"She Started It": A Restorative Approach to Sibling Conflict This Summer

It starts before breakfast.

Someone looked at someone wrong. Someone breathed too loudly. Someone is sitting in the other person's spot on the couch — and not just sitting there, but sitting there on purpose, with full knowledge of the injustice being committed.

By 9 a.m., you have already referred three separate disputes, heard the phrase "she started it" no fewer than five times, and privately questioned every decision that led to you being in this house with these children on this particular summer morning.

Here's what the research says, and what fourteen years in classrooms and schools has taught us: sibling conflict is not a problem to eliminate. It's a developmental crucible. Psychologically, sibling rivalry serves a developmental purpose — it helps children figure out what is unique and special about themselves, a process known as differentiation. The arguments about the couch spot are, at some level, arguments about identity, belonging, and who gets to matter in this family.

That doesn't make them less exhausting. But it does change what your job actually is.

The Blame Game Is a Dead End

Let's start with what doesn't work: adjudicating.

When you walk into a sibling conflict and ask "who started it," you have just transformed yourself into a judge — and both children into adversaries competing for your verdict. From that point forward, every piece of information they share is not evidence of what happened. It is advocacy for their position.

You will never know who started it. Even if you watched the whole thing, you didn't see what happened three hours earlier that set the emotional temperature. Observational studies have shown that sibling conflict may occur up to 8 times per hour during early and middle childhood. The incident you're looking at is almost never the first act of the play.

The question "who started it" is also developmentally inappropriate for most children. It asks for a level of objectivity and metacognition that young children simply don't have access to — especially when they're activated. You're asking someone whose amygdala is running the show to file an accurate police report.

Stop investigating. Start restoring.

What Restorative Practices Actually Look Like at Home

Restorative Practices is a framework* used in schools, courts, and communities around the world to address harm by repairing relationships rather than assigning punishment. In a restorative approach, those involved in a conflict discuss what happened, who was affected, and how to repair the harm — a process that helps children take responsibility for their actions in a supportive setting.

You don't need training to bring this into your living room. You need four questions and the willingness to resist the urge to solve it for them.

The four restorative questions:

1. What happened?

2. Who was affected, and how?

3. What do you need right now?

4. What can we do to make it right?

That's a very simplified framework - but it will work. Here's how it actually sounds in practice.

How to Use It in the Moment

Step one: Separate and regulate before you do anything else.

Do not attempt a restorative conversation with children who are still flooded. A child in the middle of a meltdown cannot access empathy, cannot think about someone else's experience, and cannot problem-solve. Neither can you, if you've been listening to screaming for the past twenty minutes.

Say: "I can see you're both really upset. We're going to figure this out — but not right this second. Let's take five minutes to breathe first."

Then actually take five minutes. Not as a consequence. As a physiological necessity.

Step two: Hear each person separately — briefly.

Come to each child individually, before you bring them together. Not to build your case. To give each child the experience of being heard before they have to listen to someone else.

"Tell me what happened — just your part."

Don't correct. Don't editorialize. Don't say "well, your sister says..." Just listen. This is often all children need before they can move forward — not justice, but the experience of being witnessed.

Step three: Bring them together with a question, not a verdict.

"Okay. I'm not going to tell you who was right. What I want to know is: what happened, and how did it affect each of you?"

Let them take turns. Hold the container — meaning, make sure no one talks over each other, and that the question stays focused on impact rather than blame. If they loop back to "but she started it," redirect gently: "Maybe she did. Right now I want to know what it felt like for you when it happened."

Step four: Move toward repair.

"So what do you think needs to happen now so you can both feel okay?"

Children are often surprisingly good at this when they're regulated and feel heard. They know what repair looks like between them. Your job is to stay out of the way long enough for them to find it.

The Blame Spiral and What's Underneath It

When a child says "she started it," they are almost never making a neutral factual claim. They are expressing something more fundamental: I was hurt, and I need you to know that it wasn't my fault.

The need underneath the blame is the need to be seen as good, in your eyes specifically. Children want to be seen as the most special by their parents, which means they are always pushing for preferential treatment over their siblings. The blame game is, at its root, a bid for your approval.

This means that the most powerful thing you can do in the middle of a sibling conflict is not assign fault. It's communicating — clearly and evenly — that both children are loved, both experiences are valid, and neither child needs to win for both of them to matter.

"I'm not interested in who started it. I'm interested in how you both feel and how we're going to get through the rest of the day."

That sentence takes the competition off the table.

What Not to Do (Even When It's Tempting)

Don't force apologies. Forced apologies teach performance. A child who says sorry because you made them is not building empathy — they're building resentment. Ask instead: "What do you think your brother needs from you right now?" That question requires actual perspective-taking.

Don't take sides, even subtly. Research consistently finds that siblings get on better when there is no favoritism from parents. Even a tone of voice that communicates you believe one child over the other will register — and it will cost you trust with the child who felt dismissed.

Don't make the older child responsible for the resolution. The older child is not the parent. Asking them to "be the bigger person" because of their age is developmentally unfair and tends to breed the exact resentment it's meant to avoid.

Don't solve it for them. The point of a restorative conversation is not to produce a parental verdict that both children comply with. It's to build the children's capacity to navigate conflict. Every time you solve it for them, you take that opportunity away.

The Long Game

Here is what the research actually shows about sibling conflict: sibling relationships are, for most individuals, the longest-lasting relationships, and the quality of those relationships in childhood predicts a great deal about the adults they become.

The child who learns — through hundreds of imperfect, restorative conversations in your living room — that conflict can be named, heard, and repaired without someone winning and someone losing is learning something that will serve them for the rest of their life.

Not just with their sibling. With every relationship they ever have.

So yes. The "she started it" at 9am on a Tuesday in July is exhausting. It is also, if you can find your way to meet it restoratively, an extraordinary opportunity.

You won't always have the bandwidth. That's okay. Some days, you separate them and call it good enough. But on the days when you do have a few minutes and a regulated nervous system, the four questions are waiting.

What happened? Who was affected? What do you need? What can we do to make it right?

*A Note on the Roots of Restorative Practices

The restorative questions and circle practices shared in this post are drawn from a framework called Restorative Practices — but that framework did not originate in schools, courtrooms, or research institutions. Restorative practices are rooted in Indigenous peacemaking traditions from cultures around the world, including First Nations communities in Canada, Māori communities in New Zealand, and Aboriginal communities in Australia, among many others. These traditions have centered on community healing, accountability in relationships, and repair rather than punishment for generations, long before Western institutions discovered and adapted them.

What you read here is a small slice of a much larger, more nuanced body of practice — specifically, the restorative conversation, one tool within the broader Restorative Practices framework. It is a starting point, not the whole picture.

We believe that using these tools well requires understanding where they come from and honoring the communities that developed them. A dedicated post on the fuller history, philosophy, and intentional practice of Restorative Practices is coming soon. We hope you'll read it.

Wildroot is committed to giving credit where credit is due — in our content, in our classrooms, and in our communities.

References

1. Feinberg, M.E., et al. (cited in Penn State Prevention Research Center, 2026). The psychology behind sibling rivalry. Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center. Retrieved from https://prevention.psu.edu/news/the-psychology-behind-sibling-rivalry/ — Source for the developmental purpose of sibling rivalry (differentiation) and the frequency of sibling conflict — up to eight times per hour in early and middle childhood.

2. Brightwheel. (2025). Restorative practices in the early childhood classroom. Retrieved from https://mybrightwheel.com/blog/restorative-practices-in-the-early-childhood-classroom — Source for the restorative practices framework — what happened, who was affected, how to repair harm.

3. Qian, G., Li, R., Qu, F., et al. (2024). The relationship between parental role expectations and sibling jealousy: the mediating effect of first-born children's role cognition. Current Psychology, 43, 2136–2143. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-04478-4 — Source for the relationship between parental favoritism and sibling relationship quality, cited in NCT (2025).

4. Su-Russell, C., Killoren, S., & Palermo, F. (2024). Parenting, self-regulation, and sibling relationship dynamics in early childhood. Family Relations, 73(5), 3530–3548. https://doi.org/10.1111/fare.13081 — Additional source for the role of parental consistency in sibling relationship quality. Referenced by NCT (2025): siblings get on better when there is no favouritism from parents.

5. NCT. (2025). Sibling relationships and sibling rivalry. Retrieved from https://www.nct.org.uk/information/baby-toddler/baby-and-toddler-development/sibling-relationships-and-sibling-rivalry — Review source for the statement that siblings get on better without parental favoritism.

6. Sun, X., et al. (2024). Patterns and correlates of changes in sibling intimacy and conflict from middle childhood through young adulthood. Developmental Psychology, 62(3), 665–677. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001750 — Source for sibling relationships being most individuals' longest-lasting relationships.

This post is for informational and educational purposes only.

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