Part of being a parent to siblings is witnessing the ups and downs–some literal–of their dynamic. Charles Feng has this Perspective.
On a late afternoon, my kids went outside to say goodbye to their nanny as she was leaving to go home. My three-year-old son didn’t want to put on his shoes, so my six-year-old daughter valiantly carried him on her back, “like a horsie,” as my son would say. They scampered down the driveway to get across the cul-de-sac. As she ran, she face planted on the hot asphalt. Their nanny and my wife, both only a few feet away, looked on in movie slow-motion terror as it unfolded.
As my daughter lay there crying, the adults panic-stricken, my son, oblivious, and without a single scratch, got up to pick up some sticks in the front yard. My daughter had abrasions on her knees, chin, nasal bridge, and across her entire forehead. Blood was everywhere. We patched her up with gauze and Vaseline. For the next week, my daughter had these mummy-wrappings on her face. An introvert, she was forced to be the center of attention. One classmate told her she looked scary. Everyone asked her what happened. Fortunately no one questioned our parenting abilities.
Getting injured is a rite of childhood. But it’s not as common to do so while protecting your brother. It’s a direct contrast to their first meeting in the hospital when my son was two days old, and my daughter punched him in the arm and told him to “Go back into mamma’s belly.” Their relationship has been mostly positive since then, with the usual fights over what to watch on Disney Plus, but also sparkling moments, like when they’ll spend hours building forts together from cardboard boxes. As a parent, I hope that as they grow older, they’ll be each other’s biggest cheerleaders, perhaps occasionally sacrificing for each other when necessary. It’s an intimate relationship my wife had with her deceased sister, and one that, as an only child, I wish I had with a sibling.
Two months later, my daughter’s abrasions are almost fully healed. The event now a part of their distant past, my daughter continues to carry my son on her back, but now only inside the house, where the carpet will buffer any falls.