Like many people, I spent a weird amount of my childhood shrieking at my sister for taking too long during ‘her turn’ on The Sims.
Other similarly heated arguments concerned offences such as pog stealing, birthday cake hogging and this one time when she brought my toy mouse into nursery school and promptly lost it.
We have since grown up into – reasonably – mature and capable adults, and this could well be on account of our occasional sisterly bickering, rather than in spite of it.
Indeed, a University of Cambridge study discovered how a healthy dose of sibling rivalry could be beneficial for mental and emotional development as well as developing those all-important social skills. It would appear Liam and Noel could well be onto something…
Entitled ‘Toddlers Up’, this five year research project looked at the cognitive and social development of children between the ages of two and six years of age.
In total, 140 kids were observed, with surprising results. It was noted how siblings can have a positive impact on a person’s early development, even when the bond is a temperamental one.
Although sustained sibling rivalry could lead to relationship-building and behavioural issues in later life, milder forms could indeed be beneficial for ensuring healthy childhood development.
These intriguing findings were later written up in book form by Dr Claire Hughes, Deputy Director at the University of Cambridge’s prestigious Centre for Family Research.
Social Understanding and Social Lives elaborated further on the project’s findings, including the reasons why parents shouldn’t automatically force warring kids to ‘make friends, make friends, never, never break friends’.
No comments:
Post a Comment