Siblings are the people we practice on, the people who teach us about fairness and cooperation and kindness and caring — quite often the hard way.

Dugdale frames siblinghood as a child’s first “social laboratory,” where everyday conflicts and alliances provide repeated, low-stakes rehearsals for adult moral life. The idea of “practice” suggests that empathy, fairness, and cooperation are not innate virtues that appear fully formed, but skills learned through trial, error, and repair. By adding “quite often the hard way,” the quote acknowledges the pain and friction that can accompany sibling rivalry—jealousy, competition, boundary-testing—while insisting those experiences can be formative. The line also subtly elevates siblings from mere family members to primary teachers, shaping how we negotiate sharing, justice, and care in later relationships.