Roxane Lehmann, Ph.D.

Modern Family: Season 5, Episode 24, The Wedding, Part II

Partners for Life

The Framework
After many, many false starts, Mitch and Cam finally get married tonight. The grooms don’t have the most captivating storyline in their own wedding episode though. Competing with the couple’s story is Jay’s heartwarming reconciliation with Mitch and Haley’s “I like him; I like him not” relationship with Andy. But it was the interactions between the siblings that captured my attention tonight.

There’s the sibling teasing as Luke squabbles with Manny like a stereotypical “married couple.” Alex captures it all on film, exclaiming: I can’t get enough of this!

There’s the sibling snubbing as Haley ignores Alex in favor of Andy.
Alex: Okay, this is weird. I think this is the same seat I use to nervously scratch on – on my way to school.
Haley (looking at her phone): Ahhh. Poor thing.
Alex: Yeah. Even though I felt such pressure to be …
Haley (still looking at phone): Andy’s flight is delayed again!
Alex to Haley: Okay, that was close. We almost connected on a human level.

But it’s Claire’s closing voiceover that best encompasses what it means to be a sibling. As Mitch walks down the aisle on Jay’s arm, Claire reflects: I remember like it was yesterday – the day that Mitchell came home from the hospital in a very unfashionable white diaper with three strands of scraggly Raggedy Andy hair … We were inseparable. I was his big sister. His big brother. His nemesis. His protector. His best friend … I was his first partner …

Flipping the Frame: My Notes
For years researchers have tried to figure out what shapes kids’ personalities the most. First they thought it was parents – especially moms. Next they thought it was genes. Then it was their friends. Now more and more evidence suggests that of all the factors that shape personality, siblings are at the top.

This makes sense from just the sheer amount of time kids spend with their siblings. Even during the teen years when pushing away from family is the norm, kids still spend at least ten hours a week with their sibs. All this together time gives brothers and sisters lots of opportunity to learn from each other – with learning going both up and down the age scale.

The sibling fights that drive us crazy give sibs training on how to resolve conflict – and how not to do it. This can give them a big advantage down the line in marriage and in the workplace.

Sibling rivalry can push kids to learn skills and build strengths. Sometimes younger kids mimic their older sibs while older sibs push themselves to do things so as not to be out-shone by a younger sib who has already done it. At other times, to minimize the rivalry, siblings strive to carve out their own identity by being different: She’s the pretty one; I’ll be the smart one or He’s the athlete; I’ll be the musician.

And for learning about the world of the opposite sex, there’s nothing better than having an older sibling who’s a member living in the same house. Compared with their peers, girls with older brothers and boys with older sisters tend to converse more easily and be better liked by members of the opposite sex.

BottomLine
Phil (wrapping up his duty as wedding officiant): By the powers vested in me by the state of California, I am privileged to pronounce you spouses for life.

The thing is, even if Cam stays with Mitch for the rest of his life, he wasn’t there from the beginning like Claire. Our spouses arrive relatively late in life, and our parents will eventually be gone. So it’s siblings who may be the only ones who truly qualify as partners for life. And given the powerful force of sibling relationships, we moms have a stake in building healthy relationships between our kids.

What’s a Mom to Do?
Below are some tips to help you help your kids get along.

Don’t compare their achievements. If you do, you’ll only make your kids’ natural rivalry worse. Instead, look for areas in which each child is doing well and praise them without measuring them against their sibs or anyone else. Use words like “quick” and “strong” rather than comparison words like “quickest” or “strongest.” Viewing themselves as the quickest or the strongest causes kids to crave the exhilarating feeling of being the best. And as they get older and the comparison pool gets bigger, there will almost always be someone who is quicker or stronger.

Avoid pigeonholing them. Adolescence is a time when kids are finding out who they are and figuring out what they want to do with their lives. Labeling them tells them who they are before they’ve even had a chance to figure things out for themselves. Narrow reputations (the creative one, the smart one, the athletic one, the spoiled one, the problem child), even when they’re stated in positive terms, can be bad for our kids. They can feel pressure to live up to positive labels and to think of their negative reputations as unlikely to change regardless of their efforts to improve.

Promote both shared activities and alone time. Siblings benefit from time together to learn social skills – like how to compromise, take turns, and make amends. But everybody needs some time alone. And sibs tend to get along better if some times are designated as time away from each other – especially during vacation times when there’s no school to break up the kids’ time together.

Don’t play favorites. Favoritism is the one thing that can make or break our kids’ relationships with one another. For kids the real issue is fairness. But if we try to be fair by treating all our kids the same, we’re in for trouble. Because we’re bound to treat our kids of different ages, abilities, and needs differently. Plus even if we could treat each of our children in exactly the same way, chances are they’d respond to us in different ways and their experiences would not be the same. So rather than suggesting to your children that you’ll try to treat them equally, it’s wiser to assure them that you’ll strive to be fair by taking their individuality into account and giving each what they need.

Kids spend more time with their siblings than they do with anybody else – more than they spend with their friends, with their teachers, with us, or even by themselves. And kids are stuck with their siblings for life. So it’s well worth the time and energy it takes to help our kids get along.

Your Parenting Experiences
From the time they are born siblings begin shaping each other. They serve as sparring partners, measuring sticks, protectors, competitors, co-conspirators, collaborators, models, and cautionary tales. Which of these roles best describe the relationships you and your sibs shared as kids? What do you think your kids would say about their relationships with each other?

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Modern Family: Season 5, Episode 23, The Wedding, Part I

The Teens Save the Day

The Framework
The wedding day gets off to a smooth start with Cam’s sunny greeting to Mitch: Good morning, my almost husband. But things get bumpier as the day goes on.

The first bump comes when Cam discovers that his perfectly tailored tux is not in the bag he’d picked up from the cleaners. The two almost husbands hurry to the cleaners (with Lily in tow) only to find the place closed. A call to 911 ends with this.
Cam (to dispatcher): Well, I guess we have different definitions of emergency. (And then to Mitch while looking at the cleaner’s express drop-off slot cut into the front of the building): There’s no way I can fit there.
But Lily comes through for her dads. After sighing, You two exhaust me, she climbs into the drop slot to retrieve Cam’s tux.

Over at the Dunphys, Claire tells Phil that they’re not going to the wedding without a very specific, turquoise, Italian glass bowl as a gift and asks him to pick it up after his eye exam. Alex is enlisted to do the driving because drops used during the exam will temporarily impair Phil’s vision. Later when buying the bowl and facing a long line at the checkout counter, Phil uses his impairment to his advantage.

Phil (grabbing a bamboo stick from a store display): I’m blind; follow me. Although
Alex insists, I’m not doing that, those waiting let Phil and his stick move to the front of the line.
Phil (to salesman while checking out the bowl and continuing his blind act): Yeah, that doesn’t feel like turquoise.
Salesman: You can feel color?! You gotta be kidding!!
Phil: When you lose one sense, all your other senses become heightened. That’s why you sound so loud and judgy to me.
Salesman: I don’t think [you’re] really blind.
Alex (coming to Phil’s rescue): Excuse me; my father suffered methanol poisoning on a humanitarian mission in Honduras, resulting in permanent neurological dysfunction and irreversible blindness … If he feels it’s not the bowl, it’s not the bowl.

Meanwhile, Claire picks up Luke from wilderness camp.
Claire: I feel bad you have to leave early. What are you missing today?
Luke: Boating.
Claire: Ohhh … I mean, we have a little time.
Luke: You don’t mind waiting in the car?!
The next thing you know, the two are in the middle of the lake in a motorboat going nowhere.
Luke (yanking on the pullchord): Not working.
Claire: And there’s no oar. We are literally up a creek without a paddle … We are never going to get [to the wedding] on time. And I’m the best person.
Minutes later, Luke, with a flash of insight, uses his fishing pole to snag a tree and reel the boat to shore.

Flipping the Frame: My Notes
As much as we parents might like to maintain the relationships that seemed to work so well during the first twelve years of their lives, our teens insist that things be different. In the spirit of growing up and developing their own identity, our teens demand more say, more privacy, and less physical closeness. Their moodiness and heightened sensitivity can be particularly tough to deal with during early adolescence.

Case in point is this conversation between Claire and Luke as she picks him up from camp.
Claire: There’s my guy.
Luke: I thought Dad was picking me up.
Claire (looking hurt): Ohh, I missed you too. Come here. (trying to give him a hug) … I wanted to spend some time with you. You’ve been pushing me away so much lately … So did you have fun?
Luke: Yeah.
Claire: What was your favorite thing?
Luke: I don’t remember.
Claire: It was yesterday.
Luke: Hotdogs. Can we go now?

And there’s this from Phil and Alex just after Claire announces that she is picking Luke up from wilderness camp and that Alex can take Phil to his eye exam.
Phil: That’s a bummer.
Alex (hurt after overhearing): Ahh, Dad, I’m touched.
Phil: No, not because of you. I’d just rather pick-up Luke … than go to the eye doctor. I love spending time with you … Honey, don’t be like that. You’re super fun.

BottomLine
Andy (to Haley): I’ve been in this relationship off-and-on for eight years. So I kinda know what I’m doing.

As moms of teens, we can relate to this sentiment. We’ve been in a steady relationship with our teens for over twelve years. So it feels like we should know what we’re doing. But staying connected with our teens in a way that we (and they) welcome and value, is not as easy as the connections we had with them when they were younger.

Yet our connection with our teens is our most important asset as a parent. Because now that our kids have become teens, most of our parental power is in our influence. And our influence over our teens can be no stronger than our connection with them.

What’s a Mom to Do?
It helps if we remember that the diminished feeling of closeness is likely not rooted in a serious loss of love or respect between our teens and us. In fact, the distancing effect of adolescence is temporary and our relationships often become less strained during late adolescence.

In the meantime, needing your teen’s help can build connectedness. Tonight we saw Lily (acting like a six-year-old going on sixteen), Alex, and Luke all save the day by doing something that their parents could not have done as well.

Needing your teen’s help builds connectedness because interdependence is at the heart of parent-teen relationships. Your teen needs to be able to count on you, and you need to be able to count on your teen. Asking your teen for help with a task at which they are more talented or skilled than you are can foster this kind of interdependent connectedness.

My Parenting Experience
My daughter gave me first-hand proof of this when, one summer during her middle school years, I asked for her help with a task with which I’d been struggling for years: organizing the clothes in my closet in a way that would last. Using her artistry and logic she arranged everything in my closet by color like the crayons in a brand new box. She put all the tan items together, then whites, ivories, greens, blues, reds, and browns. Besides being an organizational scheme that helped me find my clothes, it was one that I could easily maintain.

I would not have come up with this idea on my own, and I was thrilled with the arrangement. My daughter delighted in knowing both these things. And, by needing her help, I was building an interdependent connectedness with her.

Your Parenting Experiences
When you have an interdependent connectedness with your teen, it makes everything on your parent to do list – things like making and enforcing rules, helping them learn from their mistakes, and coaxing them to reach their potential – a whole lot more doable and fun. Over the summer while your teen is on vacation and free from homework is a perfect time to need their help with some of your work. What task could your teen do with more talent or skill than you?

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