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This is the finding of a study published online in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology.

Dr Ersilia Menesini and colleagues at the Universita’ degli Studi di Firenze, Italy, designed the study to investigate whether the age and gender of a child’s siblings predicted whether children were likely to bully, or to become victims of bullying. They also looked for links between sibling bullying and school bullying.

Dr Menesini said: “We found that children with older male siblings were the most victimised group.”

It was also the case that significantly more boys than girls told us that they bullied their sibling — who was most likely to be younger than them. It’s likely that this form of sibling bullying is all about maintaining a position of dominance.

Read the full article.

This research is very fascinating and certainly beneficial, though I believe an important piece has been overlooked.  The focus of study in most facets of developmental psychology has been to delve deep into the root cause of a problem and then develop an adequate treatment to control or hopefully eliminate the problem.  In terms of mental illness, this process has been highly successful in that of the 16 major mental illnesses, 14 are virtually curable and the other 2 maintainable, so in terms of researching a problem and finding a viable treatment this process makes perfect sense.  However, bullying is more of a socially heritable behavior in that children “mimic”  the behavior they observe and that behavior will spread from home to school with ease.  If one parent is particularly domineering and controlling and leads his/her household with an “iron fist” and the other parent is more or less submissive and controlled, their children will likely display those same behaviors with siblings and peers.  Dr. Menesini’s recommendation at the end of the article does start to point in the direction of the parents:

“In order to prevent and reduce sibling bullying, parents should attend to sibling relationships and attempt to mediate and reduce high levels of conflict, especially if they have older sons and if the sibling relationship appears negative and highly hostile.”

I highly recommend that every parent of multiple children pick up a copy of Siblings Without Rivalry and How to Talk so Kids Will Listen & Listen so Kids Will Talk, both authored by Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish (Avon Books)  I also highly recommend that parents observe their own behavior before trying to “fix” their kid’s behavior.  Our kids have far more character strengths than character flaws and we will likely see more of that which we focus our thoughts and attention to.  We also need to follow the advise of Mahatma Gandhi “be the change you want to see in the world“  When it comes to parenting we need to be the people we want to see in our children.  Maharishi Mahesh, the founder of Transcendental Meditation said “Don’t fight the darkness.  Bring the light and the darkness fades.”  This too is wise advice for parents when wishing to provide our children with Character Education at home and for teachers in school, especially when it comes to bullying behavior.  Rather than focus on the bullying (the darkness) and trying to “fix” the problem, focus on building confidence, resilience and optimism (bring the light) in all of our children and the bullying may just start to fade.