Tips To Teach Your Son To Be A Good Brother

If you want to teach your child to be a good brother, there is a fact that you must always bear in mind: whether your children get along, love each other and respect each other will depend largely on you. Treating them fairly, fostering positive interactions, setting rules and being a good manager of the emotional world of the little ones are excellent starting points.

Something that we can often appreciate in the field of child psychological therapy is how the rate of conflict between siblings always depends on the educational style of the parents. Inattention, lack of attachment, lack of good emotional communication or, even more, the preference of one child over another, leads to serious problems.

The great Brazilian pedagogue Paulo Freire used to say that educating implies knowing how to listen. That should always be the greatest daily concern: listening, seeing, understanding and anticipating needs in children. Let us know, therefore, the best tips.

How to prepare my older son for the arrival of a sibling?

The arrival of a brother can disrupt much of the psychological universe of the older son. The king of the house may suddenly feel dethroned.

Jealousy appears, the need to demand more attention and that confusion in which emotions become more complex and even traumatic. We must handle these situations intelligently and sensitively.

Let’s understand what strategies can help your child to be a good brother when a new baby comes home:

1. In the first place, it is recommended that the child be a participant in the entire process, from pregnancy to the first days of the newborn. What does this imply? For example, explain to him in language appropriate to his age that he is going to have a brother and that his arrival will be special.
2. Explain what it means to have a baby at home and the attention they will need. A newborn is not someone to play with, but a baby brother to care for.
3. Make him see that being the older brother has many advantages : he is the most responsible and often has the most privileges.
4. It is also important to have him for all the tasks that are possible and according to his age. An example of this is decorating the room, choosing clothes, thinking about the name of the little brother.
5. It is recommended that the child go to the hospital to meet his new brother. 
6. Newborn care is always very demanding, but we must dedicate quality time to the older brother so that he feels equally loved and participates in the parenting process.

How do I prepare my older son for the arrival of an adopted sibling?

Adopting when we already have a child is a very different process than adopting when we don’t have one. Something that many of the parents who have gone through this complex adventure know is that they are long and sometimes frustrating procedures.

However, few experiences can be more enriching for a family than starting that journey in search of new life. What should you do in these cases? How to teach your child to be a good brother ?:

1. There are wonderful books that explain to the little ones in a didactic and simple way what it is to adopt. We can always turn to specialized literature for our little ones.
2. We must be honest and sincere. Every step must be explained to them, from interviews with social services and adoption centers to the possible failures that happen when, for example, an adoption is agreed with a country that suddenly closes the processes.
3. Once the arrival of the new child is near, our child must be a participant in every moment and feel an important part.

Tips that can guide your child to be a good older brother

To teach your child to be a good older brother, your support is essential. For this it is essential that you continue to work on positive attachment with him, that he continues to see in you his best reference and that figure full of affection in which he can trust and to which to turn at all times.

Replace the “you have what (obligation)” by “you are (recognition)”

In our day-to-day lives with our older children, it is very easy to end up saying phrases like “you have to be good with your little brother , you have to be good, you have to leave this to him because he is smaller than you. Little by little the child ends up seeing the task of being a brother as an obligation, as a series of impositions that he must obey.

We must always start from positive reinforcement. Let’s be sensitive, creative and intelligent and use phrases like ” I know that you are a special child and that is why you are going to be the best brother in the world” or “I know that you are a responsible and good child and that is why I know that you will share your toys with your little brother ”.

Educating in empathy: understanding is respect

Among the tips to teach your child to be a good brother is, without a doubt, knowing how to encourage empathy in them from an early age. Thus, studies such as those carried out from the Autonomous University of Madrid, for example, remind us of the importance of promoting this dimension from early childhood to promote proper neuropsychological development.

These would be some simple tips:

1. Ask your child questions so that he is able to know what his little brother may feel: do you think he is happy, do you think he is hungry? Do you think he is calm or wants to play?
2. At the same time, it also fosters your emotional self-awareness. Knowing how to manage your emotions is decisive for you to understand those of others.
3. Work on your self-esteem. Only from a good self-concept can one also respond effectively to the needs of others.
4. Encourage your child to pay attention to his brother’s feelings and respond to them with respect.

General tips for your children to get along

To teach your child to be a good brother, it is important to create situations that favor camaraderie, respect and the correct management of problems. It is clear that at some point small disagreements will arise. However, if we transmit adequate skills to them early on, all these situations will be resolved effectively.

These educational strategies to teach your child to be a good brother will facilitate coexistence:

1. Promote and create situations in which your children spend time together. They should be stimulating activities in which they have to cooperate as a team. Facilitate the release of oxytocin with dance, sports, or dress-up games.
2. Take an hour each day to create special moments together. They are moments in which to do meaningful things as a family, such as going for a walk, watching a movie or reading stories.
3. Instill in them knowing how to ask for forgiveness effectively, as well as saying “I love you” to each other.
4. You must get one brother to worry about the other. When one falls, for example, the other must help him. When one loses a toy, the other must help him find it.
5. Do not compare them in any way.
6. Give them age-appropriate responsibilities that they can carry out together.

Teaching your child to be a good brother is a daily task

To conclude, the adventure of raising and educating a child is always complex. However, the challenge of doing it when there are two or more siblings is already a high-level challenge.

However, few experiences can be more enriching. Approaches such as emotional intelligence and positive discipline are two good pillars from which to start.

Each day is different in family life and each moment will require us to apply a specific resource to respond to needs. But when there is love and commitment, we will always be successful. We also do not hesitate to consult with good professionals when we need it.