Tips on Dealing with Your Sibling in Quarantine

Dealing with your siblings is often tough to begin with, but when you have to spend 24/7 with them, it can become even more frustrating. Here are a few tips on not turning your home into a battlefield:

- when something gets you angry, write it down in a diary instead of taking the anger out on your sibling

- play games with them (board games, card games, video games, kinect, etc.)

- make them food (the way to someone's heart is through their stomach ;) )

- listen to music you both like together

- if you have common hobbies, do them together

- talk about anything and everything (books, movies, shows, musicians, etc.)

- if you have a backyard, play there together

- try not to irritate each other (we're all like pressure cookers right now, even the smallest things can make us go off—speaking from experience)

For me and my little brother, Harry Potter is our way of staying sane together. At the beginning of quarantine, my brother had nothing to do and nobody to hang out with so he was always complaining and getting on my last nerve. After suffering a day of that, I suggested that he read the Harry Potter series: it's a series that I, personally, am a huge fan of and it's very long so it would keep him busy for quite some time. I had to work hard at convincing him, telling him about how I also was reluctant to read the series but after I started, I regretted not having read it earlier. He finally agreed and he has been loving it. It takes a lot of time out of his day, and we have something that we can talk about together. Each weekend we, as a whole family, watch the movie that corresponds with the book he read that week. That way, our parents, who haven't read the series, can also stay up to date with what my brother is reading and we can have family conversations about the movie, the plot, the characters, and more (me and my dad are both movie lovers, so it's usually the two of us passionately talking, but my mom and my brother chime in every now and then)

It's day 24 of quarantine (for me), so as the days go on I may come up with more tips, so stay tuned :)