{"id":3165,"date":"2010-10-10T19:08:50","date_gmt":"2010-10-11T00:08:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/womantalk.wordpress.com\/?p=3165"},"modified":"2010-10-10T19:08:50","modified_gmt":"2010-10-11T00:08:50","slug":"four-ways-to-be-closer-to-your-siblings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/?p=3165","title":{"rendered":"Four Ways to be Closer to Your Siblings"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m pleasantly working my way through a stack of Real Simple<\/em> magazine back issues. Let me know if you would like me to pass them on to you next.<\/p>\n

I enjoyed family-relationship expert Jane Isay’s “10 ways to be closer to your siblings” from the May 2010 issue. She is the author of Walking on Eggshells<\/em> and Mom Still Likes You Best: The Unfinished Business Between Siblings<\/em>. She offers sensible advice with tongue-in-cheek humor. I decided to post about this column when I read this line: “Avoid hot-button topics (politics, religion, high-fructose corn syrup).”<\/p>\n

Here’s a sample of her advice:<\/p>\n

1. Childhood is like Vegas: Let what happened there stay there. <\/strong>Don’t guilt yourself over the mind games you played on your brother, and stop accusing your sister of stealing the sweater you bought in Florence, circa 1992. Make a conscious effort to forgive these childhood misdeeds and they’ll soon be water under the Ponte Vecchio.
\n3. Stop being the family mole. Ever-shifting alliances, surreptitious confabs, stealth reconnaissance – you’d think we were talking about The Bourne Identity<\/em> and not those other people born to your mother. Sibling relationships are often defined by behind-the-back gossiping, whether that means secretly slamming one sib to the other or listening greedily as your parents decry your brother’s latest over-the-top electronics purchase. As expected all this duplicitous chatter erodes honesty and makes it nearly impossible for you to be as close-knit with your clan as you would like. So cut it out. And if you’re finding it difficult to tear yourself away from, say, Mom’s gripe-fest, remember that she most likely lets loose about you, too.
\n4. Mind your manners.<\/strong>Would you ever ask a friend, “Have you brushed your teeth this week?” No? Then don’t speak to your brother like that. You don’t have to be formal with siblings, but a petty comment still rankles, no matter how close you are to them. The brothers and sisters whom I spoke to say digs about weight, grammar usage, and your sib’s choice of friends are especially off-limits.
\n6. B GR8 TXT FRNDS.<\/strong> Occasional hours-long chats are nice, but you’re actually more likely to supercharge your bond by having frequent casual contact, many sibs say. Technology can help. Text messaging from a train platform, commenting on a Facebook update, and pinging on your Blackberry make it really easy to be the thoughtful sister you are.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m pleasantly working my way through a stack of Real Simple magazine back issues. Let me know if you would like me to pass them on to you next. I enjoyed family-relationship expert Jane Isay’s “10 ways to be closer … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}