How having Brothers and Sisters Helps a Child to become Competitive

(405 Words)
Many children who have brothers and sisters are more competitive than children without siblings. There are many factors at play in this phenomenon.
The children may feel like they have to compete for their parents’ attention
Many young children want their parents’ attention all the time. Whether it is negative or positive, they want their parents to notice them. They may want to play with them and get praised by them. An only child is likely to get a lot of attention. When you have brothers and sisters, however, you may feel like you have to compete for this. It may be compounded by the fact that so many parents work nowadays. They may try to do what they can to make themselves stand out such as do well in school or athletics. Some people may even act out in competition with each other to get attention even if it is bad. As they compete for their parents’ attention, they may just learn to become more competitive in general and extrapolate this to other activities.
A child may also become more competitive in doing the activities to make themselves stand out. For instance, if they want to be the child that does great in school, then they may need to compete with other children who aren’t their siblings. They may compete in math tournaments and science fairs for instance. If they want to be the star athlete then they will need to do well in the sport to make the team and then perform well in the games.
The children may play competitive games
In many families competitive games are played for fun. It might be a board game like Monopoly, Chess or Checkers. It might be a sports game that the family plays together such as basketball. The more children play in a competitive setting, the more they may get accustomed to competitive play in general and the more they may take this as one of their characteristics. They may want to beat their siblings.
They may learn this behavior from their siblings
Children learn not just from their parents but from their siblings as well. They may start to display some of the behavior that their siblings model. If one of the children is competitive, then the others may take this behavior as their own.
Competitive behavior is very common among children with siblings. The above reasons can explain some of this behavior.