fighting fair

Siblings can be bitter rivals and the best of friends (sometimes switching back and forth multiple times in the span of a day).

As the (hopefully) responsible adult in the story it falls upon you to help moderate and define the rules of conduct for your home and family. It also falls on you to determine the course of action required when these guidelines are not followed (for whatever reason).

Some of the rules my parents imposed upon my siblings and I when we were children at the time felt horrendously unreasonable, but through the test of time have proven to have been in our best interest. Here are two of my favorite rules that helped mitigate sibling rivalry.
No name calling
No rough housing

This not to say that we were abundantly obedient. Rather it lead our parents to keep things from getting out of hand.

The no name calling felt tricky at first, but lead to better arguments and understanding. When you are pushed to attack ideas and actions rather than someone else as a person it becomes a much more interesting discussion, as opposed to lobbing insults back and forth that can undermine self esteem on both sides as well as diminish the possibility of future cooperation.

"No rough housing" felt like a decree that no fun shall be had. So my brother and I would occasionally look at one another and say "do you want to wrestle?" (my sister and I didn't really do the physical confrontation thing with each other). But while my brother and I were in the same weight category we didn't have the best control, (we are talking about grade school kids here.) so it didn't take long for play fighting to become real fighting. So in an effort to preempt the tears our parents would separate us as soon as possible when we were getting rough.

One thing my dad did that put an end to our physical confrontations was sending us to martial arts lessons. With the understanding that neither of us were allowed to start a fight. And the discipline we gained made it possible for us to knock it off and give each other a break.

And the one thing that my mom told us over and over again was to "be nice to your siblings, you will be best friends some day"

It worked.