Inside: Create a strong sibling relationship between your kids by making this simple, yet meaningful Sibling Books for them as a reminder that they do in fact like spending time together.
When I brought my son home from the hospital, my two-year-old daughter wasn’t exactly thrilled.
She wasn’t mad, or sad, or even overly jealous.
She was indifferent. My daughter wanted very little to do with my son.
I had to ask her to help out with her baby brother. I had to ask her to hold him or kiss him.
And she would do it, but it was never her choice. We rarely got the priceless moments where she was super sweet with her brother.
And as my son got older and started playing with toys, my daughter began to get annoyed with him.
She wasn’t too pleased to share her space or her toys or her time.
I had read several books about sibling jealousy and implemented all I learned from Siblings Without Rivalry.
But our problem was something different. My daughter wasn’t jealous of her brother. She didn’t feel at competition with her brother.
She just didn’t like being with him.
So she needed to be reminded, and reminded often, that she did, in fact, love her brother.
And we found activities they could enjoy together and we filled our home with toys they both wanted to play with.
We took pictures of them happily playing together so we could show her how much she loved spending time with him.
And we turned the pictures and memories into something that would help our daughter feel connected with her brother even more.
Why We Need Our Kids to Feel Connected to Their Siblings:
I want our home to be a safe haven for my kids so when they come home, they can let their hair down, let their guard down, and just be themselves.
In order for that to happen, my kids have to want to be here and they have to want to be with their family. And that includes their siblings.
So we focus on building a stronger sibling bond between our kids because when my kids feel connected, we are a stronger family.
We are a better family.
Related: How to Build a Strong Family Identity
And so over the years, we have come up with several ideas to create and build up a stronger sibling bond between all of my kids.
One of my favorite ways to connect my kids more was to create Sister-Brother books for them.
For each sibling relationship, I made two books.
One for my older child from their point of view and one for my younger child from their point of view. The pictures are the same, but the wording is slightly different.
And these sibling books quickly became treasured books in our house.
Would you rather make an online scrapbook? Use this tool for digital scrapbooking!
Materials Need for Sibling Books:
- Printed photos of your kids together
- Brightly colored construction paper/Scrapbook paper/cardstock paper
- Sharpie
- Glue stick
Directions for Making Sibling Books:
1. Cut the paper to about 8 ½ inches by 5 ½ inches.
2. On the cover, title it your kids’ Sister-Brother Book or Sister Book for two girls or Brother Book for two boys.
3. For the first picture, glue down a picture of your kids when they first met. Leave a margin on the left of the picture to bind the book and leave a margin under the picture so you can write the caption.
4. For the caption on the first page, you can write, “I’ve known my brother Braeden his whole life. I went to the hospital to meet him.”
Or if it’s from the younger child’s point of view, “I’ve known my sister Addison my whole life. She came to the hospital to meet me,” inserting your own kids’ names.
5. For the next pages, continue to glue on photos and add captions.
Some page ideas I’ve used in our books:
- When my brother was younger, I helped him with his bath.
- When my brother was a baby I would feed him his bottle.
- Now that my brother is older, we can play together.
- We both like to play with our blocks.
- And we both like our water table. I play in my bathing suit and he plays in his diaper.
- We also both like ice cream!
- Sometimes my brother bugs me a little. Sometimes he makes me mad.
- But most of the time, we love being together.
- I love my brother Braeden and he loves me.
6. When the pages are complete, take the book to an office supply store and have them hard laminate the pages and spiral bind the book.
7. Round the corners of each page with scissors since hard lamination can be sharp on the corners.
My kids’ Sister-Brother books are now tucked safely away in their baby boxes. They were chewed on, spilled on, and dropped.
But most importantly, they were taken off their bookshelves often. These books were some of their most requested books to be read.
And during their quiet times, they would often “read” their books to themselves and to each other.
These siblings books are a simple, but meaningful way for my kids to feel more connected with each other and are a helpful reminder they really do love each other and want to be together.
Which in our house is priceless.
Download our Sibling Game to help siblings with kindness!
Read this for 18 super simple ideas to create a stronger sibling bond.
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