Sibling Dynamics

Few relationships shape us like those with our siblings. 

Whether you have siblings, share a sibling-like bond with a cousin or family friend, or are a parent navigating sibling dynamics, these relationships often play a significant role in defining our identity.

Since so many of our listeners have asked us to explore this topic, today on the Allender Center Podcast, Dan and Rachael are diving deep into the messy, beautiful, and sometimes heartbreaking world of sibling dynamics.

In today’s episode, we explore how these dynamics often lead to rivalries, alliances, and, at times, painful wounds that can last well into adulthood. 

These sibling roles aren’t just part of our personal stories—they are deeply rooted in ancient patterns. We see these themes echoed in biblical texts, where stories of favor, envy, and scarcity unfold through generations. From Cain and Abel to Joseph and his brothers, the struggles we face with our siblings have a long, storied history.

Tune in to gain fresh perspectives on navigating your sibling relationships, create space for growth, and learn how to honor the complex and beautiful stories each of you is living out.

Episode Transcript:

Rachael: Dan, we’ve been getting a lot of requests to talk more about sibling relationships on the podcast, especially sibling dynamics, as well as how do we navigate story work in our healing processes with siblings who sometimes almost have competing stories or competing narratives. And anyone with siblings knows that there is so much beauty and goodness that can come from sibling relationships, but there’s also a lot of brokenness. How could it be any different, right? Sibling relationships are such a microcosm of any beautiful and broken system, but especially the family system. And just as we step into this, especially you and I have very different experiences of siblings, right? You’ve talked a lot about that on the podcast at different times. We’ll get more into it, but I wanted to just note that there are different kinds of sibling relationships and you have bio siblings, you can have step siblings, half siblings, some people have cousins that either live in the home with primary care providers or have that kind of, can lean more into sibling dynamics than other people. So I’m very fortunate to have three biological siblings who are a very dear part of my life. And I would even say in my Italian family, some cousins, the ones that are closer to age that I grew up with in a way that there are definitely times where how we approach life, it feels more like siblings than cousins. I’m a stepmom to two beautiful boys, and I have a daughter who’s two and a half. And so I parent siblings who navigate some complex dynamics that I think are both very life-giving and at times can be really costly to them. I know you’ve named some of the heartache, but also relief of being an only child, but you also parent adult children who are siblings. And you and I both work in the mess of human relationship with people who bring a lot of sibling heartache. Sometimes siblings are the primary abuser. Sometimes siblings are loyal to the family system in a way that they feel in some ways they even become not an enemy but an enemy. So let’s jump in.

Dan: It’s a lovely intro. And just to underscore that this is not an easy topic and one that I just want to honor that you’ll step into talking about your siblings and your relationship, but only to a degree, because again, you have a story, but they have stories.

Rachael: That’s right.

Dan: And no child with older or younger siblings grew up in the same family. I think that’s one of the things that we would like to disillusion you of. Nobody grew up in the same family. And the idea of we’re all alike, we’re all from the same family. It’s like, well, birth order, we’ll talk a little bit about that, but just the reality that every child grows up in another world and one that has overlap, but also an intersection with very different roles. So could we begin with that? When you think about your siblings and your frame, you’ve talked about it before, but how does your role play itself out with your siblings?

Rachael: Yeah, I mean, I think before we go there, I just want to name, when I was talking about family, I will jump in there, but when we were talking about family systems mirroring and being a microcosm of the larger systems of our world, there’s so many power dynamics at play with regard to siblings and whether it’s gender or talents and abilities, or we’ll get more into this, but the impact of the capacity or lack of capacity of parents and primary care providers. And so there’s a lot of dynamics at play, a lot in the water, but I know we’ve talked before, the research doesn’t show that birth order has any clear impact on personality. I would still say there are certain tendencies for an oldest child that has multiple siblings that whether it’s just you are bearing the kind of your parents’ trial run. I just had a baby two and a half years ago, and I know if I had a second baby, not that my postpartum experience would be drastically different. I think I would still suffer and struggle with sleep deprivation and postpartum anxiety, but I at least would know what to expect. It wouldn’t be quite the baptism. And I think first children who have siblings are bearing some of the dynamic of figuring the things out. But in my family, so I have three siblings and my brother and I are actually, what many would call Irish twins. We’re only 13 months apart. And because of gender roles in our world, I often felt like he was either my twin or sometimes even older than me. And then I have two younger sisters, but there’s only five and a half years between the four of us. So we are all very close in age, and I was a very responsible, very compliant, good kid. And I did feel fiercely protective of my siblings. And at times a lot of parents in the eighties we’re outside playing, keep an eye on your siblings or whatever. So I did feel I took on that role of the second mother very seriously. And actually, if you were to have my siblings on the podcast, they would be like, nobody was asking Rachael to parent us, but she took it upon herself to parent us. She was so bossy and always up in our business. It’s such a rule follower and an enforcer of the rules. But in some ways a part of that had to do with some of the kind of dynamics in our home and wanting to keep everyone safe, including my parents, wanting to keep emotions contained. So definitely, and I did provide a lot of care to my parents as well. And so I think one of my primary roles was not even, it’s not so much keeper of the peace. It’s probably like I’ve said before, a storm watcher kind of scanning the horizon for when chaotic energy might be in the mix or when danger, and not just external danger, but the internal danger and how to soothe, how to bring soothing, how to bring comfort, how to bring care. And then I also was always very, I mean, my mom jokes that I preached my first sermon when I was four years old. So I started talking really young. I’ve always been really verbal. So I also think one of my roles was to help find language. But I mean we were all talkers except for my youngest sister, which is funny, because she’s now a lawyer. And so she probably has to wield language more proficiently than all of us, but she would often be really quiet. But all of us, the three older ones, were talking so much, it’s kind of like who could get a word in? So yeah, I would say those are some of the ways, the role that I held.

Dan: So let me make at least guesses and then you can respond that they’ve always been at some level appreciative for the kind of tending to the horizon to see what storms are about to arrive, especially having grown up in Oklahoma, that is not just a nice metaphor, it’s just plain true. You literally had to keep your eyes on the horizon to read reality, and it’s very subtle changes that might imply a great danger. So is that a fair word that there would be appreciation that they didn’t have to watch the world quite the way you did?

Rachael: Yes. My guess would be though, and I can’t speak for them, that they each also have their own ways in which they were watching, because I also struggle with a lot of paranoia and some trauma reactions as a kid. So I think they would also say, wow, Rachael was on red alert at all times. There was also kind of a, well, she’s really fearful. Or once the storm came, it’s not like I didn’t stay in the soothing, then I moved into fight flight or freeze or fight. So then it became, well, now you’re provoking the system. So yeah, I mean, I think it’s a complex bag, right?

Dan: So highly appreciative, but also you would be easily dismissed.

Rachael: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, here’s a common story because it was Easter Sunday, so we lived in a really small town and we were coming back from church and there was a bunny in our yard and it took off running towards us, and okay, it’s fine. It’s running towards us. But I did that thing where you kind of jump at it to get it to change course, and it just kept coming. So instantly I’m like, it has rabies and I start running, the bunny is going to attack me. That’s how heightened my sense of fear was. So I start running, and then it was like, oh, and then I ran up onto our deck to try to get inside, and I slipped on the deck and fell and hurt my shin, but it was so much shame for me in this story, but it was like, oh, Rachael, of course she’s afraid of the Easter bunny. Oh, of course. She had this kind of ridiculous response to a bunny. So yeah, there was definitely that reality too.

Dan: So bold to stand in the way. But when the bunny kept coming, then what gets centered is in one sense, not just paranoia, but almost circus-like foolishness.

Rachael: I could laugh and I can also just hold, there’s a lot of grief there too, but I can definitely laugh about this.

Dan: And again, I don’t want to mis-hear both sides to be able to say that in some ways you’re a schoolmarm serious. On the other hand, you’re something of the Shakespearean fool who in the complexity of your foolishness, you’re actually telling the stories about the people who have power in the family. So I think the point I want folks to hear is this, we have not merely a role, but there are oftentimes ways we are in the world, particularly with our siblings in a way in which we’re telling a larger story. And oftentimes that interplay of you have to be watching not just the sky but the brokenness of your family. And yet on the other hand, in the paranoia, you create laughable, heartbreaking, laughable moments that would’ve been both dismissive at one hand, but also hilarious on the other for your siblings. So the wise fool is the way I would put your role in the family. And so as what the term sophomore, Sophos=wise, Moros=fool, you were a sophomore in your family and everyone has a role. And again, the dilemmas I’ve already underscored. It’s much more complex than singular, and it has to do somewhat times with birth order or sometimes with regard to just talent. But birth order an important category to say the research only indicates between families, meaning firstborns versus second borns and the third borns across families. The only thing that shows itself is the firstborns tend to be both more intelligent, but more importantly, they think they’re more intelligent. So that’s literally the only thing that seems to show through that. But when they do research within a family, meaning how a firstborn relates to a second, third, there aren’t things that can be with research said to have a kind of verification between families. But we do know that there are power differentials. We do know that there is often triangulation, meaning a child is chosen as in some sense, the delight in the star, and that our children who end up becoming the black sheep who hold the family’s anxiety and rage. So important to be able to say the role and the place you play oftentimes determines the kind of interactions. So where does all that take you?

Rachael: Well, it takes me back to the beginning and in the sense that in some ways what you’re talking about is where we get this kind of phrase of sibling rivalry or the setup for envy that plays out in sibling relationships. And we can go back to one of the first pair of siblings in our biblical story

Dan: Didn’t turn out too well.

Rachael: Yeah, one actually kills the other one. And you see that in multiple sibling relationships in the text and this sense of favor and envy, scarcity. And we don’t always see in some ways the parental dynamics in the midst of that, but we certainly know they’re in the atmosphere. And again, back to, no family is going to be perfectly capable of love and secure attachment and mutual equitable delight. We were joking, even in my family about my baby sister, she would be like, well, it’s kind of like you guys all went off to college and our parents were super intense about all the rules. And then it was like, you guys went off to college. Now my parents would disagree with this story, which my sister would be like, you guys went off to college. I’m just kind like nobody even cared what I did by that point. They’re just tired and you guys did all the right things. So it was kind of like whatever. Again, it’s, I’m more just saying that’s part of why no one sibling has the same experience of a family, because people don’t have the same exact relationship emotionally with parents. And what you’re putting words to with triangulation is that sense of when there’s brokenness in the parental unit where the delight and connection and intimacy that’s meant to be there isn’t there, and parents look to their children or a child to bring that intimacy, to bring that emotional intimacy, sometimes certainly those dynamics move beyond emotions into physicality. But what happens when the way that appears to the other siblings is a favored child who’s actually bearing a lot of upside down, twisted, distorted responsibility and intimacy and care, but then others siblings are experiencing some form of neglect, or there can be multiple triangles in a family. So maybe when you talk about roles like different siblings playing different roles, and so it can get really complex and really messy,

Dan: And I think it’s one of the reasons why, here’s an observation I’d love for you to play with. I don’t see many sibling relationships engaging, number one, the different roles and their impact on one another, and then secondly, how those roles relate to the larger dynamic of the husband/wife assuming relationship. And so it’s like siblings might love one another profoundly and die for one another, give kidneys to one another, but they don’t talk and they don’t engage the fundamental structure of envy that seems to be a dynamic very akin to what we see in scripture, not just Cain and Abel, but in one sense, the longest story in the Bible story of Joseph and the, shall we say, very long story of complex relationship with his siblings as actually the framework of the people of God being substantiated in their own history in Egypt, and then eventually the departure 400 years later. So when we begin to talk about this, how is it that siblings don’t talk?

Rachael: Well, I want to just say, not to be like, I don’t struggle with that because certainly my siblings and I probably do have some dynamic or some conversations or things that still feel shaky or off limits, but I have actually been very fortunate with my siblings to be able to grow our, and part of that, grow our capacity to have those kinds of deeper, honest, heartbreaking full of places we also have to kind of repent and repair and take accountability or take a deeper look at what was going on. In some ways, I also want to credit my parents in their own ways for growing deeper capacity to name impact or to hold or bear impact. But yeah, because I think it can be really painful to have those conversations and it can feel really scary. Two things I would say, one, my own healing process and wanting to understand the story of my family led me to pursue more honest conversations with my siblings, but it’s taken patient, gentle… I’m not saying I was always gentle. That would be a big lie.

Dan: We know you well enough.

Rachael: Well, I’m just saying there were lots of missteps along the way. A lot of, yeah, I’m in my own process, but I’m not making space for other people to be in their process because you’re going to bump up against if there’s roles, if there’s triangulation, if there’s envy, if there’s humanity in a family, then there’s also idolatry and loyalty and a sense of we have to maintain the story that keeps us all okay. Because even if you’ve experienced profound abuse in your family of origin, there’s still this human, I think sometimes very dear and precious human desire to maintain connection with the people who are meant to be the ones like our people. And so you are stepping into where someone has a story that they need to be true in order to make sense and meaning of their world, and all of a sudden you’re inviting a new interpretation that they may not be ready for, again, or part of the carnage of the sibling relationship is really an enacting abuse that’s happening from the parental unit or in the larger, if you have a sibling who’s experienced profound abuse by a parent, sexual abuse, physical abuse, there is often reenactment of that abuse with other siblings. So these are very painful and sometimes complex dynamics. And so I don’t take it for granted one bit that I’m able, my siblings and I are able to get into stories and to be in that place where we’re like, well, I don’t remember it that way, or how, I didn’t realize that you felt that way or experienced that in that moment, or that this is what it’s cost you. So yeah, I mean, this is kind of a funny story, but so my sister-in-law was, well, she was experienced being only child for a long time, and then she had two half sisters who are much younger than her, similar to what Evie will experience with her brothers. And so she grew up for most of her childhood as an only child. And I remember my brother and sister-in-law started dating in high school. So we’re all kind of in that adolescent right out of adolescent stage, which was the messiest for us as siblings or sure, we ran our mouths at each other in the most volatile, violent ways. We were definitely embodying things, but I mean, we had this huge sibling fight, huge. It was like me, you start out with me and my brother, and then my sister got involved, and I don’t even know what we were fighting about. And we ganged up on my brother, but then my sister switched sides in the middle of it to something, and then they ganged up on me and we’re crying, we’re saying lots of cuss words. My little, the baby sister’s in the living room kind of just like, you guys are ridiculous, whatever. And my sister-in-law was, we came to, well, we embodied really the eroticism of violence. We came to a climax, we fought it out, and then it was like, okay, that was kind of dumb. Are we cool? Are we cool? Yeah, we’re cool. We had this very ritualistic moment of repair, and my sister-in-law was just devastated. For her this was like, this is the end of this family. How could they possibly come back from what just happened and what they just said to each other? And how can they be laughing together in the kitchen now after what I just witnessed? I mean, for her it was so traumatizing, and for us it was almost like another day in the park of being siblings. So we’ve really come a long way of being able to communicate with each other and hear from each other. And there’s definitely still places where we have impasse or where we don’t come to the same conclusion or we fall back into roles that we might even be aware of. But again, we’re human.

Dan: It just works. It just works. Well. And I think perhaps a bit redundant on my part, but to say that if you as a sibling can’t talk to your siblings about the relationship you have with your parents, it is likely not going to open the door to conversations that are more horizontal. So if I can use those categories, which implies a certain degree, of course, power, if you can’t talk about the verticality of your relationship with your parents, then the horizontal conversation will not have a depth. That’s what I’ve seen with regard to the siblings I’m closest to. And that is watching my children and watching them engage what they have come to name as their articulate, but difficult dad and their kind, but at times evasive and sneaky mother. And then being able to go, we in one sense, without even having language, we were trying to figure out how to live between us, but with you, and it was no easy task. But as they over their twenties, thirties, and now in their early forties, at least two of them to be able to name the impact of our marriage and our way of relating has actually given them ground to now be able to look at one another and go, you always took the blame. You always provided the kind of verbal and intellectual excuse. You always were the one who created laughter. So as you begin to see role, and then what they’ve, I think brilliantly done with one another is look into what each provided with a sense of admiration and with the more shadow side is oftentimes admiration is also where you look at that sibling and you go, I wish I had the ability to make people laugh. I wish I was able to shrug off how dad would be angry. So as you begin to play with admiration and is oftentimes real admiration to be able to say, and I struggled with that because of what I didn’t seem to be able to bring, to hold that, together with, again, these simple two words, grief, I understand your grief. I also honor the unique role, the unique gifting, the talents you had to help us all hold the complexity of living in this particular family. Now, I’m not saying that got resolved for Joseph, but there is some sense of that at the very end. And his comment, which I would hope in some sense in the context of all sibling interactions, you meant it for evil. Yeah, there was harm. You did harm. And yet I don’t hold you with an angry accountability I can see doesn’t resolve, doesn’t take away the scars, but I see something of what it has brought each of us to become. So the ability to grieve and name brokenness, but also as we have said a thousand times, to be able to actually be even more taken by beauty. That’s what I seldom see happening among siblings. And it really grieves me because it is the relationship, most of the time that will see your parents in the grave, it’ll be the relationships that you will hold even with spouses and children that are more compelling. There will be something that you hold with one another that is meant to be precious. And where the wounds of childhood can be now held with a sense of, again, we don’t have to pretend, we don’t have to deny, but we can also see how it has evolved every one of us to become even more who we were meant to be. That’s the dream. How often do you see that in your counseling, in your friendships, in other worlds?

Rachael: I do think it’s a rarity. In some ways you have to have a common language. You’re bringing a lot of language that’s been developed. Again, that was part of the process for me was making the time to even give language for what I’m talking about so that we could have these conversations. And I also think it’s one of our listeners who brought this question asked, can we talk about the non-parent oriented family dynamics? I totally understand why they’re saying that, but I also found myself thinking, oh, that’s part of the hardship and challenge of sibling relationships and repair and mending, is that even if parents or care providers are no longer present on this earth, they’re still present in the sibling dynamics and in the ways that were made, the ways that God made us and wired us for love, it’s way more threatening to our bodies that still hold young memory in our bodies. It’s way more threatening to mess with the parent dynamic than the sibling dynamic, which is why I think it can be. We’re back to that idolatry piece of like, I need to hold onto this story so it’s easier to blame you. You did this to me because that’s less threatening than, and I’m not talking about clear experiences of abuse. I’m talking about more where we get into envy and rivalry and places where as siblings, we are enacting some of what’s actually happening in that the power dynamic of the care providers or parents. It’s just so costly to face some of the truth of where that failure of love happened from a parent and where it had impact, and then how that impact impacted your capacity to be in friendship and in communion with people who are and have possibility to be like, yeah, ride or die, like dear friends. Yeah. So this is a place where, again, I think a lot of families have that kind of like, well, family, basically… We can be as cruel as we want to each other, but family over everything. Some cultures are like that, right? And there’s nothing, I think there’s actually a real beauty to a more collective, like in my Italian family, I think there’s something really beautiful, but even when there’s conflict and chaos, we’re still going to come together and be together. And it might mean you can feel the tension in the room, but we’re not going to in the open engage it because we have this value of gathering that is deeply important. So I don’t think that’s a bad thing. But yeah, so it gives me a lot of heartache because I think there is a longing when you have siblings to one, have a comrade in some ways, to have a co-storyteller, to have someone who helps you make sense of your own world, who holds collective memory with you, who wants to grow with you. And I think one of the most powerful sibling conflicts as we were becoming adults that we all had was we kept reverting, regressing back to these… It was kind of like we all left the house at a certain point, and this is who you were when we left the house, so I’m going to keep treating you and acting like that’s who you were. And just having to be like, I’m growing. Let me be someone that changed. Don’t create a fixed image of me. Let be someone who has new possibility. And also my brother can still get a reaction out of me in a matter of five seconds, and he thinks it’s the most hilarious thing in the world. So there might also be certain dynamics that do go to the grave with us.

Dan: Indeed. Lemme ask a very blunt question.

Rachael: Okay, scared.

Dan: Were you the one who brought certain language in that’s been helpful to engage these kind of realities?

Rachael: That’s a great question. Again, this is just where we’re just not like we’re superhuman or it’s just like we’re kind of weird in that we’ve always really fought to have something together, whether it’s a trauma bond or not, I dunno. But in some ways, yes, I was the first one to go, so to speak, of looking more deeply. I think we were always able to have honest conversations about dynamics in our family, but to make sense of their impact, to make sense of our relationship with each other. But at the same time, I would say they were also entering their own healing journeys on their own accords. It feels like a both/and.

Dan: Good.

Rachael: There was provision, there was some measure of grace.

Dan: I think my point that I’ve been moving toward is it’s often the fool that brings the disruption to the king and queen. What we know in scripture is that Nathan is a good example of the fool who is allowed to come into the presence of the king. And he has to be very careful. He just can’t say, you have sexually violated Bathsheba and you killed Uriah. He would’ve been killed if he had chosen that kind of language. So he had sufficient wisdom, like a good sophomore to be a fool, but tell the truth. And often it’s the fool who’s dismissed, who has access because they’re already, to some degree, aliens within their own family to bring things that might not be said quite the same way or with a sufficient clarity by others. And so one of the things that we’re inviting you to is kind of like, well, how much do you want with regard to your siblings? Likely there is a certain stratification, a kind of like, well, this is just the way we are, like when we’re with one another. And it’s like, well, the one person who begins to say, I want more. I want more care. I want more honesty. I want something of the depths of what the goodness of God can provide, especially for those of you who are in “really good Christian families” where everything was largely hidden. That opens the possibility that to actually speak about your role with your mom and dad and it’s good and it’s broken, that opens up conversations that will likely be met with some degree of disparity and contempt from your siblings. And you all have ways of being with one another that can alleviate, you get miffed and you withdraw, you get loud and you shout, but whatever, to actually have a very different response. And just to begin that process to engage your younger brother, your older sister, in ways that disrupt, but also invite, that’s where I think a lot of people probably have at least some sense of, no way Jose, I’m busy enough, I’ve got enough problems in my marriage, my friendships, my children, my work, et cetera, and now you want me to think about more? And part of my answer is, nah, nah, whatever. They’re just siblings. But maybe, maybe, yeah.

Rachael: Well, I think this is where the invitation to story work can be really powerful. And the more you do your own story work, the more you have a capacity that they might have different, they might tell the story differently than you. And instead of that feeling triggering or an assault on your memory or your experiences, does it leave room for curiosity? Does it leave room for getting to know someone in a different way than maybe you’ve made assumptions? And make no mistake about it, you will have to face, I mean, my gosh, I was so self-righteous with my siblings. Like, oh my gosh, I work this out with my sons, that oldest sibling. You can’t break any of these rules, touch any of my things, but I can do whatever I want with your things because I’m responsible. I mean, it’s just so much there. So it opens the door, I think, to even deeper levels of healing. But I do also want to say to those who just feel the agony of being the fool who has and has bumped up against closed doors or even violence, the ways in which a closed system starts to work when you are exposing, even if that exposure is unto life or unto new possibility, it’s not always the experience that people say, oh yes, I want to be well, I want there to actually be something deeper and more meaningful between us. And so I also just want to just speak to that kind of particular agony. And I know something of what it is to keep holding out hope and to keep knocking on the door. I also know in my work with people, there come times when what is most honoring to a system that does not want to be honest is to have different kinds of boundaries. And so I just, all of that’s there together. So may there be no demand or accusation that you’re taking in, but also no accusation against your desire and your hope and your longing.

Dan: Well said, and this is where I can end and say again, there have been complications being an only child, but I don’t envy you all. I’m grateful, grateful for the labor and for the goodness you have known, and your siblings have known as you have foolishly fallen on the porch, and yet without your boldness to stand down, that bunny there wouldn’t have been the opportunity to be able to invite people truly into again, the foolishness of the gospel. I think there is nothing sweeter than that image for me of bold stance, flight fall, and yet in it again, the invitation is those of us who follow Jesus, we are entering into a level of foolishness that sibling interactions seem to give very sufficient fodder to be able to use.