A reader sent us this question:

My question is regarding my oldest.  He's 10 and a great leader at school.  I can't walk through the building without being stopped and told what a great leader he is to his fellow classmates, which is what we want of coarse. (Praise God)  But there seems to be a disconnect between school and home.  He doesn't like to 'lead' at home.   He's got great initiative at school... we call it "see a need, meet a need"  and his teachers tell me he's great at jumping in and helping without being asked.  But here at home... not so much.  My first thought is that I've done something to allow/foster/enable this in him, but I also know he's a sinner and a pre-teen young man who is trying to figure a lot out right now.  However...  he still has to be a good leader/example to his younger siblings.  
Just wondering if you had any helpful thoughts on the matter.

First, what a great question, because in our humble opinion you are asking the right things. So often with our kids, especially as it pertains to school, we ask about things like math grades, or English papers. Obviously those are important, but not nearly as important as character issues like honesty, respect, integrity, and yes leadership. So we commend you for focusing on character issues with your young child. Kelli will often say about those good reports from the school, “it’s our paycheck!” It’s fun to see God at work in our kids – what a privilege he lets us be a part of it. I love, “see a need, meet a need”. I don’t know if you’ve read any of our stuff on “triggers”, but we will certainly be stealing this one from you! And thank you!

As far as your question, here are a couple of thoughts that we would offer up: first we aren't going to be able to fully unpack everything on sibling relationships in this blog, but we will post related articles in the future. Next l this is part of a bigger issue we call sibling hierarchy. Whenever we get the chance to talk about sibling (we call it affection) rivalry, we always focus on sibling hierarchy. In a sense you are desiring a part of what we would teach. Now I don’t know your situation, so you may be doing what we are talking about, but the bottom line is, God chose the oldest in your family… he chose the second born… the third born and so on. Because of that, we believe strongly in honoring the birth order of our kids. To give you a practical example, our kids don’t fight over sitting in the front seat – the oldest automatically gets that privilege – not because they are better or more important, but because they are the oldest. In a philosophical sense, we use our kid’s birth order to reinforce training in honoring authority and for the older ones, being servant leaders with their younger siblings. We do talk more about this in our CD “Sibling Affection”. If you’ll email me your mailing address, I’ll send you a copy.

As soon as we start talking about age hierarchy mom’s bristle – typically because they are worried for their younger kids. They are sure the older kids will abuse the position and lord over their younger siblings. Certainly that can happen. You have to be on your guard to watch for that (part of the servant leader training), but we have found way more often when parents make the younger kids honor older brothers or sisters, the elder rises to the occasion. My guess is at school, your son is looked at as a leader and he feels like he is given a leadership role. The same needs to happen at home. We can’t expect our kids to have the responsibility of leadership without the authority of leadership – they go hand in hand. With authority comes great responsibility; when we come home and the house is a wreck the only one in trouble is the oldest – they were in charge. Of course if the younger sibling was disobedient, then we have a different issue to deal with.

As I mentioned we are on the lookout for kids taking advantage of their position and we are quick to correct and discipline those cases – it’s a serious thing in our home to take advantage of your position of leadership. I suspect your child, if given the mantle of leadership when you aren’t in the room, will rise to the occasion. The great thing is when we train our kids to be great leaders in the home – it naturally transfers to their everyday life. The incredible bonus for us has been the wonderful loving and healthy relationships that my kids enjoy with each other today as young adults. They are truly each other’s best friends – even if one of them is in charge!