Siblings without Rivalry by Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish

When you thought that one baby have changed your whole life as you ever experienced it, the arrival of the second one definitely adds to the challenge. As soon as both siblings grow up a little bit, your daily life becomes dominated by the mental and physical exhaustion as well as stress keeping up with their playing along with the interminable fights and arguments that seem to fill the day (from the time they get up until they go to bed).

Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too (How to Help Your Child) tries to be a practical guide for parents looking for that alternative way of reaching their children without the conventional screaming, punishing and yelling that most of us went through.

Empathy seems to be the key that will allow you to see the situation from a different angle and help you understand your child. The book is full of unconventional advice such as; stop treating your children equally, stop trying to be fair and just try to meet each child’s needs individually, avoid comparison (whether favourable or unfavourable) and just describe the situation, always acknowledge every child’s feelings, stop intervening in their disputes by letting them work out the solution...all seem to be sound pieces of advice that promise to bring more communication, more co-operation and problem solving skills that will be with your children for the rest of their lives.

Written in the same narrative style as How to talk so kids will listen and listen so kids will talk, this book is like an extended chapter that became too long, deep and complex as to be included in the same book. Definitely, the complex subject of dealing with siblings deserves a book on its own.

Following the same structure, the book is very clearly laid out; full of real life examples, practical advice on how to tackle day to day conflicts, great cartoons that illustrate in a more visual way the same situations and short summaries with the key points of each chapter to act as a quick reminder. Although, in practise is not that easy to get it right the first time round, the structure of the book makes it easy for you to go back again and again looking for any reference you might need to tackle any specific problem and find it in just a quick flick through.