearning for exclusive time with friends. 
This episode is an essential listen for parents who wish to foster deep connections within their family while respecting their children's social development.

Embark with me, Val Harrison, on a heartening journey towards strengthening the family unit.
Also be a part of our "Intentional Mom, Strong Family" Facebook community where wisdom and questions flow freely. 
In this episode, I also share a personal update on how Rich and I are diving deeper into our calling to help struggling marriages.
This is more than a podcast; it's a community of intentional parents, and your enthusiastic participation makes all the difference in creating strong families anchored by love and understanding.
LINKS:
Episode: https://www.practicallyspeakingmom.com/podcast/episode/78020fe0/130-part-2-your-childs-nine-circles-of-influence-on-their-self-perception-from-the-life-giving-words-series
Ebooks: Homeschooling in Real Life https://www.practicallyspeakingmom.com/product-page/7-system-for-homeschool-success-simplifying-schedules-records-and-curriculum
Ebook: The Homeschool High School Roadmap to College https://www.practicallyspeakingmom.com/product-page/the-homeschool-roadmap-to-college

Transcript

Val Harrison: 0:03

THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS GENERATED AUTOMATICALLY AND HAS NOT BEEN EDITED FOR ACCURACY. I'm often asked by my extended family and by friends how is it that my kids get along so well and have such close relationships? Today, we'll be looking at one of the things that we did in our family that did seem to make a big difference. I scheduled very short one-on-one times with the kids throughout the week. My goal was to have at least one time slot per week where every combination of sibling groups would meet together one-on-one. We have seven kids, so there were lots of combinations to have, but my goal was this interpersonal connection with them. I had a specific thing for them to do together for just 5-15 minutes at a time, in fact, the scheduling thing that I did with the kids. It also helped me to not experience burnout. Well, I take that back. I did experience burnout in my younger years of parenting. It had to do with me not realizing the importance of taking a break. So, anyway, I do believe that this scheduling practice that I had was very, very helpful in growing relationships, and we're going to be talking about that today. Let's get going right now.

Val Harrison: 1:24

Welcome to the Practically Speaking Mom Podcast. I'm Val Harrison, the Practically Speaking Mom. I'm your fellow intentional mom friend, walking this parenting path with you each week. Being intentional isn't easy, but it sure is worth it. Galatians 6-9 says Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. So, my intentional parent friend, let's get going with more intentional right now. Last time on the podcast I told you we'd begin a new series called Clarity for the Mission of Motherhood, and it's really the mission of all parents. So Clarity for the Mission of Parenthood also. We are going to do that, but I'm postponing that until next time.

Val Harrison: 2:16

So for this week I'm answering a listener question. That is why I ended up talking about sibling communication. So this listener sent me this question Recently. Her oldest daughter had a friend over. Normally when this friend comes over, they play together really well with the younger siblings. This time, however, went completely different. The older daughter shunned the younger kids and wanted to keep her friend all to herself.

Val Harrison: 2:47

This mom wanted to know what I would have done. So first off, we always want to get to the root of why a child is behaving the way they are. That's always where we want to start. Stop and ask in the four main root areas of life, which are spiritual, physical, mental and social in those four areas. What might be going on? And my first guess with that would be that, because this older one's getting older, friendships are becoming more of a priority in her life, and we want to help our older kids to navigate these changes. We want to honor their need for more friendship time while also helping them to honor the younger siblings as valuable.

Val Harrison: 3:38

So let's get into this issue and look at how can this mom handle this situation from here on out, and so what I would do is talk to this daughter ahead of time and be like okay, you want to have the friend over and that's great. I love you having friends over. I want to know your friends and I want them to feel welcome here. I want this to be a home away from home for them. Love that you want to have friends over. Some people do not have the courage to develop friendships and I love that you have that courage and that you want to invest in that friendship, and I want to invest in it too. So, yes, I want to have them over. Let's talk about the ground rules of that. While they're here, let's have some family time and some just you and the friend time. We do want to incorporate the friends into the family unit because that strengthens a lot of things. It allows me to have this interaction time with that friend so that I have relationship with them, rapport with them, know a little bit more of their heart, so that I know what kind of influence they're going to have on my child. But I also want to bless and influence that other child. So there's just a lot of reasons why I want that connection to happen.

Val Harrison: 5:07

Well, let me give you an example. That was really smart. My sister-in-law had a rule whenever you have friends over, you've got to play one game with the family and then you're free to do stuff on your own. I loved that rule Getting to bond with the child and the friendship so that that's not some isolated friendship in their lives which can then be a wild card when that child has the mindset that friendships are a very separate thing from the family. And when I haven't been careful with that, I've really regretted that. I don't think that's what's best. For kids to have the mindset that friendships are an island part of their life, not integrated into the family unit. So a rule like the game I think is awesome.

Val Harrison: 5:54

The principle behind that needs to be have some family time together with with us and the friend, and then you can have separate friend time. And then you need to tell the siblings hey, when the friend comes over, there will be some family first time, and then we're going to honor their time alone. Setting up expectations is really helpful all around. Communicating that ahead of time sets the expectations in the older daughter's mind and in the younger siblings mind and in your own mind. It also allows the daughter to inform the friend, so then the friend's expectations fall in line with that too. A lot of conflict comes just from a lack of joint expectations or taking time to clarify everybody's expectations before we jump in to the situation. What I'm really doing is borrowing a principle that I use in another part of my life, and that is I got a couple of online resources that are eBooks on homeschooling, and one of those eBooks is called homeschooling in real life, and in that I talk about how do you homeschool multiple ages.

Val Harrison: 7:13

One of the things that helps bond siblings together is to have scheduled time together, so I would schedule the youngest has some time with the oldest, maybe just five minutes a day, or 10 minutes or 15 minutes a day. The youngest has a time slot with the second oldest. The youngest has a time slot with the third oldest. I tell the old, whoever is the older of the two kids, when they're playing together. I tell them now, when you play together, you're going to play on that younger child's age level, not what you want to do, what they want to do. But the next day, if the child is old enough, we're going to reverse that and say, okay, today, when the two of you play together, younger one, you're going to do with the older one what would be fun to the older one. Okay. What we're learning to do in those scenarios is we're learning to help them care about the other person and spend time with other people based on what's being a blessing to that other person, not just spend time focused on what I want to do with them.

Val Harrison: 8:22

Okay, setting up those time slots of different siblings interacting can be very helpful. So, on this day, nathan is going to play with Andrew, something that Andrew would like. Now, the next day, andrew and Nathan are going to play together, but Andrew is going to do something Nathan would like. Okay, now let's look at this time slot of Andrew with Emma. Andrew's time slot today is to help Emma with her reading. He's going to listen to her read and be her cheerleader and encourage her. Good job, you've got it. Oh well, that word wasn't quite right. Actually, this is how you pronounce that one, you know.

Val Harrison: 9:08

So I would schedule different types of interactions, um with the kids, and I know that seems like micromanaging, but what I was doing was teaching them how to have healthy sibling relationships in this way. I want my kids to be able to interact with a variety of ages, and scheduling some focused times like that helped that to happen. And again, this could be five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes a day that they're scheduled to do that, so it's not like it's taking up the whole day. I'm scheduling the youngest child's schedule first because the youngest one has a nap time, has a feeding schedule, like when they're really little, and this one is going to play with them, this one is going to read them a story, this one is going to feed them their breakfast, so different things like that was helpful to me, but also it was teaching them how to interact with these other ages. Another reason why I would schedule the youngest first is because the youngest ones love tank empties the quickest. The younger they are, the more often they need love tank feel filling. So that little one having that scheduled time with all those different people in their day, that's super awesome for filling their love tank as well as teaching the older ones that empathy and caring for someone in another age group. Then when we have a friend that comes over and we say, hey, I want you to spend a little time first on the family unit, or I might say, your younger sibling has been used to spending time with you when that friend comes over. So to totally eliminate that all of a sudden would be super hurtful, heartbreaking really, to that younger child. She's developed a friendship with that friend now too and things. So we're going to have 30 minutes where the younger sibling gets to play too, and then you will take an hour of just you guys. Okay, now let me add in one other little thought idea for you.

Val Harrison: 11:25

When I would schedule in some different things throughout their day, I also took into consideration what does this child need to grow in Like, for example, maybe one child could actually really benefit from playing memory, the game memory. It would teach them a different aspect of brain development. Or maybe this child would really benefit from the game sorry or shoots and ladders, because it would teach them disappointment and to be okay with disappointment. Or maybe this one is a new reader and this other one needs to practice their phonetic cards. So I'm going to have the older one, who really could use that practice, to do practice with the phonetic cards to the younger one who's just learning them, because it gives practice to both of them. Or maybe the younger one is learning math, learning addition, single digits, and the older one is a little bit weak on their review of that. So I'm going to have them do the flashcards to the younger one because they both learn from that.

Val Harrison: 12:39

So I definitely scheduled plenty of that kind of interactions with the kids. It doesn't mean that it took up all their day and they had no time to play alone and play the way they want to play and do lots and lots of other life in there. But yes, I was intentional with little bits of time of interactions with my kids, considering their sibling relationships and also considering the character develop that they development they could benefit from and the academic benefit that they could develop from even spiritual things like maybe this one is too young to read a devotional book by themselves, and this older one would really benefit from being a teacher of God's word and the heart of God to a younger one, because we all benefit when we are both a teacher and a student. It's so, so, so good for our character when we learn how to do both. We want to learn how to lead, we want to learn how to follow, we want to learn how to be a team player you know, part of a group. So the giving our kids all these varieties of learning opportunities can be so beneficial.

Val Harrison: 13:57

And yes, it takes a little time to get ourselves in the habit of creating some schedules and getting our kids in the habit of following some schedules, but in the long run it mega, mega freed up my time to have these different interactions happening, because it wasn't me trying to do everything myself. When we try to do everything ourselves, we are keeping other people from growing in ways they need to grow. So stop thinking that the loving mom does everything not true. If we take the perspective that we do everything, we get burnt out and there's just a million dominoes that fall when mama is burnt out. It harms our relationships. If I'm burnt out, I'm not able to notice the different character development or heart issues that are going on around me. If I'm burnt out, I am physically, emotionally, spiritually depleted so much there. That doesn't work well when mama tries to do it all. So recognize that all of these parts of your life that you're trying to manage, you're the manager of them. You're not the doer of all of them and they are opportunities for growth within your family. Pray that God would help you to identify what's the way to set up the growth. God, give me direction and help with this. So we're wrapping it up here for today.

Val Harrison: 15:35

If you would like more help on this topic, I mentioned to you earlier in this episode that I have an online book which I call Home Schooling. In Real Life, I've been homeschooling for almost 26 years, so I've definitely had a chance to figure out some ways to make it all work well. That resource is only $5. I have another homeschool online book called the Homeschool High School Roadmap to College. This resource is all the ins and outs that I've learned about how to homeschool in high school successfully to give them what they need for success in college if that is where they're supposed to head next. That resource is not just about college. It is about how to homeschool high school solidly. That resource is also only $5 and you can find both of those along with lots of other resources from me, including four books. All of that can be found on my website, practicallyspeakingmomcom. Then click on shop and you'll see all of the goodies there. I will also put links in the show notes to some of these things. I'm also going to put in the show notes a link to a podcast episode about the circle of influences in our child's life, such as friendships and how do we help them navigate all of those relationships. There's gonna be a link in the show notes for that episode.

Val Harrison: 17:03

So finally, I wanna know, moms, do you have any questions for me? Ask them in my Facebook group, intentional mom, strong family, and you'll get an answer from me, along with answers from lots of other awesome moms in that group. Hey, moms, can I ask what in favor of you? This week, my husband, rich, and I have felt called to take a leap of faith in our ministry to travel to attend a course by focus on the family, to receive certification for counseling marriages in trouble. If you would want to help us to afford that trip, you can also go to my website, practicallyspeakingmomcom, and click on the donate button at the top of the page. Don't feel pressure about that, but if you appreciate what we do here, we would be so grateful for you to help us achieve that goal. Until next time, may God bless you and your family as you continue to be an intentional mom building a strong family. See you next time. Music.