Sibling Fighting: When It Is Normal, When It Is Bullying, and What Actually Helps

It was a Sunday morning. We have a shared tablet, and on Sunday mornings my girls get to play some games on it, as long as they share. It usually starts with one of them finishing breakfast and coming to ask if she can play. She starts the rotation, and when her sister is done eating, she joins in. I teach my kids that a family item is a shared item, and that we take turns with it.

That Sunday, I heard screaming from the other room. I waited a moment to see what else was going on, and then I heard my youngest crying. When I went to look, her sister had taken the tablet out of her hands. I sat them both down to understand what had happened. Her sister had wanted a turn, but instead of asking for one, the way I teach them, she had just taken it. I calmed my little one down, and then I coached them both on coming up with a rotation that would work for each of them. We talked about using our voices to reach a compromise and work things out, and about never ripping something out of someone else's hands. They talked it through and came up with a compromise that worked for both of them.

Why I Started Looking at the Research

If you have searched "my kids fight constantly" or "is it normal for siblings to fight every day", you have probably been told the same thing in a dozen different fonts. Sibling rivalry is normal. Every family has it. Stay out of it and let them work it out. Some of that is true. Some of it is the opposite of what the research found. And almost none of it helps with the question a tired parent is actually asking, which is whether this particular fighting, in this particular house, is the normal kind.

The "sibling rivalry" label does a lot of quiet work. It treats every fight as the same thing, a natural competition for a parent's attention that kids grow out of. That frame is comforting, and for a lot of ordinary bickering it is roughly right. But it also covers up something researchers have been documenting in recent years: a share of what families call rivalry is one child repeatedly hurting another, and that pattern is linked to outcomes that look a lot like being bullied at school.

So this post is about telling those two things apart. It covers what the ordinary fighting is and why it happens so often, where the line sits between conflict and bullying, what predicts which way a sibling relationship goes, what the studies found when parents were taught to step in differently, and the situations where the standard advice does not fit.

One thing up front. If your kids fight a lot, that alone does not mean something is wrong with them or with you. Fighting is one of the most ordinary things siblings do. The research is mostly about what kind of fighting it is, and what happens around it.

What Is Actually Happening When Siblings Fight

It happens a lot, and that part is normal

A review of the sibling literature by Feinberg and colleagues reports that observational studies have recorded sibling conflict at a rate of up to eight times an hour.^[1] That figure comes from older research, reported by the review, but it is still a useful number to hold onto at 6 PM, when it feels like they have not stopped.

Physical aggression between siblings is common too. In a US national survey of 1,705 children, caregivers or the young people themselves reported at least one form of sibling victimization in the past year for 37.6% of children. The rate peaked at about 45% for children aged two to five and 46% for children aged six to nine, and it was higher for boys, for siblings closer in age, and in brother-brother pairs.^[2] The survey counted psychological and property victimization as well as physical, so this is a broad measure. But it tells you the hitting, grabbing and name-calling in your house is in very wide company.

Why siblings, specifically

Siblings fight more than friends for reasons that are mostly structural. They did not choose each other. They share space, toys, screens, a back seat, and the same one or two adults. And they usually come with a built-in power gap: one is older, bigger and further along in language and self-control. Feinberg's review describes the sibling relationship as both equal and unequal at once, with older siblings more likely to act as models, advisers and caretakers for younger ones than the other way round.^[1]

That mix is part of why sibling conflict can be useful. It is a relationship with real stakes that the child cannot walk away from, so they have to work things out with someone whose wants are different from theirs, every day.

Conflict can be practice

Researchers who have watched siblings negotiate find that the way they fight is tied to how well they understand each other. In one study of 40 sibling pairs with a kindergarten-age child, Howe and colleagues filmed the children playing with a toy farm. How the children resolved their disagreements was associated with the quality of their relationship, with more sophisticated negotiation during pretend play, and with how much they talked about thoughts and feelings.^[3] That study was correlational and small, so it cannot say the fighting caused the understanding. It does show that the way children handle a disagreement and their understanding of each other tend to go together.

A larger study by Ross and colleagues asked 64 sibling pairs aged four to twelve to resolve a real, ongoing disagreement. The pairs that reached a compromise tended to start with an offer that met both children's goals, to plan for the future, and to keep opposition limited. When a conflict stayed unresolved, the children had spent their time on accusations and opposition and done very little planning. The authors' summary is that children had to shift from debating past wrongs to making a plan for next time.^[4] Hold onto that idea. It turns out to be the core of what helps.

How fighting can become a pattern

The other side is that a sibling relationship can also teach the wrong lesson. Feinberg's review describes a model from Patterson's work on families in which negativity and coercion between siblings act as a training ground. A child learns through what happens next that coercive behavior gets results.^[1] At home that might look like a sibling giving up the toy, or a parent stepping in to make the noise stop. Repeated enough times, that becomes a habit of handling disagreement by force, and the review notes it can carry into how the child deals with other people.^[1]

This is the mechanism behind most of the practical advice later in this post. Fighting itself is normal. What matters is what the fighting teaches each child about how disagreements end.

The Myth: "It's Just Sibling Rivalry"

The rivalry frame has two problems. The first is that it lumps very different things together. The second is that the advice that usually comes with it, "stay out of it and let them work it out", is only partly supported.

Conflict and bullying are different things

Wolke, Tippett and Dantchev reviewed the research on sibling bullying for The Lancet Psychiatry in 2015. They draw the line this way. Many siblings experience some occasional conflict. Sibling bullying is something else: a repeated and harmful form of aggression within the family. By their estimate, up to 40% of children are exposed to it every week.^[5]

Their definition is short: repeated and harmful. In practice, this is how I would tell the two apart. Ordinary conflict goes both ways, the winner changes, and it ends. Bullying keeps landing on the same child, it is aimed at hurting them rather than at getting something, and the child on the receiving end cannot make it stop. One large study gives a concrete threshold. Toseeb and colleagues analyzed reports from more than 30,000 children aged 10 and 12 in 18 countries, asking whether a sibling had physically hurt them or called them unkind names more than three times in the last month, and they explicitly excluded fighting and play fighting. On average 28% said yes, and the rate ranged from 9% to 59% depending on the country.^[6]

Why the difference matters

The research on peer bullying is large and well known. The research on sibling bullying is newer, and it finds a similar pattern.^[5]

In a US national survey led by Tucker, which covered 3,599 children and teenagers, those who had experienced sibling aggression in the past year reported more mental health distress. When the researchers compared sibling aggression with peer aggression, each one generally predicted worse mental health on its own.^[7] The authors' conclusion was that sibling aggression "should not be dismissed".

A UK study followed more than 6,900 young people from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, a birth cohort. Those who said at age 12 that a sibling bullied them frequently were about twice as likely to have depression at 18 (odds ratio 2.16) and more likely still to have self-harmed (odds ratio 2.56), compared with those who were not bullied by a sibling. The link to anxiety was smaller (odds ratio 1.83). Those numbers shrank only slightly after the researchers accounted for a range of individual, family and peer factors.^[8] This is an observational study, so it shows that frequent sibling bullying predicts these problems, not that it causes them, and the authors are careful to call it a potential risk factor.

The Lancet review adds one more finding that makes sense to any parent. Children bullied by both siblings and peers had much higher levels of emotional problems than children bullied in only one place, and the authors suggest the likely reason is that those children have no safe place to escape to.^[5] Home is supposed to be the place you recover from a bad day at school.

None of this means that two kids who scrap over the remote are headed for trouble. These studies are about frequent, one-sided aggression. They are the reason it is worth knowing which kind you are looking at.

"Let them work it out" depends on their age

The second half of the rivalry advice is to stay out of it. The studies that actually watched families at home suggest that stepping in helps the youngest pairs most.

Kramer and colleagues used wireless microphones to listen in on 88 two-parent families with two young children, the younger aged three to five, and recorded how parents handled real sibling fights. When parents did nothing, more conflict tended to follow, and younger pairs in particular behaved more antagonistically when their parents did not step in. Within this group of young families, the picture flipped for the relatively older pairs: when mothers stepped in, those pairs were less involved with and less close to each other.^[9]

Perlman and Ross observed 40 Canadian families with two- and four-year-olds at home and compared how the children fought before and after a parent got involved. Parents tended to step into the most intense fights, the ones where the children were doing little to calm things down. After a parent stepped in, the children used fewer power moves and more sophisticated negotiation.^[10]

So for the youngest children, staying out of it tends to be followed by more fighting. My reading is that the bigger or louder child often wins, and both children learn that is how fights end. For pairs who are a little older, a parent taking over may get in the way. The question is not whether to step in. It is how, and for whom.

The Boring Fundamentals: What Predicts Which Way It Goes

If you are looking for one thing that sets the tone between siblings, the evidence keeps pointing back to the adults. That is uncomfortable to read, so I want to say clearly what it means and does not mean. It does not mean sibling fights are a parent's fault. It means the household around the siblings is one of the few parts of this a parent can actually change.

How the house runs

Tippett and Wolke looked at 4,237 adolescents from a large UK household survey. Using a broad definition, 46% had been on the receiving end of sibling aggression and 36% had dished it out. Larger families, male siblings, and financial strain were all linked to more of it. But parenting showed the strongest relationship of anything they measured. Harsh parenting went with more sibling aggression, and positive parenting went with less.^[11]

A 2026 meta-analysis by Tian and Chen pulled together 117 studies on sibling aggression and abuse. Of all the predictors they examined, violence or conflict between parent and child was the strongest.^[12] These are correlational studies, and some of the arrow could run the other way, since aggressive children are harder to parent gently. But the same link shows up in a single large survey and in the pooled studies, and it fits the coercion model above: children tend to settle disagreements the way they see disagreements settled. If the way adults handle conflict in your house is something you want to work on, the earlier post on what yelling does and what to do instead covers that side.

Some of what predicts sibling bullying is not about parenting at all. In the Avon cohort, Dantchev and Wolke found that the strongest predictors of a child's role in sibling bullying were the shape of the family, being the firstborn and having older brothers, and being a boy. Parenting, early social experiences and the child's own individual characteristics also mattered, but less.^[13] Birth order and sex are not anything you chose. They are a reason to keep an eye on a particular pairing, not a reason to feel guilty about it.

Fair is not the same as equal

Every parent of more than one child gets the "that's not fair" protest. The research on how parents treat siblings differently is more forgiving than that protest suggests.

A 2025 network meta-analysis of 26 studies covering 37,025 participants found that more differential treatment in a family was linked to more depression, aggression and rule-breaking in children, and that the less-favored child tended to have more symptoms than the favored one. The associations were modest, in the range of r = 0.10 to 0.21, and how the siblings got along helped explain the link.^[14]

But treating children differently is not the problem on its own. In a study of 135 children around 12 years old and their older siblings, Kowal and colleagues found that when children saw a parent's different treatment as fair, they had fewer emotional problems and higher self-esteem.^[15] A second study by the same group, of 74 families with teenagers, found that differential treatment was linked to worse parent-child relationships only when the teenager saw it as unfair. Differential treatment the teenager judged to be fair was not linked to worse relationships at all.^[16]

Children of different ages, temperaments and needs need different things, and kids can understand that. My sense is that what children react to is a difference that seems to have no reason, or whose reason seems to be that they matter less. That is something a parent can talk about out loud.

Warmth is its own thing

The single most useful idea I found in this literature is that the warm side of a sibling relationship is separate from how much they fight.

A meta-analysis by Buist and colleagues combined 34 studies of 12,257 children and teenagers. More sibling warmth, less sibling conflict and less differential treatment were each linked to fewer emotional and behavioral problems. Conflict had the strongest link of the three. The associations were stronger for pairs with more brothers, for siblings closer in age, and for children rather than adolescents.^[17]

Kramer has argued that the field spent too long treating conflict as the main feature of sibling relationships. Her review suggests normal sibling interaction is better described as ambivalent, a mix of, and swings between, warm and hostile behavior, and argues that programs should build the positive side rather than only trying to cut the fighting.^[18]

A randomized trial supports that. The Siblings Are Special program brought 174 families with a fifth grader and a younger sibling into twelve weekly after-school sessions plus three family nights. Compared with families who did not take part, the program improved positive sibling relationships, parents' strategies for handling siblings, children's self-control, social competence and school performance, and it was linked to lower maternal depression and fewer emotional problems in the children. It did not measurably reduce sibling conflict.^[19] Read that again, because it is the point. The children got along better, and the household was better off, without the fighting going down.

The warm side also seems to protect. In a two-wave study, Gass, Jenkins and Dunn found that children who had an affectionate relationship with an older sibling showed less of the anxiety and low mood that usually follow stressful life events, and that this held whatever the child's relationship with their mother was like.^[20]

So the goal is not a house with no fighting. It is siblings who also have good time together, enough of it that the fights happen inside a relationship that is worth repairing.

When the Standard Advice Doesn't Fit

When one child has ADHD or autism

The usual advice assumes two children with roughly similar skills at managing frustration. That is often not the house you are in.

In a study comparing 77 children with ADHD with 14 children without (a small comparison group), Mikami and Pfiffner found more sibling conflict when one child had ADHD. Most of that difference was explained by the additional behavior problems that often come with ADHD, rather than by ADHD itself.^[21] So if one of your children has ADHD and the fighting is constant, it may help to work on the behavior that drives the clashes, rather than treating the sibling relationship as the problem.

Autistic children are more often on the receiving end. In a UK birth cohort of 475 autistic children and 13,702 non-autistic children at age 11, Toseeb, McChesney and Wolke found autistic children were more likely to be bullied by a sibling and more likely to be both the bully and the bullied, and that this mixed role was linked to more emotional and behavioral difficulties.^[22] A later study of 416 autistic adolescents found sibling bullying was especially common for those who shared a bedroom, lived in a lower-income household or had been diagnosed later, and that more sibling bullying in early adolescence predicted lower self-esteem a few years later, which in turn predicted poorer mental health.^[23]

The practical point the 2018 authors make is that support should involve both children.^[22] A neurodivergent child can be the one who explodes and the one who gets picked on, sometimes in the same afternoon. And the other sibling usually has a reasonable grievance too. Neither child is the whole problem.

When there is not enough room to separate them

Several of the factors linked to more sibling aggression are not choices: financial strain and larger families,^[11] and, in the study of autistic teenagers, sharing a bedroom.^[23] Most of the advice online assumes you can send each child to their own room to cool off. If you cannot, the parts of this post that do not need space become more important: stepping in early with young children, the way you mediate, and building in good time together. It also helps to give each child something that belongs only to them, even if it is a box or a shelf, because I suspect a lot of sibling fights start over who owns what.

Children moving between two households

There is no study I could find that answers this directly, so what follows is my own reasoning from the research above. In a two-household family, siblings are often the one relationship that comes along to both houses. The protective effect Gass and colleagues found for sibling affection during stressful life events^[20] suggests that relationship is worth protecting on purpose. If the kids fight more around handovers, it may be the transition rather than each other. The earlier post on what predicts how kids do after a divorce has more on why the handover itself deserves attention. And because each household will handle sibling fights its own way, I think it helps more to be consistent within your own house than to try to match the other one.

Pickup Days in My House

The girls usually go through an adjustment period when they come back to my house. It is not a reaction to coming home to me. It comes with the back-and-forth itself, and I assume it is a byproduct of going between two households after a contentious split. My oldest is on edge and watches everything, and small things that don't normally bother her can set her off. My youngest is overly emotional: she cries, whines and complains, and she has a really hard time the first night back. None of this is how they normally are. It generally goes away as the weekend goes on. Then, the closer it gets to going back, the more the anxiety creeps back in, and the more they cling to me, asking me to stay.

Those two reactions are like oil and water. The crying overstimulates her older sister, and the two of them clash. This is where "fair is not the same as equal" stops being an idea for me. On pickup night my girls need different things. My youngest needs to feel her emotions and let them out, and later we talk about them, with lots of hugs and comfort along the way. My oldest tends to be really anxious, and sometimes she needs space, sometimes reassurance and sometimes comfort. Giving one of them space and the other a long hug is not favoring either one. It is meeting each of them where she is, so that both feel heard, understood, and like they matter. All of it, down to the little apologies for things they didn't do wrong, is met with love and kindness.

All of this tends to lead to more arguments and fights between them, and I meet those with the same love and kindness. It is the pattern I described above: when the fighting picks up around a handover, it may be the transition rather than each other. In my house, the pickup-night fights are not a verdict on how my girls get along. They come from two kids each having a hard time in their own way, and as the weekend goes on, the fighting eases along with everything else.

What To Do Instead

None of these require a program or a therapist. Each one connects back to a finding above.

1. With young children, step in early. For preschool and early school-age children, the home-observation studies found that leaving them to it was followed by more conflict, while a parent stepping in was followed by better negotiating.^{[9] [10]} Stepping in does not mean deciding who is right. It means being in the room while they sort it out.

1. Mediate instead of judge. In two studies, one of them a randomized trial, Ross and her colleagues taught parents to act as mediators rather than referees.^{[24] [25]} The study summaries do not spell out a script, so this is how I would put it into practice, based on what they describe the children doing: each child gets to say what they want and how they feel without being interrupted, you help each one understand what the other wanted, and then you help them come up with a solution themselves. The children in mediating families reasoned more, talked more about feelings and understood each other's motives better. In the randomized trial, when the children later talked through a recurring conflict on their own, they were less negative and understood their sibling's point of view better.^[25] Younger siblings in particular were better able to settle the problem themselves.^[24]

1. Point them at the next time, not the last one. The pairs who resolved conflicts focused on planning; the ones who did not got stuck on accusations.^[4] When parents talked about the future during a disagreement, children tended to do more of the same when they negotiated on their own, especially when the siblings already got along reasonably well.^[26] Asking "What will you do next time you both want the tablet?" points them at a plan.

1. Know the difference between a fight and bullying, and protect the one who cannot make it stop.^[5] If it keeps landing on the same child, if it is about hurting rather than getting something, or if one child is clearly afraid of the other, I think mediation is the wrong tool, because it assumes two people with roughly equal power. Step in, stop it, and treat it the way you would if a classmate were doing it.

1. Give older children more room. As children get a bit older and better at negotiating, step back gradually. In the same home study, even among young families, the relatively older pairs were less close when mothers stepped in.^[9] Be available, not in charge.

1. Explain the differences. You will treat your children differently, because they are different. Say why. Children who saw the differences as fair had fewer emotional problems and higher self-esteem, and differences that seemed fair were not linked to worse relationships with parents.^{[15] [16]}

1. Build good time on purpose. A shared job, a game they both like, a bit of time every week where the two of them are on the same side. Warmth is not just the absence of fighting: more warmth between siblings was linked to fewer problems,^[17] and in one trial the relationship improved while the fighting did not.^[19] In a waitlist-controlled program for siblings aged four to eight, Kennedy and Kramer found that teaching children emotional and social skills improved their relationship, and the children needed less help from parents to rein in negative behavior.^[27]

1. Look at how conflict sounds in the rest of the house. Of everything these studies measured, how parents treat their children, harsh or warm, had the strongest link to how siblings treat each other.^{[11] [12]} This one is about you, not them, and it is also the one most fully in your control.

Sibling Relationships Change

If you are reading this after months of fighting, the evidence on change is encouraging. In the mediation studies, mothers could learn the approach with training,^[24] and in the randomized trial the children's own negotiations were less negative than in families where parents stepped in as usual.^[25] In the Kennedy and Kramer program, children aged four to eight became better at managing their emotions and the relationship improved, compared with families still on the waitlist.^[27] In the Siblings Are Special trial, the relationships improved across the board, regardless of gender, age, family background or how difficult things were at the start.^[19]

A sibling relationship is not settled by how it looks this year. It may well be one of the longest relationships your children ever have, and a lot of it is still being built.

When to Get Help

Most sibling fighting does not need a professional. These are the signs that it might:

• One child is afraid of the other, avoids being alone with them, or changes their routine to stay out of their way.
• The aggression causes real injury, involves weapons or threats, or is getting more severe over time.
• It is always the same direction. One child is consistently the target and cannot make it stop, even when you are trying to help.
• Any sexual behavior between siblings that is not ordinary curiosity between young children of similar age, or anything involving coercion, secrecy or a large age gap. This always warrants a professional's input.
• The child on the receiving end shows signs of distress: low mood, anxiety, trouble sleeping, pulling away, or any talk of self-harm.
• Your own efforts are not working and the whole family is worn down by it.

A pediatrician or family doctor is a reasonable first call, and can refer you to a family therapist or child psychologist. A family therapist can work on the sibling relationship directly.

If you are worried about abuse in your home, the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline is available around the clock at 1-800-422-4453. If a child is talking about hurting themselves, call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. If anyone is in immediate danger, call 911.

If You're Reading This

If one of your children is the one getting picked on: Believe them, even if the other child says it was a joke. What separates bullying from ordinary fighting is the pattern, so it is worth watching for a week or two and noticing whether it really is mostly one direction. If it is, you are not overreacting by treating it seriously.

If one of your children is the one doing it: That does not make them a bad kid. In the research, children who are aggressive toward a sibling are more likely to be caught up in bullying at school too, sometimes on both sides of it, and the pattern is tied to what is going on around them.^[11] Stop the behavior clearly, then get curious about what it is doing for them.

If you were bullied by a sibling growing up: You might be watching your own kids with an alarm that goes off at every fight. Some of that alarm is useful. Some of it may not fit the fight in front of you. The distinction in this post, repeated and one-sided versus ordinary and mutual, may help you sort out which is which.

If your children split their time between two homes: You only control the house you are in. Your house can still be the one where fights get mediated and where the kids get good time together.

The Bottom Line

Siblings fight a lot, and most of it is ordinary practice at living with someone whose wants are different from yours. The thing to watch for is not volume. It is a pattern where the same child keeps getting hurt and cannot make it stop, and that pattern deserves to be treated as bullying.

With young children, staying out of it tends to mean more fighting, not less. Teaching children to say what they want, hear what the other wanted and plan for next time works better than deciding who started it. Treating children differently is fine when the reasons are clear. And a good sibling relationship is built from warm time together as much as from less fighting.

Resources & Further Reading

• Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline, childhelphotline.org, 1-800-422-4453. Counselors around the clock for parents, children and anyone worried about child abuse.
• 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, 988lifeline.org. Call or text 988.
• Feinberg, Solmeyer and McHale's review, free to read in full on PubMed Central. The most readable overview I found of how siblings influence each other, and of the few programs that have been tested.
• Related posts on this site: The Invisible Echo, on how the way adults handle conflict carries into children; Why Your "Defiant" Kid Might Actually Be Anxious, useful if one child's explosions seem out of proportion; and What Actually Predicts How Kids Do After a Divorce, for families moving between two homes.

References

↑ [1]: Feinberg, M. E., Solmeyer, A. R., & McHale, S. M. (2012). "The third rail of family systems: sibling relationships, mental and behavioral health, and preventive intervention in childhood and adolescence." Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 15(1), 43-57. PMID 22105663. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10567-011-0104-5

↑ [2]: Tucker, C. J., Finkelhor, D., Shattuck, A. M., & Turner, H. (2013). "Prevalence and correlates of sibling victimization types." Child Abuse & Neglect, 37(4), 213-223. PMID 23428164. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2013.01.006

↑ [3]: Howe, N., Rinaldi, C. M., Jennings, M., & Petrakos, H. (2002). "'No! The lambs can stay out because they got cozies': constructive and destructive sibling conflict, pretend play, and social understanding." Child Development, 73(5), 1460-1473. PMID 12361312. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.00483

↑ [4]: Ross, H., Ross, M., Stein, N., & Trabasso, T. (2006). "How siblings resolve their conflicts: the importance of first offers, planning, and limited opposition." Child Development, 77(6), 1730-1745. PMID 17107457. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2006.00970.x

↑ [5]: Wolke, D., Tippett, N., & Dantchev, S. (2015). "Bullying in the family: sibling bullying." The Lancet Psychiatry, 2(10), 917-929. PMID 26462226. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(15)00262-X

↑ [6]: Toseeb, U., Deniz, E., & Noret, N. (2025). "The prevalence and correlates of sibling bullying victimisation in early adolescence: An investigation of over 30,000 adolescents in 18 countries." Child Abuse & Neglect, 160, 107211. PMID 39736193. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2024.107211

↑ [7]: Tucker, C. J., Finkelhor, D., Turner, H., & Shattuck, A. (2013). "Association of sibling aggression with child and adolescent mental health." Pediatrics, 132(1), 79-84. PMID 23776124. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2012-3801

↑ [8]: Bowes, L., Wolke, D., Joinson, C., Lereya, S. T., & Lewis, G. (2014). "Sibling bullying and risk of depression, anxiety, and self-harm: a prospective cohort study." Pediatrics, 134(4), e1032-e1039. PMID 25201801. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2014-0832

↑ [9]: Kramer, L., Perozynski, L. A., & Chung, T. Y. (1999). "Parental responses to sibling conflict: the effects of development and parent gender." Child Development, 70(6), 1401-1414. PMID 10621963. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.00102

↑ [10]: Perlman, M., & Ross, H. S. (1997). "The benefits of parent intervention in children's disputes: an examination of concurrent changes in children's fighting styles." Child Development, 68(4), 690-700. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.1997.tb04230.x

↑ [11]: Tippett, N., & Wolke, D. (2015). "Aggression between siblings: Associations with the home environment and peer bullying." Aggressive Behavior, 41(1), 14-24. PMID 25187483. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/ab.21557

↑ [12]: Tian, N., & Chen, M. (2026). "Sibling bullying, aggression and abuse in childhood and adolescence: a scoping review and meta-analysis of prevalence, predictors, and outcomes." Trauma, Violence, & Abuse. PMID 42813571. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/15248380261487140

↑ [13]: Dantchev, S., & Wolke, D. (2019). "Trouble in the nest: Antecedents of sibling bullying victimization and perpetration." Developmental Psychology, 55(5), 1059-1071. PMID 30762414. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000700

↑ [14]: Jiang, Z., Yang, Y., & Chen, B. B. (2025). "Parental differential treatment of siblings and child psychopathology: a network meta-analysis." Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 28(3), 555-572. PMID 40524095. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10567-025-00530-w

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