Background: Siblings may support each other, but also reveal fierce rivalry and mutual aggression. Supportive sibling relationships have been linked to the development of psychosocial competence of children. In the present longitudinal study, we will focus on the development of perceived support in sibling dyads and on the influence of sibling…

Based on the notion that friendship may serve an important protective function against peer victimization, this study examined the moderating effect of reciprocal friends' prosociality on the link between a child's reactive aggression and victimization. The study also investigated whether a similar moderating effect could be found with respect to…

Seventy-six siblings (3-9 years) were individually interviewed concerning their recent conflicts. Analyses compared goals, requests, and voluntary actions attributed to self and other. Children were adept at describing both own and others' goals, requests, and actions, and these formed coherent hierarchies in which overarching explicit goals…

This study investigates the extent to which analytic power can be increased through the inclusion of siblings in a data set and the concomitant use of random coefficient multilevel models. Analyses of real-world data regarding the predictors of young adult alcohol use illustrate how parallel single-level analyses of a 1-child-per-family data set…

In this article, the author describes the Sports, Habilitation, and Recreation Program (SHARP), a program of the Foundation for Blind Children in Phoenix, Arizona. The SHARP program aims to help children, who have visual impairments, achieve goals, develop independence, and make friends. One of the unique features of the SHARP program is that it…

Few studies have examined the impact of children with genetic disorders and their unaffected siblings on family functioning. In this study, the reciprocal causal links between problem behaviors and maternal distress were investigated in 150 families containing a child with fragile X syndrome (FXS) and an unaffected sibling. Both children's…

This paper explores Freud's developing thought on brothers and sisters, and their importance in his psychoanalytical writings and clinical work. Freud's work on sibling psychology has been seriously undervalued. This paper aims to give due recognition to Freud's work in this area. (Contains 1 note.)

This study examined older siblings' influence on their younger brothers and sisters by assessing the connections between youth's perceptions of sibling influence and sibling similarities in four domains: Risky behavior, peer competence, sports interests, and art interests. Participants included two adolescent-age siblings (firstborn age M=17.34;…

Investigated the discrimination of sibling age and sex roles by second born children (age 5-13), with the focus on changes in discrimination as a function of the child's age and sex, sibling status, sex of sibling, and age spacing between siblings. (DP)

Mothers told stories to their children, inserting questions under two conditions. In one situation, mothers were alone with their younger child; in the other, an older sibling was also present. It was concluded that the presence of older siblings may influence the language young children hear and produce. (Author/CL)

Examines whether mothers' temperament ratings of their children as easy or difficult follow the pattern of occurrence of sibling deidentification as determined by generalized alike-different judgments. Participants were 111 middle-class mothers (80 with two children and 31 with three) and 93 inner-city mothers (62 with two children and 31 with…

Two investigations were conducted to ascertain teachers' expectations for the performance of the younger siblings of learning disabled students. Results indicated that teachers held lower expectations for younger siblings of LD than of non-LD students. (Author/CL)

Recent experimental evidence has documented the negative effects of work-promoting welfare policies on adolescents. One potential explanation for these effects is that when parents must work, adolescents may be required to provide child care for younger siblings, occupying time that could be spent on homework or enrichment activities. This…

Older siblings tended to directly answer questions addressed to language delayed children rather than to provide prompts or rephrasings of the question as they did for younger normal children. (Author)

Questionnaires completed by 83 families of autistic children (5-23 years old) revealed that significantly more autistic children were non-right-handers than either their siblings or their parents. Findings suggest that increased mixed- and left-handedness in autistic persons is not due to inheritance. (CL)