Inspired by that lady I saw in the store, talking in her mobile phone, saying with a deep sigh: “But honey, I can’t buy an extra television set just because you and Colin fight all the time over what show to see!”
I will probably have just one kid, and sometimes I wonder if that is a good thing or a bad thing. Most people I knew, myself included, didn’t have a warm relationship with their siblings as kids. So I’m polling to see how common a good, or bad relationship between siblings as kids is.
Nothing but fighting and bickering as kids, we were terrible. It was the kind of fighting that resulted in trips to the emergency room.
We became really close friends when we went away to (different) colleges, though, and still are very close. My brother is one of my best friends. I guess we had to live 600 miles apart to discover that!
I chose “nothing but bickering and fighting,” but it was really more like “frequent bickering and fighting with quite a lot of ignoring and the occasional not-unpleasant getting along.” My sister (she’s five years younger than I am) and I have been friends since she hit her mid-20s or so, though.
My husband was an only child, and I am pretty sure that explains most of why he hates “animated debate” so strongly and takes it so personally in all contexts. He never learned arguing as recreation.
I would have done anything to protect my younger sister-a neighbor kid once threw a rock at her, and I about chucked him into the nearby river. Of course not too long later I casually tossed a rock of my own at her (she was 30 feet distant and walking away, and I never thought it would actually hit her-but it homed in like a Maverick missile right towards her skull). In between the fights (more Three Stooges than anything else) we had a lot of fun tho.
Sadly, much bickering and fighting, not many good memories. I was the oldest, the only girl, and along come these two brothers who were disgusting pigs. (Maybe I was spoiled.) One went on to become a ripsnorting big success, great job, great house, fantastic family, the kind who holds an ‘open house’ during holidays and there are cars parked up and down both sides of he street for a mile. I love him to death NOW. The other brother is a 350 lbs. heavily medicated borderline-poverty mental case who lives in a subsidized apartment he has never cleaned. I shudder to think (I may have to send in a cleaning service sometime), though he looks and smells clean every time I see him.)
Guess which one lives 2000 miles away. Guess which one lives 10 miles away.
My sister (4 years older) and I fought like crazy as kids. We still loved each other, but there was definitely more fighting than friendship. She always had my back, though. When she went to college and came back for break, we really started getting along, and have had a much better relationship since then.
So even though we’ve now had more friendship time than fighting time, at family get togethers we will start fighting again if we’re together for more than 3-4 days.
My brother and I (he was five years younger) got along fine, as did I and my sister (she was 11 younger than me). But the two of them fought incessantly and, as adults, were barely cordial to each other. When my brother died 11 years ago, my sister went to the memorial service and heard his coworkers and associates said about him and said to me afterwards that she wished she had known him better. Part of the problem was that his wife and my sister disliked each other heartily. But then I couldn’t stand his wife either (and she reciprocated), but she couldn’t break up our bond. Not–to be fair–that she really tried, although she would remark on it.
I had two brothers. One I didn’t get on with. One I did.
I was the youngest, and I got on with the oldest. The oldest would stick up for me against the middlest.
And today I get on equally well with both of them.
It was bad enough that after my parents kicked him out when I was a teenager, I think I spoke to him twice before he disappeared 5 or 6 years later, and only then because my mom was talking to him and I just happened to be there. When I was younger and I’d try to talk about the shit that happened, people would frequently brush it off and tell me it was just normal sibling fighting. It wasn’t. I can count on one hand the times he was EVER a caring older brother. Think of a woman stuck in a relationship with an abusive man… it was kind of like that, complete with me making up lies about a large bruise on my face and being scared to come home from school.
Dude had some serious anger problems, and I was a convenient target that couldn’t leave.
Like salinqmind, I am a girl with two younger brothers. When my first brother was born, three-year-old me despised him for taking away my parents’ attention, but when he got old enough to do things other than shriek and poop, we became friends. I was old enough (5) when my second brother came along to be mature about it. The three of us played together a lot and had exciting adventures as small people, though there were also hair-pulling and yelling and smacking and tears. My brothers fought with each other a lot; and it got nasty, but I stayed out of the way.
Now that I’m in college and my brothers are both in high school, we still hang out sometimes, with occasional disagreements, but we don’t have a lot of interests in common, so we all keep to ourselves for the most part.
(I voted for the ‘lots of friendship but lots of fights’ option.)
My three sisters and I fought like sisters, but there was also the unspoken bond of “that’s my sister” - like they’re an extension of your own self. There wasn’t much obvious caring and camaraderie so much as just hanging out and being sisters.
As children we fought and bickered constantly. We did not travel in the same friend circles, to have me present would have been horrifying to my older bro (he is 3 years older).
However now we are adults we are good friends. We’ve vacationed together several times and had a blast. Really the change happened when I started high school, then my brother left for college. It was a lot of little things that added up to seeing each other as allies rather than rivals.
I have five siblings, including two mergers and one acquisition (two half sibs and a stepsib). To answer the question would require a novel, because the answer is different for each one. In general, we fought less than I gather is to be expected. Certainly less than did my husband and his single sibling.
My brother concluded upon my arrival that I was brought into the world for his entertainment and companionship, which my younger brother also decided about our youngest sister. This may be a boy/girl thing. I myself thought my First Sister was worthless upon her arrival and much is made of the tale of my 3 year old self trying to wheel her bassinet outside onto the balcony of her room. On the other hand, said sister remarked that kids didn’t tease each other when she was in school, whereupon it was explained that the reason she was blissfully left in peace at school had rather more to do with the violent intervention of her two scary older siblings than she was aware.
I also get a lot of comments about how little my kids fight, and I only have two. My observation from watching my husband’s family (even as adults) is that parents may influence their kids’ fighting more than they think.
In the situation you overheard, just for example, my mother would have put the television in the basement or attic and said that it was not worth having a television if it led to quarrels within the family. Ask me how I know.
Had I started earlier, I would have had a whole baseball team, I liked having a tribe rather than a family – and I still do like it. But I did not, and you know, that is neither good nor bad. It has its up sides and down sides, like everything else.
My sister was born in 1950, I in 1954, my brothers in 1957 and 1963. I’m male. My sister was my first playmate and friend. When I began to venture out into the neighborhood to play with kids my own age, she was often my protector. When she reached her teens she was not quite as willing to have me hanging around, but we remained close.
My first brother was my closest buddy. I took him with me when I went out to play. I even sometimes took him along on dates with me when I was a teenager - just the ones he could enjoy, like ice-skating. When I was 14 and playing in my first band, my brother was the drummer. I had him out playing gigs and making money when he was 10 years old. We continued to play music together semi-professionally until 2000.
My youngest brother is nearly ten years younger than me. When he was a little kid, I barely noticed him. By the time he was a teenager, I had long since moved out of the house. While he was a teenager, he got interested in some outdoorsy stuff that I liked to do, and we began to go camping together. We are very close today.
I don’t remember ever having a serious disagreement with any of my siblings.
Horrible fighting and bickering growing up (though I was always protective too) and then I went to college and kinda grew up and so did she. Now we are the closest of friends and we get along extremely well.
I could have picked answer choice 2 I suppose. But currently the situation seems just to be the polar opposite. It’s not like a mix of both. First it was all fighting, with some protectiveness, now it’s all friendship with some playful teasing.
My brother is a lot younger than me (six years) and we didn’t get along well when he was young. Add introvert who’d rather read to hyper kid who needs someone to entertain him plus having so little in common because of the age and gender differences and you get a lot of bickering!
But by the time he started middle school he outgrew being so hyper and we began to have more in common, so we stopped fighting and got a whole lot closer and have remained so to this day.
Lots of fighting as children (mainly due to unrepentant favoritism of my younger sister by our parents). We got along okay in our late teens, but once she met her now-husband and turned into a parody of a conservative, we’ve rarely spoken. It’s not uncommon for us to go more than a year without talking.
My two kids are an older boy and younger girl, and while they argue sometimes, they get along well for the most part and care for each other. Hope they get along well as adults.
All I have is a brother 10 years older than me. I idolized him. I think most of our problems would have stemmed from him getting aggravated at having a little girl follow him around everywhere. But he took responsibility for me and treated me very well. He was the one who potty-trained me and we had a lot of fun. Our relationship broke down a bit once he went off to university and I barely saw him. After working in different cities for a while, he moved back to our home city when I was 16 and since then we’ve become close again.
I have one brother, 5 1/2 years younger than me. Lots of fighting, lots of friendship. Of course, when we were kids I picked on him all the time, but God help anyone else who might have given him any grief. That was my province, and my province only. 
Once he got into his teenage years, and his size started to approach mine, I decided friendship was the better course of action. I’m so glad he was never the vengeful type.
Plenty of fighting! I was a girl older than 3 brothers, and they had more friendship in with the fighting. But we all get along well now.