There are times when a standard or idea rub me the wrong way, but I can't put my finger on WHY. And like I have said before, nothing challenges your belief system quite like being a parent. Large portions of my life the last few years have been spent asking myself "Is this really what I think/believe? Or is this a left over idea that I was made to believe and follow?"
I grew up in a home schooled family of five. Living with my siblings had it's good points and not so good points. There were siblings I got along with most of the time down to siblings that I got along with none of the time. As adults, we get along, and I am very close to my sisters especially. That hasn't always been the case when we were trying to share rooms or clothes or chores.
Being in home school groups and circles and conferences, we heard A LOT of "God wants your children to be best friends" and "The world says siblings fight, etc, but we are to be different." I'm pretty sure I heard these statements about a dozen times, if not more.
Now I have kids. Three girls less than 4 years apart. Plus we're adopting an older child. Plus, I'm expecting a baby, which means that my 2 youngest will be just over 6 years apart. What do I expect from them? Do I expect them to be BFFs? Where along the line do I think they should fall? There has to be something between 'my brother is a plague upon the earth' and 'I don't need friends because I have my sister'.
I've done some digging. There are verses in the Bible about conflict resolution, about peace making, about love and friendship. I cannot find a verse ANYWHERE about God expecting siblings to be best friends. Or friends. So I dug around on Google. I found lots of people stating that "God wants your children to be friends" but no Scripture to back up this statement. And if you are going to tell me that GOD says something, I'm going to NEED TO SEE THE VERSE. Or verses, because maybe He didn't come flat out and say it, maybe He insinuated it. But I'm not seeing many of those either: we're just back to the verses about friendship and love. (And what about only children? Are they doomed to have no friends because God somehow 'forgot' to send them siblings?)
Here is my new-to-me conclusion: this is (another) standard we parents put upon ourselves and our children, handing them a burden God never intended. Putting pressure on ourselves as moms. We see our children fighting, we feel like failures. Obviously, we aren't doing something right. I have felt this way myself. One of my children doesn't get a long with her sisters. She can for short periods of time, but compared to how the other two get along (playing for hours at a time), it's pretty much non existent. She prefers her church friends and her friends from school. And before there was school, sister play was still not her first choice.
Would it be great if they all got along? Yes. Do I allow her to treat her sisters like poo poo just because there's no Bible verse about siblings = Best Friends? No. She CAN still treat her sisters with respect, learn to apologize, learn to problem solve, learn to work as a team, and learn to compromise with them. And guess what? She needs to learn how to do those things with people outside the home too. To say a child can only learn those lessons with siblings, or should learn with siblings first is a big leap into "HUH?" territory.
Kids are born with different personalities and temperaments, like and dislikes. Is it my job to robo-tize them into all being alike so they get along? I don't think so. Different personalities gives them different strengths and varying interests. It's what makes them, THEM.
So, do I need to beat myself up because my kids just had a fight over what to play with? Nah. Show them how to work it out using kind words? Yes.
Having your kids be best friends sounds great. One day, if mine are all best pals and live on the same road, I will do a happy dance. If they end up living in different states and communicating via text messaging 90% of the time, that will be okay too.
But I don't think I'm going to put pressure on them to be best friends any more. I certainly will never tell them they HAVE to because GOD SAYS SO. And I'm definitely done making myself feel bad if my kids have a fight (or 10) through out the day and I have done nothing but try and referee from sun up til sun down.
Whew. That's a load off.
(On a side note here, it was really discouraging to dig thru several pages of Google results to find ONE blog post that was brave enough and logical enough to stand up against the endless piles of books and bloggers stating that God wants your kids to be best friends. You can read her blog HERE, although I can't vouch for everything else she says, because I haven't looked at anything else she's written. Yet.)
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