Experts believe that sibling relationships are an important component of children’s social and emotional development. 

Siblings play a unique role in one another’s lives. Siblings shape one another’s history and character, to a far greater extent than is usually acknowledged.

A good number of Nigerian families have multiple children, and this may sometimes mean that young children don’t always get a lot of individual attention from their parents.

For example, once a couple has a second child, the attention they spent on their first child will then be split among both children.

Having very large families may be detrimental to children. Previous studies have shown that children from large families tend to score lower on vocabulary, IQ and other academic tests, compared to those from smaller families. This is attributed to resource dilution.

Now a new study suggests that healthy interactions of a younger child with an older sibling might help compensate for that.

To see if an older sibling can ‘possibly fill in for some of that diluted attention’, researchers from the University of Toronto studied 385 young children who had a sibling at least four years older.

The children’s mothers and their older siblings were scored on how well they interacted with the younger child.

For example, the researchers scored whether the older sibling or mother were sensitive to the younger sibling’s abilities and gave them positive feedback.

The younger sibling’s vocabulary was also tested by having the child point to an object’s picture after its named was said out loud.

The researchers found that children with many siblings tended to score lower on the vocabulary test, compared to those who came from much smaller families.

The children from large families whose older siblings scored higher during the interaction, however, tended to score higher on the test than those whose older brother or sister scored lower during the interaction.

Overall, the researchers concluded that how older children interacted with their siblings was tied to the younger child’s development.

Jennifer Jenkins the senior author of the study and the Atkinson Chair of Early Child Development and Education at the University of Toronto, told Reuters Health that,

“The idea is that here is this effect of being in a large family where you don’t get that many resources, but if you get an older sibling that’s really attuned to your needs that would be a modifying effect,”

 

“Siblings really play this very strong role in how kids come out,”

 

“I’d like people to think about those sibling relationships a little bit more and then how to strengthen them.”