NurtureShock (18 page)

The most common reason the kids were fighting was the same one that was the ruin of Regan and Goneril: sharing the castle’s
toys. Almost 80% of the older children, and 75% of the younger kids, all said sharing physical possessions—or claiming them
as their own—caused the most fights.

Nothing else came close. Although 39% of the younger kids did complain that their fights were about… fights. They claimed,
basically, that they started fights to stop their older siblings from hitting them.

Mindful of the Freudian paradigm, the scholars tempered their findings, wondering if the children were too young to understand
the depths of the family psychodrama they were starring in. But these brothers and sisters weren’t toddlers. The younger kids
were in elementary school, and some of the older kids were already teenagers. The scholars felt that the psychological community
needed to recognize that “siblings have their own repertoire of conflict issues separate from their parents.” The struggle
to win a greater share of parental love may be a factor, they wrote, but kids in mid-childhood don’t think about it, recognize
it, or articulate it.

Laurie Kramer also came to this same conclusion. She reviewed 47 popular parenting manuals, analyzing how much of their advice
regarding sibling relationships was rooted in empirical research, versus how much was just unproven theory. Kramer found that
every single parenting manual recited the psychodynamic paradigm, that sibling resentment stems from a loss of parental attention
when the younger child is born. Kramer noted that there’s certainly research making this point. For instance, one recent study
showed that an older sibling’s jealousy when the younger is 16 months old predicts what kind of relationship they’ll have
a couple years later. But Kramer feels this fixation on competition for parental love masks and distracts from a more important
truth: even in families where children are given plenty of affection by both parents, “young children may fail to develop
prosocial relationships with their siblings if nobody teaches them how.” Less emphasis needs to be placed on the psychology,
and more needs to be on skill-building.

What else is overrated? Parents imagine that the difference in age between siblings is an important factor. Some think it’s
preferable to have kids less than two years apart, so they are close enough in age to play together; others feel they should
wait three or four years, to help each child develop independence. But the research is entirely mixed—for every study that
concludes age differences matter, there’s another study proving it doesn’t. “Relative to other factors,” said Kramer, “age
spacing is not as strong a predictor. Nor is gender. There’s many other things to be concerned about.”

As for what does matter, Kramer’s work offers one big surprise. One of the best predictors of how well two siblings get along
is determined
before
the birth of the younger child. At first glance, this is astounding—how can it be possible to predict a clash of personalities,
if one of the personalities at issue doesn’t even exist yet? How can their future relationship be knowable? But the explanation
is quite reasonable. It has nothing to do with the parents. Instead, the predictive factor is the quality of the older child’s
relationship
with his best friend
.

Kramer studied young kids from families who were expecting another child. She observed these kids playing one-on-one with
their best friends. The kids who could play in a reciprocal, mutual style with their best friend were the ones who had good
rapport with their younger sibling, years later.

It’s long been assumed that siblings learn on one another, and then apply the social skills they acquire to their relationships
with peers outside the family. Kramer says it’s the other way around: older siblings train on their friends, and then apply
what they know to their little brothers and sisters.

After monitoring these relationships with best friends, Kramer saw that one factor stood out as especially telling: shared
fantasy play. As Kramer and John Gottman explained, “Fantasy play represents one of the highest levels of social involvement
for young children.” In order for joint fantasy play to work, children must emotionally commit to one another, and pay attention
to what the other is doing. They have to articulate what’s in their mind’s eye—and negotiate some scenario that allows both
their visions to come alive. When one kid just announced the beginning of a ninja battle, but the other wants to be a cowboy,
they have to figure out how to still ride off into the sunset together.

If, however, the child hasn’t developed these good habits on friends, and the younger sibling comes along, now there’s very
little incentive to learn the skills of shared play (choosing an activity both can enjoy, inviting the other and/or asking
to be included, recognizing when someone is busy or wants to play alone). The incentive’s not there because, as Samantha Punch
pointed out, the sibling will be there tomorrow no matter what. Siblings are prisoners, genetically sentenced to live together,
with no time off for good behavior. There is simply no motivation to change.

Kramer also considered children’s behavior in day care and preschools. The fact that kids could cooperate in class or remain
engaged in a group setting didn’t predict improved sibling relationships. It was that real connection between friends—that
made a child care how his behavior impacted someone he liked—that was the catalyst for the difference.

“A parent is going to work hard to meet his child’s needs. They are highly motivated by love,” Kramer explained. “Other kids
don’t care if you’re hungry or have a bruise on your knee—they have one, too.”

In other words, getting what you need from a parent is easy. It’s getting what you want from friends that forces a child to
develop skills.

“It’s not that parents are unimportant,” Kramer has concluded. “But they are important in very different ways.”

Which is why, in a sense, what Kramer is really trying to do is transform children’s relationships from sibship to something
more akin to a real friendship. If kids enjoy one another’s presence, then quarreling comes at a new cost. The penalty for
fighting is no longer just a time-out, but the loss of a worthy opponent.

Why, for adolescents, arguing with adults is a sign of respect, not disrespect—and arguing is constructive to the relationship,
not destructive.

J
asmine is an eighteen-year-old high school senior in Miami-Dade County, Florida. She’s a natural beauty with long dark tresses
and ebony eyes. Though she was raised and lives in Opa-Locka, an area known for its poverty and gangs, she attends a competitive
private school across town. (“There’s a lot of rich white kids who go there.”) Despite a demanding courseload of honors and
college prep classes, Jasmine maintains a solid 3.6 GPA and was selected for a prestigious program for children of Latin American
immigrants—kids who will be the first in their families to attend college.

The youngest daughter of two in a staunchly Catholic family, Jasmine sings in her church’s choir. She is often at the front
of the church saying the weekly readings. Inspired by her part-time job at a local hospital, Jasmine intends to study harder
this year and attend the University of Florida; she aims to become a doctor.

“I think my parents are proud of me because they know about some of the struggles I have had to go through—but I’ve always
been very motivated,” she says.

Or perhaps, if they knew the rest of Jasmine’s extracurriculars, her parents might never speak to her again.

Long ago, she figured out that her parents keyed off her level of interest in a boy. When it was obvious she thought a guy
was cute, they never let her be alone with him. She was allowed to go only on group outings, and dates were always chaperoned.
So now she always insists that she isn’t interested in a guy—they are “just friends”—then her parents will let them go out
alone. She can go over to the guy’s house to hang out unsupervised and have sex—sometimes planned, sometimes just a happy
accident.

By the time Jasmine was fourteen, she was sneaking out of her first-floor window once a week, in the middle of the night.
She was going to parties with local gangbangers—drinking enough alcohol that she was blacking out. Entire nights are gone
from memory. “I’m a competitive drinker,” she giggled like the schoolgirl she was. “If someone’s drinking, I can drink more
than them.”

Still fourteen, she began dating an eighteen-year-old. Her parents knew about the guy—whom they hated and wouldn’t let in
the house—but Jasmine snuck out late at night to see him. They’d been having sex since their first month together. Her boyfriend
secretly paid for her prescription for birth control and tried to convince Jasmine to run away with him. That had been going
on for months before her mother, while putting away laundry, accidentally found the pills hidden in Jasmine’s dresser.

“She went crazy,” Jasmine says. “She was so upset she couldn’t even talk to me. So she had my aunt come in to find out what
was going on.” Jasmine immediately lied that the doctor had given her the pills to regulate her hormones—and after a while,
her family was convinced. As far as her family knows, she is still a virgin.

Jasmine started meeting guys in an internet chat room. They were always a few years older. One—who was at least in his twenties—came
to the house to take her out. She looked out the window, ready to leave with him, but she decided he was too old for her—so
she didn’t go out to his car.

In four years, she was caught sneaking out only once: the police spotted her and a friend walking down the street at three
a.m., hours past curfew. The police brought her home, and her parents promptly grounded her for two months. Now, at a more
mature eighteen, she has cut the sneaking out down to once every other week. “I don’t do those as much now… except for the
random booty calls and the secret dates.”

Twice, an ex-boyfriend had gotten her drunk, then forced himself on her. She sort of concedes that she’d been date-raped—but
then she insists both incidents were her fault. “I drank an entire water-bottle full of vodka, and I knew if I got drunk it
might happen. I was stupid. It happened ’cuz I’m not smart. Thank God I’m not pregnant.” She pauses. “I sort of think God
must love me, because I’m still alive.”

It’s not just the dating she lies about. She lies about things she doesn’t really need to cover up. The lying is on autopilot.
“I lie to my parents every day. I lie about homework every night. I say I finished it when I haven’t even started. I finish
it—but I do it at school before class. Never when I say it’s done.”

Jasmine explains, “I just don’t want to tell my mom something if it’s going to make my life difficult. She lectures me a lot—and
I don’t want her to stop. If she did, I would think she didn’t care. So sometimes, I will tell her the truth—when I feel like
being lectured. It just depends on my mood. But I only ever tell the truth when I want to.”

If her parents found anything out now, it would be bad but she’s less worried about it—now that she’s a legal adult, looking
forward to voting in her first presidential election. “Maybe I’ll tell Mom someday. But not for a really long time. When she
sees that I turned out okay, grown-up, so that she doesn’t have to worry. After I have my career, and I’m all settled.”

Until recently, we didn’t really know how often teens lied to parents. The systematic accounting was nonexistent. Most parents
have some sense that they’re not hearing the whole truth from their teenagers. They fill the information vacuum with equal
parts intuition, trust, and fear.

With other uncertainties in life, we have averages to inform a sense of what’s normal. When a couple gets married, for instance,
they have a 57% chance of seeing their fifteenth wedding anniversary. If you’re wondering how long you might live, it’s informative
to know the life expectancy now averages 78 years. Those taking the New York State bar exam for the first time have an 83%
chance of passing, and high school seniors applying to Harvard have a 7% chance of being admitted.

Shouldn’t we have the equivalent statistics on how much teens lie to (and hide from) their parents?

Drs. Nancy Darling and Linda Caldwell thought so.

Darling and Caldwell both came to Penn State University around the same time, and naturally took an interest in each other’s
work. Darling was studying adolescent dating, which teens lie to their parents about routinely. Caldwell was researching a
new field called “Leisure Studies,” which sounded at first to Darling like a trivial topic, but turned out to be the study
of what kids do in their free time. One of the operating theories of Leisure Studies is that adolescents turn to drinking
and sex partly because they have a lot of unsupervised free time. They’re bored and don’t know what else to do. “When you’re
fourteen, everything’s more interesting when you’re drunk,” remarked Darling.