"I think that no matter who your siblings were, this would have been the outcome," he said. "Your personality invites it," he told me, referring to the bullying (and my nicey-nice temperament). At the time, I thought that since he was my therapist, he must have been right. So I ate his words, and said to him, "I guess if I had fought back, my sister would have stopped being mean to me."
"Oh I guarantee you she would have," he replied.
Looking back on that conversation disgusts me. I do not believe, for one second, that what happened to me was my fault. As I've said before, there are many factors that contribute to sibling abuse. The victim him- or herself is not one of them.
Victim blaming is a problem in discussions about sibling abuse. While my therapist is probably the most blatant example of the problem, I've seen it creep up in other resources too.
The parenting classic Siblings Without Rivalry trespasses into victim-blaming territory with its proposed solutions for bullying siblings. In the chapter "Siblings in Roles," the authors address bullying behavior in their subtopic "Freeing Children to Change." They use a little formula called, "No more 'victims,' no more 'bullies'." They show how this works with little cartoons where a parent can "free a bully to be compassionate and a victim to be strong."
So that seems harmless enough, right? What's wrong with that approach?
A couple of things.
First of all, what the authors are proposing is the "don't use labels" approach. This has been used before in bullying prevention, but it has never been used--and isn't supposed to be used--as a main solution. Not calling the bully "a bully" and not calling the victim "a victim," is supposed to be one of many, many tactics that can be used to help prevent bullying. But it is not the panacea for ending bullying. And it is surprising to me that the authors of Siblings Without Rivalry present it as such.
My second beef with this approach is the assumption the authors are making. They're assuming that if a child is being picked on, that child is weak. Throughout the book, not just in the chapter on sibling roles, the authors provide example after example of a bully picking on a sibling who is meek and mild. They're implying the bullying is happening because the victim is timid. Not a single anecdote is given for cases where the chosen victim fights back.
And unlike what Faber and Mazlish have presented to us in their book, victims do fight back. In real families, sometimes the victim is timid, and sometimes the victim is tough. Sometimes the insults cause the victim to shrink back, and sometimes they make the victim lunge out. But in either case, the result is the same--the victim's reaction almost always has no effect on the attacker. I've seen many families experiencing sibling abuse. Whether the victim reacts passively, aggressively, or assertively, the bullying almost always continues. (This is why it's important for parents to understand that sibling abuse can exacerbate the fighting between siblings, and even if the two of them are fighting, it's important to get to the guilty party and hold that person accountable.)
What does a victim have the power to do? They have the power to
- (Try to) avoid their sibling
- Tell their parents the bullying is bothering them
- Emotionally distance themselves from their sibling
- Stand up for themselves ("stop making fun of me," etc.)
I know children who have done all of these things, and still the bullying didn't stop. Ask people who were once victims of sibling abuse,and 99.999% of them will tell you, "I DID stand up for myself!!!....And it never worked." This is why "learned helplessness" is one of the long-term effects of sibling abuse. It's not that victims are "weak," it's that their attempts to protect themselves have very often failed.
Within the family, children are not in charge of punishments. Those belong in Mom and Dad's territory. And as any parent will tell you, one of the first rules of parenting is to not nag and yell, but follow through with consequences. If a child misbehaves, that child gets one warning. If he doesn't comply, his action should be immediately followed with a consequence. So what if you're a kid, and you can't give out consequences? What happens then?
Also, a parent saying "stop it" is very different from a child saying "stop it." Parents are the authority figures in the family, and are in charge of setting family rules and expectations. Unlike siblings, parents are not equal to their children. They hold power over their children, and are expected to make their children comply. Siblings simply do not have this power.
This power dynamic shifts once the kids grow up. When you're an adult, you have the power to cut off a relationship with your sibling. This couldn't have happened before, when you were both living in the same house. But as an adult, you finally do have the power to provide consequences--in the form of taking away your sibling's privilege of having a relationship with you. This threat of "treat me respectfully, or else you'll lose me" is often enough to make the abuser comply. And if they don't, then the power is still in your hands, and you can finally punish your sibling--permanently.
To my old therapist--I can guarantee fighting back would not have stopped my sibling. But more involved parents, family expectations implemented earlier, and consequences would have. In finding solutions for sibling abuse, pointing fingers at the victims will not empower them. Instead, let's hold the proper parties accountable, and take the burden of blame off the victims' shoulders. What happened to them is not their fault.
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