Sibling rivalry

when does it end

Just quickly, first, the paperback of my first novel is out on July 16th.

If you shied away from the hardback due to price - no judgment here - and are not a kindle user, the paperback can be pre-ordered in all the usual places BUT ALSO has been selected for a promotional deal at bookshop.org.

The code at checkout is PREORDER20 and will give you 20% off the cover price of £9.49. Promotional deals are really helpful for authors and I’m very grateful to be picked. Bookshop.org does excellent work supporting independent booksellers so it’s good work as well as money off. Offer ends on the 17th May, which is this Sunday.

The link to pre-order again is here, and the code at checkout is PREORDER20. Thank you all, generally, for your tremendous support of this book over the last year and also thank you to Bookshop.org.

Sibling rivalry: I have three siblings and found being one of four difficult. I felt a bit lost in the shuffle and now, looking back, see that I compared myself endlessly and negatively to my siblings, when I could have been regarding myself on my own terms.

Large families really suit some personalities, but not mine. Only having two children was a very conscious decision. Two is my limit. I could divide my attention in two, just about. But not three, not - egads - four!

So imagine my shock at the intense sibling rivalry that exists between my own children. Kitty freaks out about how much food Sam eats. “No! He can’t have another one. He's eaten TOO MUCH.” Sam waits until my full attention is on Kitty due to exams or D of E or whatever and then starts losing things and begging for help to find them, or injuring himself in some dramatic way or simply standing directly in front of me saying “we need to chat”.

He was profoundly disturbed by seeing me helping Kitty revise for physics a few months ago as physics is “his” subject. “What I’d like,” he told me, seriously, “is for you to test me on physics so I can show you how much better I am at it than Kitty.”

I explained that I was only helping Kitty revise because it was an absolute emergency, which is the only way you will get me to open a physics text book. His physics is fine, so that won’t be happening.

They both lose their minds if both the lock screen and home screen of my phone shows the other child. When either of them is getting a telling-off, which admittedly doesn’t happen much these days, the other intuits it with almost a sixth-sense and appears at the doorway, gleeful and I have to snap “Don’t say anything,” otherwise they will pipe up with their own list of critiques, accusations and so on.

“Listen!” I barked the other day. “There are only bloody two of you. Both your parents are completely and ruinously devoted to your health and wellbeing. Stop acting like two baby birds in a nest fighting over a single caterpillar. There’s plenty to go round!”

They looked at me with their beady eyes, uncomprehending. For them, I suppose, somewhere in the atavistic, lizard part of their brains, this is a fight to the death.

What’s the sibling rivalry like between your children - or your siblings? At what point does it become unhealthy? Leave a thoughtful comment in the box below - or I’m telling Mum.