In DOLIF psychology instinctual SIBLING RIVALRY and parental Favoritism give rise to divergence in personality and behavior among adjacent siblings. But exactly HOW does this come about?
It is well understood that parents have the best intentions to raise their children so they can be proud of them. If their first child is well behaved and has a pleasant temperament, first-time parents, having little experience with raising children, naturally expect their second child to behave more or less the same way, or even better. On the other hand, if the first child was rambunctious, whiny or otherwise difficult, they hope the second one will be calmer and easier to manage. Whatever their hopes, THEY ARE ALWAYS TAKEN ENTIRELY BY SURPRISE! For it seems that as soon as the second child is born, from the first sight of each other, both children start to demonstrate not only animosity toward each other, but also OPPOSITE behavioral characteristics. DOLIF informs parents that they should anticipate their children’s personalities and behavior patterns. That is, if their first experience was positive, the second will be negative. Conversely, if their first experience was negative, the second one will be positive!
At this point, noting the differences in their children’s temperaments, parents spontaneously and with little or no awareness, use their logical Adult Mind to compare the behavior of one child with the other. On so doing, they become subject to a host of reactions and Emotions that challenge their logic. They think: How come one of our children is so well behaved and makes us so happy, while the other is so hard to handle? Why does this child make our lives so difficult when they come from the same gene pool and we’re raising them both the same way? Most critically, if their first child behaved well they think: Why can’t the second child just be the same as their sibling? Their pride and self respect come into play because they of course hope to raise the best possible children who will make them proud of their achievements as parents and people in society. Their sense of social propriety is solicited too: How come this child doesn’t embarrass us in public, but the other one never stops being loud, whining, instigating fights, having temper tantrums, etc.? They refer to their need for peace and calm in the household: Why is this child so disruptive, when our other one sits by calmly and lets us enjoy a meal together? They recall their own backgrounds and early lives: This child is so aggressive. With fear and dread they ask themselves: Can s/he be like my father who abused our mother? Am I to relive my horrid past now through this child? Or: Does my unruly child “take after” my aggressive and belligerent sibling/spouse/uncle/aunt/grandparent, etc.?
The values that parents desire in their children are those that suit adults and make them comfortable. Their bad child routinely disrupts the family and behaves in ways that render them socially abashed and personally upset with the family life they are trying to build. Living in their Adult Mind, parents are equally astounded by the displays of desirable behavior by their good child. From their vantage point they see that each sibling’s personality traits seem to be taking its own shape naturally, spontaneously, and without their provocation. They find they have done nothing different to coddle one or antagonize the other, and justified that they discipline them both fairly when necessary. Drawing on their personal experiences and Adult-based need to make sense of their situation, they conclude that their well-behaved child is somehow endowed with positive heredity, while the bad child is stubborn and antagonistic because of their unfortunate bad genes. At best they convince themselves that they have the misfortune of being the parents of two children who are “very, very different”.
But it is in fact nature’s trick!
Little do parents suspect that their children were programmed from birth to turn out opposite, and that we humans are charged with coping with their differences! And so over time and experience the parents, especially the PLG, fall further and further OUT OF LOVE with the poorly behaved child, and ever further IN LOVE with the well behaved one! All the while too, the children become more and more committed to and entrenched in their own chosen styles of behavior and character traits, which become solidified and end up identifying them, both to themselves and others. And in this way, family relationships soon fall into place.
On a psychological level, the unfortunate result of this charade is that parents end up INVESTING MORE POSITIVE EMOTIONAL ENERGY or LOVE into their “good’ child.
That is, this more compliant child becomes increasingly rewarded for their good behavior, and begins to feel in reality, MORE LOVED and FAVORED by her/his parents in comparison with their sibling. They also fit in better socially and get along well with surrounding persons. such as friends, relatives and teachers. So these Emotional bonds, especially between the PLG and the Favored child become ever tighter, and the associated character traits even more deeply ingrained.
The adjacent sibling, egged on by their undying instinct to be opposite, retains their negative behavioral path, becomes ever more distanced from the LOVE connection with the PLG, and ever more marginalized on a social level. Naturally this child’s behavior is challenging and upsetting, and over time, puts this sibling on an unsavory road to garnering increasingly LESS LOVE, less Emotional investment from the parents and gradual DISFAVOR compared with their well-behaved, cooperative Favored sibling next door. And so the vicious cycle persists and perpetuates itself.
The long range problem is that the negative sibling becomes stuck in their negative path. Determined to be opposite, the unfortunate Disfavored sibling has little “choice” of how to behave, and is now chronically subject to any and all of the negative Emotions of Anxiety, Depression and Anger. It would seem to us that this child is simply endowed with “bad genes”, but nothing could be farther from the truth. How do we know this? Because the pattern of divergent personalities in the first two siblings is entirely predictable and universal and the pattern of one Favored and one Disfavored child is repeated in every 4-person family! Remember too that each child, BOTH the Favored and Disfavored siblings are still always repulsed by each other, and committed to the ways and belief systems they have built over time, so that once the roles are decided and established, there is little room for change or adjustment on either a personal or social level.
Negative Emotions are expressed through negative behaviors. So we refer to the see-saw effect of Anger and Depression, where if Anger goes up Depression goes down, and vice versa. On the Angry side of the spectrum we find that the Disfavored child has temper tantrums, acts up and rebels or fights with parents, siblings and others. On the Depressive side they may hurt themselves, withdraw, whine, cry, self-isolate or take drugs to calm themselves. If pure Anxiety is expressed, we may observe that they are nervous, agitated, worry, bother others, bite their nails or develop obsessive or phobic behaviors. All these activities create tension in the home and are precisely the ones that clash most with adult personal and social preferences. The Disfavored child “pushes our buttons” and causes parents and others to seethe with their own Anger and frustration. We grit our teeth and fume, and before long our Disfavored child becomes the object of discomfort, blame, tension and even avoidance, both inside the family and in most social settings. Ultimately, they are the recipient of LESS LOVE and increased DISFAVOR, especially when compared with their well-behaved adjacent sibling.
From the parents’ side, we are unfortunately guilty of falling prey to their trap of soliciting Favoritism. Parents naturally feel they should be aligned with the Favored child who is pursuing the positive behavioral road since, as adults, they prefer socially compliant behavior. This makes our Favored child happy and contented with whatever we offer. They seem smart, listen to instructions, smile, are in a good mood and never question our authority. But at the same time it puts our Disfavored child in the awkward position of having to be unpleasant in order to oppose their sibling and grasp our attention, behavior that makes us respond with Anger. To us they seem unreasonable and impenetrable. None of our reality-based actions seem to be effective.
In one sense, DOLIF places much of the blame for behavioral outcomes in children on their parents because of parents’ preferences in LOVING one child who complies with their wishes and social desires, and discriminating the other through unwitting comparison. But consider too that DOLIF empowers parents. It advises them about how to change their Disfavored child’s behavior by adjusting or curbing their own powerful inner current of LOVE or Favoritism that is responsible for generating the behavior in their child. DOLIF provides new knowledge that the behavior of a problem child can be quickly and sharply improved by re-directing some of their LOVE and empathy toward the Disfavored sibling, and convincing themselves to LOVE this child with the same fervor as their Favored one!
The entire process is highly subtle, unspoken and taboo. DOLIF tells us that children continually try to court and charm their PLG into LOVING them more than their rival sibling by tricking them into preferring their style of behavior, either positive or negative. The fact behind it is that children, when born into this world, have no idea how they should behave. Parents though, lacking knowledge about the underground SIBLING WAR and frivolously labelling the behavior “normal SIBLING RIVALRY”, never fail to oblige by falling head over heels into the trap set by the children of Favoring and praising one child and punishing or being repulsed by the other, all the while fully believing they are justified in doing “the right thing“! Unfortunately, this attitude has been promoted and exacerbated by Behavioral psychology, which only follows our natural and religiously inspired urges to reward good behavior and punish bad. These attitudes are further encouraged by conferring professional-sounding titles to these oppressive punishments such as “Time Out”, “Tough Love”, “Interventions” or “Boot Camp”.
As they grow older, the child who happens to embark on the “right” or positive path becomes increasingly invested in developing a personality and lifestyle that is gentle, even-tempered and warm-hearted, with behavior and interactions that are socially compliant and pleasing. This now Favored child, whose motivation for their personality and behavioral style looks like it was genetically imprinted, really developed their behavioral path both randomly and deliberately with exactly the same primary purpose as their negatively-behaved sibling. The purpose of both the positive and the negative styles of behavior was merely to try to ATTRACT, WIN and HOG ALL the available LOVE and ATTENTION from their Prime Love Giving parent, and at the same time be opposite to their sibling. Now, because their Favored style of behavior happens to appeal to their PLG, as it does to all adults, and by virtue of the close relationship they enjoy with their PLG, coddled and secure as they are in their Inner Circle of Love, the compliant child not only ends up Favored, but ultimately becomes a more gentle, socially desirable citizen of society.
The other child, whether older or younger, whose personality and behavioral characteristics, for whatever reasons, took the negative path, on sensing their LOSS of the portion of LOVE offered by their PLG, now becomes riddled with the 3 negative Emotions of Anxiety, Depression and Anger. However again, shocking as it may seem to us, observation and long-term study confirms that this Disfavored child is, exactly like their gentle neighboring sibling, subject to the same instinct to oppose their sibling. Like their sibling, they are immersed in the same desperate struggle and are trying to ATTRACT, WIN and HOG the same POT of LOVE and ATTENTION from their PLG. It means that this child behaves negatively with exactly the same goal as their Favored sibling! And although we might consider the behavior of the Disfavored child to be misguided or even stupid, we should learn that with their Mind of a Child that is lacking in logic, they have NO capacity for scrutinizing the social situation around them or knowing what is expected of them. We must not forget that all it is done within the context of two children with burning Sibling Rivalry instincts who are immersed in their Mind of a Child and poised to WIN LOVE by all means possible in their competition to please the same PLG. It is an overwhelming preoccupation and failure of their logic and social reasoning power. Ironically then, behavior which for us as adults would seem normal, is not at all so for a child, but is understood in a totally different context. Whether the specific style or type of negative behavior chosen is rebellion, depression, high anxiety, mental illness, or other undesirable actions, the goal of the Disfavored child remains the same as that of the Favored one: (A) to please and WIN over their PLG, and at the same time (B) design their personality to be diametrically opposed to their Favored sibling. Naturally, unfortunately for the Disfavored child, this type of behavior is usually exactly what parents and society dread most and disapprove of, and in the end the behavior pattern they establish by adulthood can be highly damaging to all, including the person themselves.
So it is that authority figures must believe that the negative style of behavior displayed by a Disfavored child comes from exactly the same source of primitive drives and desires as the Favored child, and has exactly the same GOOD intention or motive behind it. That is, in the course of real, everyday life, this negative, Disfavored child, by using distasteful behavior is, in exactly the same way as their Favored sibling, actually trying their best to ATTRACT and somehow WIN the LOVE and ATTENTION of their PLG in order to bump out their rival sibling. However, in order to obey their commanding instinct to be opposite, they must search for ways to accomplish this goal somehow without copying their sibling’s style of behaving that consists of being nice, compliant and conformist. (Read more in the blog titled: How Siblings and Parents Really Feel Inside.) Warped and counter-productive as it may sound to us, the entire performance of both children is part of their endless SIBLING WAR and has very little, if anything, to do with their behavior in the context of our logical reality and daily lives. However, the problem of course for the Disfavored child is that because they are NOT succeeding at WINNING the battle with their negative tactics, they are forced to suffer the social consequences we impose with our behavioral tactics.
DOLIF Theory is the product of long term observational study and its findings are currently unknown in psychology. This is likely because the ideas are foreign to adults. They represent a significant departure from the common belief in Behavioral strategies and “spare the rod and spoil the child” religious attitudes. These methods advocate reward-and-punishment techniques that work well with animals, but are inappropriate for humans. The lack of earlier discovery of this new branch of psychology can also be attributed to its elusive, intangible Emotional theme that follows the Mind of a Child, whereas we adults are accustomed to thinking in hardcore, rational, reality-based Intellectual terms. Some may say there is insufficient research behind the DOLIF method, but its presentation here can be compared to a criminal case that is brought to court when there is no body, no fingerprints and no DNA. Yet the case must still come to court with the support of circumstantial evidence alone!
The problems we face with our children today and with the proliferation of mental illnesses are more pressing and momentous than the need to debate the supremacy of our theories. Besides, the changes that come about in children with the use of DOLIF are stark, immediate, and far too obvious to ignore. It is urgent then, for the sake of understanding the dynamics behind child psychology, mental problems and treatment at all ages, that we try our best to grasp and implement these new concepts. Of course, there is nothing to prevent systematic research from being carried out from now on, but a project such as this is far too great to be completed in one lifetime and by a single individual such as its author.
