Siblings experience and express a wide range of feelings for each other that are connected to the children’s respective functions.
Brothers and sisters are first and foremost mutual interaction partners.
They do not just play with each other, but are also rivals for their parents’ attention, which is often a scarce commodity in challenging family constellations.
At the same time, sibling relations are firm: conflicts can be worked through more easily than with peers, and even aggressive behaviour actually directed at parents can be displaced on siblings in relative safety.