I remember the knock down drag out fights that my brother and sister and I had while growing up.  No punches were thrown, however we perfected wrestling holds and torturous tickling techniques that drove us crazy.  Accompanying the physical contests were screaming and taunting bouts that drove our parent’s nuts.  It was usually two of us ganging up on the other in various combinations but each of us was on the receiving end often enough to make it all seem fair.  Sometimes our combinations changed within seconds and afforded a brand new opportunity for getting at the other sibling.  Thinking back now on those wrestling and shouting matches those fights now hold special places in my memory.  But were there any other explanations for our fighting?

When my co-author, Jim Harden, and I began to write about temperament in our book, “What Makes You Tick and What Ticks You Off,” we looked at temperament primarily as that aspect of our personality concerned with emotions and the speed and intensity of our reactions to them.  We took data from hundreds of our various workshops and seminars and found, as Hippocrates did some 2,500 years earlier, that we are born with four temperaments and develop our “dominant” temperament, that is, those behaviors, attitudes and emotions that feel MOST comfortable to us.  We have described these four “Basic Elements” in natural terms to describe the four temperament categories.  They are:

Earth— reliable, traditional, organized, sensible, and trustworthy. 

Air— intelligent, analytical, curious, visionary, and logical.

Fire— spontaneous, playful, innovative, uninhibited, and fearless.

Water— compassionate, friendly, personal, and benevolent.

My brother is a dominant “Fire” temperament.  He owns his own business and enjoys participating in golf, tennis, gambling and traveling.  He hops from one fun activity to another and is not afraid of trying anything new.  My sister is a dominant “Water” temperament.  She would give you her last dollar if you needed it.  She is a doting parent who has smothered her kids with love and attention.  Her best friends from elementary school remain her best friends today, 40 years later.  I am a dominant “Air” temperament.  I enjoy writing and assisting public and private sector clients solve planning and organizational development problems all over the world.  Could our different temperaments play a role in our bias toward fighting as children?

Jim Harden and I also found that we each possess a shadow temperament, that is, those behaviors, attitudes and emotions that feel LEAST comfortable to us.  So, if we take our four Basic Elements and prioritize them, the temperament that is our dominant preference would come first.  Our second and third preferences (i.e., secondary and tertiary) would come next and our fourth preference would be our shadow temperament – the behaviors, attitudes and emotions that we relate to the least.  We found that most of our conflicts with others (e.g., spouses, our children, bosses, co-workers, etc.) are typically with those who demonstrate our shadow temperament.

My shadow temperament is “Water.”  Although I’ve learned to appreciate this temperament more through the years, as a child the typical “Water” behaviors drove me nuts.  For this article I learned that my sister’s shadow temperament is “Fire” and my brother’s shadow temperament is “Air.”  So, all of us represented the shadow temperament of another sibling.  That could be a factor in our continuous fighting.  My Air behavior was a problem for my brother.  My sister’s behavior was a problem for me.  My brother’s behavior was a problem for my sister.  Typical sibling rivalries for parental attention or for receiving gifts or the hundreds of other reasons for fighting would still be at play, however our differences in temperament, especially our shadow temperaments are worth additional exploration.

The shadow is that vaguely familiar part of us that we prefer to keep suppressed, unacknowledged, and “in the dark.”  We are most often not conscious of the existence of this shadow temperament but it plays an important part in our personality. These shadow aspects of our personality are either part of our biological inheritance (i.e., genes) or were stored there during our upbringing because we “learned” that they were unwelcome. “You don’t DO that here, Brad!”  This shadow affects our life daily—sometimes in helpful ways but most often it causes conflict and interpersonal strife.  When you experience your shadow temperament in others, you typically perceive their behaviors as negative.  The Basic Elements, viewed from your shadow temperaments, may include:

Earth—Earth’s may be described by others from their shadow as parental, conservative, inflexible and judgmental. 

Air—Air’s may be described by others from their shadow as calculating, condescending, unemotional, and cold.

Fire—Fire’s may be described by others from their shadow as irresponsible, immature, boorish, and reckless.

Water—Water’s may be described by others from their shadow as meddlesome, clinging, nosy, and emotional.

The continuous denying or repressing of the shadow creates two negative consequences. First, it will express itself at the worst time and place (e.g., at the dinner table at Thanksgiving with all your relatives watching) and in the most infantile fashion (e.g., temper tantrums); OR, we project our poor opinions of those behaviors onto others (e.g., my brother is an idiot!).

The irony is that the more deeply we hide our shadow—the more evident it is to everyone but ourselves.  However this shadow can also become a source of strength, creativity and growth for anyone who takes the time to positively explore making these behaviors personally and socially acceptable.  As we grow older and begin to apply temperament to our own lives and behaviors, we can learn that our negative reactions to certain (not all) behaviors of others may indicate differences in the behavioral preferences with which they were born.  Here are some sibling examples from a dominant and shadow temperament point of view to demonstrate how differently we (and others) perceive the world:

Earth – The dominant Earth child who “tattles” to the parents on her siblings’ actions when they were gone because she believes family rules should be followed whether or not the parents are home; OR, the siblings who calls the Earth child to task for “ratting them out.”  They believe that family rules are merely guidelines and that the Earth child’s interpretation of those rules is debatable at best.

Air – The dominant Air child who believes that it is only right that he be given a larger gift than his siblings because he has waited the longest to receive it.  It is logical, in his mind, that his reward reflect the sacrifice that he has gone through; OR, the siblings who believe that such a large gift is totally unfair because they did not receive such a gift.  Why, they may think, should parents play favorites?

Fire – The dominant Fire child who kicks his brother’s nearly completed Lego castle to bits because he wonders what other fun thing could they make with the Legos; OR, the siblings who believe their brother is completely out of control and only causing trouble because he is bored and can’t entertain himself without bothering others.

Water –  The dominant Water child who plays with dolls all day and won’t allow anyone in her room because she is afraid they will destroy the new family she has created; OR, the siblings who think their unfair sister lives in a dream world that excludes them from her world but allows her into theirs.

The behaviors in others that tick us off the most are, more often than not, representing our shadow temperament—those behaviors that we are “hot wired” not to trust and not to value.  The dominant and shadow behaviors of each temperament as shown in our sibling examples above illustrate that our personal reactions to behaviors, especially in conflict situations, are influenced by our own temperament.

So, when your children fight with each other, what may be going on is a difference in temperament.  Dominant behavior in one child may be perceived by his/her siblings from their shadow temperament as negative – and therefore worth fighting over.  Temperament in children is considered “developing” in that they are typically unable to identify and explain why they feel so negative or indignant about certain behaviors.  This inability of children to articulate their feelings to any extent makes it tougher for parents to identify the temperament issues that are being presented.

We have found in our research that many parents can tell what their children’s dominant temperament is without too much problem.  Identifying what their shadow temperament is, on the other hand, may be much harder to do.  Awareness of temperament differences may be enough for most parents to equip them to better handle sibling fighting.  Parents who can demonstrate to their children the special gifts that each temperament bestows can have a more positive approach to reducing fighting than can the parents who rely mainly on corporal punishment or banishment to a bedroom– not that those techniques are without merit, at times.

My brother and sister and I survived our fighting childhood and remain quite close to this day.  For us, fighting became a way of bonding and brought us closer together.  It also taught us what our limitations were, both physical and mental, and that information was used at school and later in life.  For our parents, who had to live through many years of our constant bickering, shouting, wrestling and skirmishing, life might have been made a bit easier on them if they had used temperament as a tool for instructing us about the strengths that each of us kids brought to the family and for helping them understand what made each of us tick.

Why do your children fight with each other?  Maybe it is a clash of temperaments.