ABSTRACT
The relationship between siblings is the longest lasting that people have in their lives - it is longer than their relationships with their children, with their parents, or with their partners. It is a relationship that can be of great power that is watched and worried over by parents, and explored and illuminated by novelists. Sleeping problems, feeding, and toilet problems increased, and withdrawal, anxiety, and dependency all have been found to intensify. Parent-child relationships can differ markedly within the same family. And children from a remarkably early age monitor what happens between their parents and their siblings. The differences in personality, interests, well-being, and adjustment of siblings growing up in the same family are marked, and this presents those who study families with a challenge. By far the most common cause to which the teenagers attributed negative changes in their relations with their siblings involved friendships outside the family.
