Child Psychology and Psychiatry

particularly likely to be compromised [10]. These
findings remind us how important it is to recognize
the context of multiple family relationships within
which siblings grow up. From the second year on,
children monitor the interactions between their
parents and siblings with vigilance [11].
The evidence that influential experiences within
the family differ markedly between siblings has
shown us that it is sibling-specific experiences
that need to be studied [4]. Innovative analytic
techniques have been developed to assess and dis-
tinguish between these ‘child-specific’ and ‘family-
wide’ influences [12].