3 Rules That Saved My Family From Sibling Rivalry (And Why Fairness Is a Lie)

Every parent who has ever tried to split a cookie perfectly in half knows the feeling. You’re not just dividing sugar and flour. You’re performing a ritual of cosmic justice in front of the two most ruthless judges on earth: your children.

If you give one a millimeter more, the courtroom explodes. That’s not fair!

So you spend years trying to be perfectly equal. Same bedtime. Same dollar amount for birthday gifts. Same number of pictures on the wall. You are a nervous accountant of love, and you’re failing.

Stop. The most peaceful sibling relationships don’t come from perfect equality. They come from a set of rules that feel almost wrong — until you see them work. I studied dozens of families, but one stuck with me: a mother raising three kids in a chaotic, multigenerational household, with an absent husband, a dying child, and a system that somehow produced lifelong friendship among her surviving kids.

Here’s what she understood that most parenting books don’t.

Rule 1: Pick a Leader, Not a Mediator

Your instinct as a parent is to become the Supreme Court. A squabble erupts over a toy? You hear both sides. You weigh evidence. You deliver a verdict. Congratulations — you’re now a full-time judge in a courtroom that will never close.

Treating children as equals doesn’t prevent rivalry. It creates a market for grievances, where the loudest complaint gets the biggest payout.

This mother did something different. She appointed the eldest child as the ‘team leader.’ Not as a tyrant, but as a manager. When a fight broke out, she didn’t step in. She sent the oldest to resolve it. She gave him real authority — and real responsibility. If something went wrong, he was accountable.

The younger kids accepted this because it mirrored how the real world works: hierarchies exist, but they earn their legitimacy through responsibility, not privilege. The older brother wasn’t favored — he was deputized.

His younger siblings eventually stopped fighting for his attention and started falling in line. Peer pressure replaced parental nagging. The kids regulated each other.

Rule 2: Apologize Like You Mean It

One day, a sum of money went missing from the family savings. In 1970s China, five yuan was a fortune. The mother accused the eldest son. He tracked down the actual thief — a neighbor’s child — and brought the evidence back to her.

She could have quietly dropped the issue. Instead, she gathered the children and apologized. She said, in front of everyone, that she had been wrong. She admitted her mistake.

It was the first time her eldest son ever cried in relief.

When parents apologize, they don’t lose authority. They earn a kind of trust that no amount of ‘because I said so’ can buy.

This is the paradox: your children need to know you are fallible. They need to see you choose justice over ego. A parent who admits error creates a family where fairness is a shared value, not a weapon to be wielded.

Rule 3: Don’t Play Judge. Teach Them to Settle.

The third rule is the hardest. When two kids come to you with a problem, your brain screams: Solve this. Now.

Don’t.

Instead, teach them a framework. One mother used a five-step system: (1) Ask permission before taking a sibling’s thing. (2) Trade — anything can be exchanged, from toys to favors. (3) Negotiate like a diplomat, not a boxer. (4) Look forward, not backward — the past is a trap. (5) Violence is never an acceptable shortcut, no matter how small.

You cure sibling rivalry not by giving them perfect solutions, but by making them solve their own problems until fighting becomes the worse option.

When a younger brother wanted a snack his sibling had finished, the mother didn’t split it. She said: ‘You don’t have to share. But if you do, I’ll give you double of what I buy tomorrow.’ The older brother saw the math and waited. The younger one offered half anyway, because he wanted the credit.

They figured it out. Without a judge. Without a hero. Without a loser.

The Takeaway

If you have multiple children, the most loving thing you can do is stop trying to be a perfect equalizer. You cannot make them identical. But you can make them a team.

Give the oldest real authority. Admit when you’re wrong. And let them argue their way to peace.

You don’t cure sibling rivalry. You make it obsolete.