How to Help Your Teens Get Along During Lockdown

Parenting teenagers has never been easy, and the pandemic isn’t making it any easier. Not only is Covid causing a lot of stress for parents and teens individually, but it may actually be disrupting typical social development. The teen years are ordinarily marked with an increase in time spent with friends instead of family, and this tends to cause increased tension with parents and siblings. However, with pandemic restrictions and changes to school structure, teens in 2020 are finding themselves forced to spend less time with their friends and more time at home with their family. This disruption to typical socializing combined with increased stress in everyone’s lives means tensions are probably high, and your kids are probably fighting.

So, what can you do if your kids are fighting more than they used to? Developmental psychologists have spent decades researching sibling conflict and cooperation, and this research can provide some possible solutions to your kids’ conflicts.

Spend more time with your kids.

It has been demonstrated again and again that the more warmth and positivity that exists between parents and their kids, the more warmth and positivity there is between siblings, and this same relationship is found with time spent between parents and their kids. While most parents’ initial reaction being told to spend more time with their kids is likely an eyeroll (and rightfully so) this is one of the most reliable predictors of sibling cooperation, so take a minute and mull it over. Can you spend more time with your kids? If the answer is yes, a lockdown might be the perfect opportunity to make it happen.

It’s also important to ask yourself if you treat your kids differently. A study by Sandra Graham-Bermann highlights a link between kid’s relationships with each other and parents’ differential treatment of siblings. This could be anything from spending more time with one kid, to giving one more chores than another. While I’m not suggesting you can’t have a favourite, if you want your kids to get along its best you keep this to yourself both with your words and your behaviour. Kids are very perceptive of whether or not they’re treated differently than their siblings, and if they are, its likely to impact their relationship with each other.

Dads can unfortunately be left out of the conversation when it comes to parenting. However, a study done by Brenda Volling and Jay Belsky at Pennsylvania State University highlighted that a dad’s relationship with their kids has a significant impact on their kids’ sibling relationships. In general, fathers who were more affectionate towards their kids at 3 years of age had children with better sibling relationships years later than fathers who were unaffectionate, or uninvolved. Father’s differential treatment of siblings, including when they’re different genders, was also related to increased conflict between siblings. So, dads, take note! If you want your children to get along, spend time with them, be nice to them, and try your best to treat them equally.

Don’t get involved.

When your kids are fighting it might be tempting to step in and help them sort it out, but a study by Susan McHale and colleagues, shows this may not be true. While it can be effective to step in with younger children and help them work through their issues, McHale’s research found this doesn’t really work with teenagers. A study done by Laurie Kramer and colleagues showed a similar pattern. In this study, parent intervention reduced conflict with younger siblings but reduced closeness in older teenage siblings. Since teens are working on becoming independent, stepping in when your teens are fighting can actually hinder their abilities to solve their problems together. In fact, some research has shown that parents who did step in on their kids’ conflicts had kids that were more hostile towards each-other. Instead, this study demonstrated that spending more time with your teens when they’re not fighting is linked to better sibling relationship quality.

Play video games.

I know what you’re thinking; more screen time? Research by Sarah Coyne from the University of Alabama indicates that video games could actually help your kids get along! Not only are video games a pandemic friendly activity, but Coyne’s findings demonstrated that teenage siblings who played video games together (yes, even violent ones,) were more affectionate towards each other than siblings that did not. This was true for siblings of any gender, although girls demonstrated more affection than boys. Unfortunately, if one sibling spent more time playing video games alone, they were less affectionate towards their siblings. Additionally, research by Tobias Greitemeyer, Eva Traut-Mattausch, and Silvia Osswald also found that making undergraduate strangers play video games as a team promoted feelings of cohesion, and led to an increase in cooperative behaviour, despite the game being a violent one.

With this in mind, encouraging your kids to play video games together might be the best way to help them get along while they’re stuck at home together. Sports games like FIFA, NHL, and NBA, where siblings can play on the same team may be ideal, but more violent games like Call of Duty can work too, as long as your kids are working together. If it’s a game your kids are already enjoying individually, suggesting they play together should be an easy sell. It’s important to note that if siblings are competitive it may not be a good idea to encourage them to play against each other, so it’s best to ensure that gameplay involves working together towards a common goal.

Video games may also be a great way to increase your own relationship with you kids. Forcing your teens to spend time with you when they’d rather be doing their own thing may be difficult, but video games can allow you to join them in something they likely already enjoy. Even if video games don’t seem like your thing, there’s plenty out there to choose from and you might find yourself enjoying them! A family night of Among Us or Mario Kart may just be what everyone needs.

Take care of yourself.

My final suggestion for helping your kids get along, is to put your own wellbeing first. Research suggests that warmth and positivity from parents is key to cooperative sibling relationships. As a parent it is important to find ways to be content yourself, so that you can help your kids do the same. Spending more time with your kids may be a good way for you to bond with your teens and enjoy yourself, but this isn’t the case for everyone. Listen to your gut and figure out what works for you.

Furthermore, if you follow these suggestions and your kids’ relationship doesn’t improve, don’t take it personally. While we know a lot about what families with good sibling relationships have in common, we can’t say for sure if these things cause good sibling relationships, or if siblings with good relationships naturally do these things. As a parent, the best you can do is the best you can do, but spending time together as a family and showing your kids that you value each of them individually and together should help make everyone happy.

Further Reading:

Coyne, S. M., Jensen, A. C., Smith, N. J., & Erickson, D. H. (2016). Super Mario brothers and sisters: Associations between coplaying video games and sibling conflict and affection. Journal of adolescence, 47, 48–59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2015.1o2.001

Dunn, J. (2002). Sibling relationships. Blackwell handbook of childhood social development, 223–237.

Greitemeyer, T., Traut-Mattausch, E., & Osswald, S. (2012). How to ameliorate negative effects of violent video games on cooperation: Play it cooperatively in a team. Computers in Human Behavior, 28(4), 1465–1470. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2012.03.009

Kramer, L., Perozynski, L. A., & Chung, T. Y. (1999). Parental responses to sibling conflict: The effects of development and parent gender. Child Development, 70(6), 1401–1414. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.00102

McHale, S. M., Updegraff, K. A., Tucker, C. J., & Crouter, A. C. (2000). Step in or stay out? Parents’ roles in adolescent siblings’ relationships. Journal of Marriage and Family, 62(3), 746–760. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2000.00746.x

Nash, C., O’Malley, L. and Patterson, M. (2018), “Wii are family: consumption, console gaming and family togetherness”. European Journal of Marketing, 52(9), 2005–2025. https://doi.org /10.1108/EJM-06–2017–0425

Noller, P. (2005). Sibling relationships in adolescence: Learning and growing together. Personal relationships, 12(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1350-4126.2005.00099.x

Volling, B. L., & Belsky, J. (1992). The contribution of mother‐child and father‐child relationships to the quality of sibling interaction: A longitudinal study. Child development, 63(5), 1209–1222. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407518771741