Jeffrey Kluger Quotes About Siblings

Quotes about: Siblings

• It's one of the worst-kept secrets of family life that all parents have a preferred son or daughter, and the rules for acknowledging it are the same everywhere: The favored kids recognize their status and keep quiet about it - the better to preserve the good thing they've got going and to keep their siblings off their back.

  Jeffrey Kluger

  Daughter, Mother, Sibling

• Certainly, people can get along without siblings. Single children do, and there are people who have irreparably estranged relationships with their siblings who live full and satisfying lives, but to have siblings and not make the most of that resource is squandering one of the greatest interpersonal resources you'll ever have.

  Jeffrey Kluger

  Children, Sibling, Single Child

• Older siblings get more total-immersion mentoring with their parents before younger siblings come along. As a result, they get an IQ and linguistic advantage because they are the exclusive focus of their parents' attention.

  Jeffrey Kluger

  Sibling, Parent, Focus

• We're learning how important it is both to preserve sibling relationships if they work and repair them if they're broken. We're also learning a lot about nonliteral siblings - stepsiblings, half-siblings - and the surprising power they can have.

  Jeffrey Kluger

  Sibling, Broken, Important

• If you're an older sibling and you have a younger sibling who needs mentoring or is afraid of the dark, you develop nurturing and empathic skills that you wouldn't otherwise have.

  Jeffrey Kluger

  Sibling, Dark, Skills

• There's a sort of sibling moratorium when you're establishing yourself as an adult. So much of your energy has to be focused on other things like work and kids. But when people become more settled, siblings tend to regroup because now you're building a new extended family.

  Jeffrey Kluger

  Sibling, Kids, People

• When you're your parents' one shot at a genetic legacy, you may get to attend all the best schools, wear all the best clothes and eat all the best foods - at least relative to children in multiple-sibling households. But you also wind up with an overweening sense of your own importance.

  Jeffrey Kluger

  Children, Sibling, School

• When you learn conflict-resolution skills in the playroom, you then practice them on the playground, and that in turn stays with you. If you have a combative sibling or a physically intimidating, older sibling, you learn a lot about how to deal with situations like that later in life. If you're an older sibling and you have a younger sibling who needs mentoring or is afraid of the dark, you develop nurturing and empathic skills that you wouldn't otherwise have.

  Jeffrey Kluger

  Sibling, Dark, Later In Life

• My own life has in some ways been a decades-long tour of the sibling experience. I have full sibs, I have half-sibs, and for a time I had step-sibs.

  Jeffrey Kluger

  Sibling, Long, Half

  Jeffrey Kluger (2011). “The Sibling Effect: What the Bonds Among Brothers and Sisters Reveal About Us”, p.10, Penguin

• Your parents leave you too soon and your kids and spouse come along late, but your siblings know you when you are in your most inchoate form.

  Jeffrey Kluger

  Sister, Brother, Sibling

  "Why we can never escape our siblings". Interview with Mandy Van Deven, www.salon.com. September 11, 2011.

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