Road Trip

I always thought as the kids got older, it would be easier to take road trips with them, but that hasn't rang true yet. Instead of packing bags of toys for the trip, we are now packing several pairs of shoes, jewelry, X-box and the Wii. It hasn't got any easier than when the were little. At least when they were little, I could gather their stuff together. Now, it requires their assistance and there are so many things they claim they can't live without.

Except now we have even more complications, nobody wants to sit next to the other one. They are driving me nuts with this sibling rivalry crap. I have no clue how to stop it, everything I try doesn't work. They are 11 and 12 years old and claim they hate one another. My oldest and middle child are 8 years apart, so I didn't have to deal with the sibling rivalry as much as I do with my two youngest, who are only 1 year apart. They live to drive the other one nuts. The only problem with that is, the parents are the ones who are stuck trying to mediate between the two all the time and according to them, we are never fair. No matter how hard we try to be fair, someone is always unhappy with the decision. The sad part about it is, I have two psychology degrees and can't get my two children to get a long, no matter how many different things I try there is always that underlying resentment towards one another and I don't know how or when it began. We adore them both and hate seeing them at one another all the time. It makes it very difficult to do anything together as a family, because they are always arguing with one another.