Is it HARMFUL to Ask Older Siblings to Help? #90

A viral clip says that telling your older child to “help your sister” damages both kids. I get why that message spreads fast, especially if you grew up as the oldest and felt like too much landed on your shoulders. But developmental psychology is more nuanced than a scroll-stopping soundbite, and mixing up parentification with age-appropriate help can leave parents stuck and anxious about every request they make.

I break down what the research actually supports: yes, it can be unhealthy when an older child feels like the parent, carries ongoing responsibility, or becomes the default caregiver. That’s real, and it matters. But it’s also true that families thrive on cooperation, and small, bounded responsibilities can build autonomy, confidence, and trust. We talk about the difference between equality and equity, why “everyone gets the same” often fails in real homes with real ages and stages, and how to give kids what they need without trying to force a perfectly balanced scoreboard.

You’ll hear practical ways to frame sibling teamwork, assign roles that fit each child’s capacity, and avoid resentment by keeping parents in charge while still letting kids contribute. If you want less sibling conflict and more cooperation, this conversation gives you a clear line between healthy helping and too much.

Transcript

The Question Behind The Viral Clip

Jon @WholeParent 0:00

Is it bad to make your older kid help their siblings? Is it bad for their development? Is it bad for their relationship? This is what we're talking about on the episode today. It's a viral video. It's from I think like close to a year ago, but it's cropped back up on social media. I've seen so many people who I respect respond to this video and kind of like and share it. But actually, from a developmental psychology standpoint, it's not true. So let's get into it. We are doing a throwback or maybe throw forward episode of the Whole Parent Podcast today where I ask, answer, sorry, a question that I got in DMs inside of the parent lab, which is my online community that I run. And this question is a parenting myth about older children that basically says it's not good to have your older kids help your their younger siblings. And I'm not surprised that this person brought this question to me because one, I had not yet released my siblings course, which I now have released. It's a 21-day siblings challenge inside the parent lab. And number two, there is a video that's been circulating on social media. It's pretty viral. And I want to play it for you. Obviously, if you're watching this on YouTube, then you're going to be able to see the video as well. But if not, you will just be able to hear it. But I'm going to play it for you really quickly. And then once you hear it, you'll understand why I'm making this video.

What Research Supports And What It Does Not

SPEAKER_00 1:36

Developmental experts found that making your older child the helper actually damages both children's development. Here's what to do instead. When we constantly say, You're the big kid, help your sister out, we're forcing their brain into a caretaker role before it's developmentally ready. And the younger child's brain learns, I don't need to be responsible because somebody else will do it for me, creating learned helplessness. The sibling partnership method creates cooperation without burden by making them teammates instead of caretaker and dependent. First, instead of help your sister, try, you both need to put on your shoes. How do you want to tackle this together? Next, give each child age-appropriate jobs. The oldest child isn't responsible for the younger child. They're responsible with them. Finally, when they do work together, say, you two made such a great team, instead of thank you for helping your sister. This will build genuine cooperation instead of resentful obligation.

Family Equity Versus Family Equality

Why Small Duties Build Confidence

Learned Helplessness And What’s More Real

Teammates Need Different Roles

Subscribe Share And Parent Lab

Jon @WholeParent 2:28

So the first thing I want to say about this video is that there is some truth, like with many social media accounts and videos, to what this creator is saying. There is some accurate truth, but it is also not entirely true. And so if you just take this video at face value and you allow it to be, you know, your whole way of understanding sibling relationships, which is something that I'm actually writing a book on right now, then you would probably come away with the wrong impression. But if you take this video in its context and what I think the creator is trying to say, I think it can still be helpful. And I'm not like demonizing this creator or saying like this video is bad. I think that the way in which I'm seeing in the comments uh this video come across. And then to get a DM directly in my membership while this is kind of going viral on some places that kind of highlights this, I felt that it was necessary to address it. So the question that I got came, it was anonymous. I asked this person if they could share it, and they said, no, I wouldn't prefer you not share it with my name. And I said, okay, no problem. You can do that. I can either just respond to you directly inside the parent lab, or if you let me, I will do this as an episode. They said you can do it as an episode, but I would not like to share my name. So to the anonymous person who DM'd me this, uh, I've heard that you're not supposed to make the oldest kid into the helper, like not ask them to do things for the younger siblings too much. I was an oldest growing up and I had a lot placed on me, and I don't feel that it's really fair. But I end up having moments where I do have to put more on my older daughter in uh respect to her and and give her respect to like watch her little sibling for a second or go get this thing because she can't do it or she doesn't want to do it, etc. What are your thoughts on this? Well, basically, here is what I want to start by saying what is true about the video. There is research that if you place too much responsibility, like you allow a child to entirely become uh entirely reliant on another child, that it can lead to, I have not heard that it leads to learned helplessness, which is something that the creator pointed out. I have not found any studies that like highlight that. Learned helplessness is a thing that kids experience, but not necessarily when is more specifically when when it's done by an older sibling rather than like another caregiver, like there's that I haven't been able to find that data. But for the older child, there is data that says like if they feel parental, like they feel like it is their job, their entire job to take care of their little sibling. In other words, they are the parent now, and the parents are not the parent of that child, that they are the parent, that that's not healthy for their development. And I agree with that. Like there's lots of research that highlights that and that point points to that. The problem is the way in which the video is framed, it's like, no, you can't even ask your oldest kid to like go get you a diaper while they're you're doing like a diaper change for their little sibling, or you can't help the ask them to help them put their shoes on or help them go down the slide at the park or whatever. And I think that that actually fundamentally misses something that's really important in sibling development. And that is this concept of family equity, which is something, again, I have an entire like day on this inside the 21-day sibling challenge, but it misses the idea that actually to try and pretend that the kids are just equal misses something foundational. Equity is different than equality. Equality is everybody gets what the, or everybody gets the same thing. So each of you need to put on your shoes, and I'm not gonna like tell one of you, or I'm not gonna give one of you more time, or I'm not gonna give one of you more assistance, even though one of you is at a completely different developmental age and stage to be able to do that task alone. Uh that's family equality. And the idea behind family equality is that it's grounded in this very American Western ideology of like everybody should get the same. And this permeates our political system, it permeates the way in which we talk about kids, it permeates our educational system. We have a really, really um centralized educational system in the United States where we basically expect all kids that are the exact same age, regardless of different different developmental factors or learning challenges or different ways in which they process information, we expect them all to be able to like cope at the exact same level. Like all kindergartners or all five-year-olds are ready for kindergarten, rather than saying, well, well, some four-year-olds might be ready for kindergarten, and many kids aren't ready for full-time school until they're seven, right? This is the reality of development, is that it's not a one-size-fit-all. But in the United States, we have this very like fairness is equality. Like that's how we have seen this played out in so many different ways. And I want to highlight here that this is not this creator's problem. This is a cultural phenomenon. This is something that we talk about in sociology and anthropology, not just in developmental psychology. And there are different developmental psychological theories that have tried to control for this. And so if you like look back in history, there were different developmental psychologists who were forwarding theories about how child development works. And as we've progressed through and as that understanding of child development has evolved, they have gone from, hey, every kid on planet Earth should be at the same stage of development at the same exact age, to no, actually, development is broadly contextual, and different kids in different environments can be complete have can have completely different versions of what healthy development looks like. And so if you go to a hunter-gatherer tribe as Michaeline Duclef did in her first book, and if you don't know, she was on my podcast like maybe three weeks ago, four weeks ago, and with her new book called Dopamine Kids. Her first book was called Hunt Gather Parent, and she went into these indigenous hunter-gatherer uh societies. Mostly uh they weren't hunter-gatherers. I shouldn't say that. They were uh that's the name of her butt book, Hunt Gather Parent. They were indigenous societies. And as she went into those societies, what she found was that older siblings, like even five years old, six years old, had a far greater degree of responsibility for their younger siblings than we ever have here in the United States. And what that kind of showed, and this is true, by the way, not just in indigenous communities, but if you live near people who come from different places in the world, there is a family who never lives next door to us from Jordan, there is a very different expectation placed on older siblings towards younger siblings than there are in most American families. What we find is that there is, that doesn't always indicate like maladaption in developmental terms. And so I think this idea that it's always harmful paints with a broad brush, and I don't think that that's helpful, especially for parents who like are trying to navigate this. Now, why is it actually so so let me say first, like I'm sorry I'm getting kind of getting lost in my thoughts here, but first what we can say is in certain cases it can be too much and it can be too extreme, and that is something to be prevented. If ever a child is taking on a fully parental role, especially in Western contexts, right? Don't go out judging everybody else and how they do it, but in in Western contexts, in most, you know, Western Europe, United States, Canada, you can basically say, all right, if the child feels that they are in a parental role, probably not healthy for their development. Now, that said, equality is also not healthy because it kind of uh eliminates or smooths over the very real differences that exist. And so one of the things that I tell parents to do most frequently, especially in, I actually have another course inside the parent lab, it's really a workshop of like how to bring home your new baby for the first time. One of the things that I specifically say in that course is that you should place additional responsibility on the older child, even if they're only two years old, so that they can feel a sense of empowerment that comes from the exercise of duties of taking care of the older kid. This has to be done in conjunction with making sure that their fundamental basic attachment needs are met, right? That's a big piece of this, that you can't just totally abandon the older child for the new child. And I think pushing back and saying, hey, John, we have to make sure we don't do that, that's very valid. But one of the best ways that you can get that child to feel that sense of like, I'm the older brother or I'm the older sister, and I have responsibility in this, and I'm on my parents' team and I'm working towards like helping my younger sibling. Like one of the best things that you can do to foster that is to ask them to help with little tasks, to ask them to, you know, hey, can you make a funny face while I go wash this strawberry for you? Hey, I'm gonna wash this strawberry for you, but I need to put your sister down in her chair. Can you make a funny face for her? Or can you go get her her little puffs while she so that she can have a snack while I make your snack? All of these things are ways in which your child will feel empowered. And it's not about building responsibility, it's about building autonomy and empowerment. And so a child who feels like the existence of their sibling has created not a lack for them, but like a growing for them will feel much better about that. The problem with equality is like just brass tacks, your chill, your child who got more of your attention is not going to get as much of your attention when the new kid comes along. Like I'm sorry to break it to you. You chose to have more than one kid. As soon as you chose to have more than one kid, your attention was going to be split. Now, there's some things that we can do, things that I talk about in the 21-day sibling challenge, like spending, you know, seven to ten minutes a day one-on-one with that older kid at very peak important times for them. There's stuff you can do so that it doesn't become a wound for them. But this idea that you're going to be able to just like give, add another kid to the mix, and the older kid is just gonna like envelop them in as an as a co-equal teammate on day one is in my in my view ridiculous. Like that's not actually possible. And when you actually read the very few books that are out there on siblings, you find that basically none of them say this. Basically none of the people who study siblings say that you should just, you know, give all the kids the same thing and that you should treat all the kids the same. You don't want to put them into roles where it's like you are this and this is all you are now. And I think that that's what the video is trying to push back on. But in no way is it going to be completely equal. So if you think that you can just like do this thing where you're just gonna be able to always, always give equal things to both kids, like it's not gonna happen for you, and you're gonna be left with a massive disappointment. Now, I do want to say kind of like one thing here, which is that imparting some of that responsibility onto the older kid has to be done carefully. It has to be done in such a way that they feel that they have space to grieve, because they are grieving that they are not an only child anymore, or they are not the only one who's needing your attention, while also showing them that like this has led to them getting special treatment. And so one of the things that I've said to my kids, as and I have four, right, is that I will make very clear when an older kid gets to do something to that kid that the baby can't do yet. So I'll it's sounds a little strange, but I will say, like, oh, you want to stay up late or you want to watch a movie or whatever, okay, and then I'll turn to the baby and I'll say, You can't do that yet because you're not big enough yet, but someday you'll be old enough. But your big brother gets to do that right now because he's older. Now, this again, it becomes, it lays out a different foundation. And if you're thinking to yourself, like, oh my gosh, I would hate to hear that if I was like a two-year-old, well, I don't say it to two-year-olds, I say it to the to a baby who's not necessarily gonna hear that and understand that. When the kids get older, and I'm still having to do that, I will say, I will take the nine-year-old off and I'll say, Hey, listen, I don't want you to make a big deal about this. I'm gonna let you stay up late to play with your friends outside, but I don't want you to make a big deal about it. So after we ever, you know, we put your six-year-old brother to bed, then you can go back out. Like you can just walk back out and do your thing. But I don't want you shoving it in his face, and I don't want you, you know, doing this whole like na na boo-boo. I got to do something that you didn't get to do. And by giving them all of this positive reinforcement, this is what it means to be an older brother. Yes, it comes with some responsibility, but it also comes with some amazing opportunity. That is actually how you get siblings who want to caregive and they want to be helpful. And what we know, and again, this is from research across the board, is that kids who are in age-diverse play environments, even when they're not related, it activates the caregiving instincts, the natural caregiving instincts of the older kids in that play environment. And what we've found now, what's researchers like Peter Gray, who's my guest next week, uh, have found is that look, when you have older kids playing with younger kids, it actually reduces the amount of bullying that happens because those natural caregiving instincts have been activated for that older kid. And a lot of the problems that we have in modern society is exactly because of this idea of equality that all kids are just supposed to get the exact same thing. And if one kid gets this thing, everybody else has to get it in the exact same way. Again, this is a very Western mindset. It's a Western ideology posing as if it's like fundamental truth. It's not fundamental truth. You should give your kids different things. It's not unhealthy, it's not unhelpful. You can and should ask minor help, not hey, you're six years old and you're gonna watch your two-year-old little brother from 1 p.m. until 9 p.m. at night and you're just entirely irresponsible. No, that would be unhealthy. That would be an extreme version. But, you know, hey, can you sit with your little brother here while I run to the car for 10 seconds? Hey, can you keep a little, you know, you guys are all playing in the backyard and all the gates are closed. Can you make sure that the gate stays closed so that your little sister can't get out while I run inside to go to the bathroom? All of these things are healthy levels of like co-relationship. It's not gonna lead to your kid having a sense of bitterness. And I was so before making this podcast episode, I really wanted to make sure that I was right about this. So not only did I go back to all the research, not only did I go and like look up the data, from an anecdotal perspective, I actually talked to my nine-year-old and I was gonna have him on the episode, but then his friend didn't have school today, and so he was like, All right, I'm gonna go play with my friend. I don't want to be on your dumb podcast dad. I was like, all right, it's fine, it's fine, go ahead. But I was gonna have him be on the podcast because I asked him, I said, you know, hey, am I doing this right? Do you think? I didn't say, am I doing this right? I didn't want to put that on him, but I said, Hey, do you think that it's better for older siblings to be given the responsibility sometimes for their little siblings to, you know, help them get a snack or or you know keep an eye on them while their parents like run and go do something real quick, you know, in the house, not like leaving them home alone, but like, you know, if I have to go grab a screwdriver from the basement, you can watch your siblings. Do you think that it's better, or would it be better if I never gave you any of that responsibility? If I just said, It's not your job to watch your siblings and it's you know entirely not on you. And he paused for a minute and then he looked up at me and he said, Well, it's fun to take care of my siblings. And I said, Well, but not always, right? He said, No, not always. And I said, So what happens when it's not fun? He says, I said, eh. It's still it's still a good thing to do. It still makes me feel good. And I think what he was really saying in that was it makes him feel like a sense of accomplishment. It makes him feel proud. It is a source of autonomy. It is not over-responsibility, it is trust. It's saying to that child, I trust you with something so important, a task of getting that that I actually need help with. I'm I got your sister here, it's a poopy mess, and I need your help to get me another pack of wipes from the bathroom uh cabinet. Well, if I never asked my kid to help their sibling, I couldn't do that. I couldn't ask him for that. But because I don't do that, because I do ask for help, he gets to know I am able and I am capable, and I can help in ways. And I will say this as well. When we talk about learned helplessness in the research, one, learned helplessness does not happen so flippantly. I should say this. Learned helplessness is a term in psychology that is thrown around all the time as if it's like a prevailing like epidemic in our society. Learned helplessness is rare, like true learned learned helplessness is rare. It's a thing, it's a feature of psychology, but it is not you know over the top. That said, you do have entitlement, which is like like I don't want to do anything for myself, not learned helplessness, but like I I don't want to. That entitlement is often fueled by parents who do everything for their kids, not by siblings, because siblings will hold each other accountable to a greater extent. This happens all the time. My six-year-old will say to my four-year-old when he says, Go get me markers. My six-year-old will say, You know where the markers are, go get them yourself. And it's not an aggressive thing, it's not a derogatory thing, but he actually is helping him to do the opposite of learned helplessness. He is actually like showing him, hey, if I can do it, you can do it too. And they do stuff like this all the time. And I promise you, if you do this in a healthy way, you're going to lead to a relationship where kids know that they can help each other. Now, here's one more tip for you before I end, because I'm only doing one question today because we're talking about that video as well. My last tip for you in the midst of this is as your younger kids get older, start assigning them tasks to help the older brother. See, I love what this creator said at the end where she said, ultimately the goal is teamwork and team making like fostering teammates. It was actually the working title for the book that I'm writing right now about siblings was teammates, because I think that is the fundamental principle of good, healthy relationships. That is what's guiding my whole like that's the underlying metaphor in the 21 day challenge that I use. I love Love that she said the goal is teammates, teammates. But anybody who's been on a competitive team knows that not everybody on the team does the same job. Doesn't matter what sport you're playing. Even sports where that's like, you know, there's sports that is highly specialized, like baseball and football, and there's sports that is less specialized, like volleyball and basketball. Even in those less specialized sports, you don't have the six foot-one guard uh trying to box out guys underneath the basket, you know, who are seven feet tall. You don't have the five foot eight Libero, which is a position in volleyball, the guy with the different jersey or the woman with the different jersey, playing the front row. There are different roles for different people based on talent and skill and capability and competence and just, you know, biological factors. I was never six five. I couldn't play right side or outside hitter at a competitive level. I was just not tall enough to do so. That was not a knock on me. It doesn't mean that I'm a bad person because I wasn't, but it means that in order to be a part of the team, I had to have a different job. As your kids are growing up, you want them to feel like teammates, but teammates are not just people who always work together in the same way. And so the goal is to actually start assigning tasks to the other kids, to the younger kids, and how they can support. And so last night we did something kind of silly. We built a new uh little playhouse in our backyard. We had gotten one off of Craigslist many years ago or Facebook Marketplace or whatever, but it was like falling apart. The neighbor kids had kind of broken it, and it needed to be, let's say, disassembled. And so uh I waited until it was my older two kids and me at night, and I said, All right, here's some sledgehammers, let's take this thing apart, which is like a dream for kids, right? And they started doing their Taekwondo moves and kicking things apart. And then when it was all said and done, we had to put all the pieces into black trash bags. And I assigned each of them a task that was age appropriate for the nine-year-old and the six-year-old, and even the eighteen-month-old. I said to my eighteen-month-old, go find pieces like this. And I held up a small piece of the playhouse and put it in here, and I pointed to the trash bag. To my older son, oldest son, who's nine, I said, Go find any pieces that seem dangerous that you can be safe with. You're responsible for the dangerous pieces. And then to my six-year-old, I said, Go get all the pieces that are too big for your sister but that aren't super dangerous. I don't want you to get hurt. And so they each had a task, and I held the bag and I was piling stuff with my other hand, and we together took all of the pieces of the shattered playhouse and put them into the bags that we had to throw them away. And I tell you the story to say we did so as a team, but we didn't do so in this equality way of everybody's working at the same pace at the same thing. We did so that at a skill-related level. And to this mom who did this post who may might be an oldest kid themselves, to the person who asked me this question, um, who said that they are an oldest kid, I just want to say if you are an oldest and you felt like too much responsibility was placed on you, that is something that you have to process. That's something that you have to process with a safe person in your life. But what the research shows us, with older kids especially, is that if you want your kids to help each other later down the road, which is ultimately the goal, right? I want my kids to pick up their phone when they're in trouble and dial their brothers and their sister and say, Hey, I need somebody to talk to, or I need help with this thing, or you know, hey, you've been through this before. Can you talk to me about this? That's what I want for them when they're 20 and 30. And what the research says is that that is a habit that is built early. Be a family that helps each other. Don't make, don't demonize being a family that helps each other. You have to do so in an effective and thoughtful way, but don't become that family who's just constantly worried about, oh, am I giving all of my kids exactly the same thing? You will never give your kids the same thing. And maybe for this parent who probably has maybe two kids at the most three kids, they feel that oh, they can just keep giving their kids, they can just buy buy one of each every time, or they can just always give their kids the same thing. I'm telling you, as a person with four, I counsel people with seven kids, with eight kids. They all know the truth, which is that as your kids grow, the boundaries change depending on their age and stage. Kids are not always gonna have the same thing. Kids don't always have to have the same bedtime so that it's fair. Fairness is about equity. I have an entire day on this inside the 21-day course. Equity means everybody gets what they need, not everybody gets the same. And if you and if you're trying to do parenting, like cough and hack up along, if you're trying to do parenting from the everybody gets the same, and I'm constantly just trying to protect and over-protect, you're not going to lead to your kid not feeling a sense of responsibility. You're gonna lead to isolation. Your kids just don't they they are coexisting, they are not existing in tandem. And I know that's not this creator's goal, and I know that's not this parent's goal. I know that because they all they talk about teamwork. So I just wanted to provide some nuance, and I hope this is a good episode for you to listen if you have siblings, especially if you grew up as an oldest kid. Thanks again for listening to this episode of the Whole Parent podcast. I hope it was worth the time that you gave it today. I hope you learned something or were challenged, or maybe it just made you smile. If it did, there's a couple of things that you can do that would really, really help me out. The first one is to go right now and subscribe to my channel at Whole Parent on YouTube. YouTube is getting full, unabridged versions of every podcast episode ad-free right now. I am really trying to get people over there because I have so much awesome YouTube content planned and I have such a small following over there. So if you want to get the best of Whole Parent, hop over to the YouTube. There's awesome stuff there. It's going to absolutely change your life. The second thing that you can do is actually go to the link in the description. You can find YouTube there as well, but find the link for the Parent Lab. It's my exclusive community where I do group coaching. I have a whole course library there full of amazing educational resources for parents. It is a subscription model where you gain access for a low monthly fee. Go ahead, check out the Parent Lab. There's so many amazing things in the Parent Lab. And if you want to grow in your parenting, it's the best way to do that. The third thing that you can do, and it probably costs you the most because it costs you vulnerability, is to share this episode or this podcast in general with people in your life. There are parents in your life who are struggling. There are parents in your life who could use this in their life. And we know that the number one way that we can get more people to listen and watch and follow along with the podcast is by personal referral. People want to know what you're listening to. They want to know what's helping you to parent more effectively. And so if you can do that, find somebody in your life who needs this podcast and send it to them. I would be so, so, so appreciative. Thank you again so much for your time. You can find links to everything that we talked about in the episode, including my books, Punishment Free Parenting, and Set My Feelings Free down below. And I'll see you next time.