My Brother is a Brat
"My 18 year old daughter calls her younger siblings brats. My son hardly acknowledges he has a sister. Among the younger children there is a lot of anger and they avoid being with each other...
“...The only child any of the siblings like is the baby, and I wonder how long that will last. I teach them, pray with them, and remind them how important it is to love their own family. Somehow what started as the children not getting along are now older children that simply do not like each other. We have a rotten family life. What can I do? What did I do wrong? Help me.”
Kay
Answer:
Just like adults, kids find it very difficult to like someone for whom they have no respect. You can’t shame them into liking each other, and you can’t preach them into it either. Duty, like the duty to love your own family, grows mighty thin when you are part of a family where each one is selfish and spoiled. The only thing you can do is to make sure you raise likeable kids that provoke respect and honor from others.
It takes a very mature adult, willing to “die to himself” and be a martyr, to demonstrate even a neutral attitude toward those that are repulsively unlikable. Mature adults can steel themselves for the emotional suffering and sacrifice it takes to go out into this sick world. For a little while each day you can leave the sanctuary of a secure home to go into the den of the world and express love toward the decidedly unlovely. But you come home tired and ready to relax around family members whose company you enjoy. But if the family members are more like the selfish, dog eat dog world, then where does one go to let down his guard, to talk and find sympathy, to relax?
You are fighting a losing battle seeking to establish one virtue (the virtue of tolerance) among a tightly pressed group of selfish, unhappy individuals. You said all the kids liked the baby. Of course they do. The baby has not yet matured to the point of being able to compete with them, to be moody and selfish. When the baby gets old enough to exert his own selfishness they will turn on him as well.
To live in a social order there must be boundaries observed by all and enforced by all. If your older children do not like their younger sister there is good reason. Honestly ask yourself—this may be hard to do—“Do I like the little girl?” Yes, you love her. You are her mother. You tolerate more than do the older children, but do you like that little one that the other kids find so hard to tolerate? What is it that they so dislike? There are people that you do not like and you avoid them. Why? Would you—could you like them if you were placed in daily contact and they continued to manifest the same undesirable traits? Would it help if your pastor told you to like them? What if it was you duty to like them, would that make it easier? What would it take for you to like those individuals? You answer, “A few changes in the way they…” You share the same viewpoint as your children.
