In the grand tradition of lying to children, I have convinced our 3-year old daughter, Claudia, that her favorite color is blue.

I don’t care that every girl born in the past two decades has chosen pink (or its slightly mellower relation, light purple) for a favorite. Steering Claudia toward blue wasn’t an attempt to subvert the girls-must-like-pink rule: I was just avoiding fights.

You see, Claudia has an older sister Fern, who staked prior claim to pink during her glorious reign as an only child. So when her baby sister started using utensils and crayons, I would hand her the blue specimen of each, saying encouragingly, “Sweetie, blue is your favorite color.”

My deception knew no bounds. “I’m so sorry,” I offered along with handed-down socks, “but pink is the only color we’ve got. I know how much you hate it.” Sure enough, after years of fatherly fraud, Claudia now half-believes that her favorite color is blue, and thus we’ve evaded a raft of clashes.

Alas, the pink trick may be my only triumph in this game of raising sisters, a challenge for which I – a stay-at-home dad and the younger of two brothers myself – was painfully unprepared.

The feuds we dodged were quickly replaced by endless squabbles so ridiculous that I giggled before I cried. Claudia once shouted “Harry Potter!” at a bookstore window, but the picture was, in fact, Anne of Green Gables.

Nothing frustrates Fern like her sister’s mistakes, so she corrected her (“That’s not Harry Potter!”); Claudia stood firm (“That is Harry Potter!”). For several minutes, the girls battled, call-and-response style, the volume escalating with every round.

Finally, I overruled them with my finely-honed parenting skills. “Girls, stop yelling,” I said. “Let’s go get ice cream.”

But sisterhood shouldn’t need an ice cream booster. Am I naïve to think that Claudia should dote on everything Fern does? And shouldn’t Fern be an affectionate mentor?

Not at our place.

Battle Cry of Sisters

Fern practices a martial art of her own invention that consists mainly of aggressive ballet moves and high-decibel screeches. Naturally, Claudia mimics her, but it’s not good enough for Fern: she criticizes everything down to the quality of her sister’s war cries.

“It’s not ‘hiiiii-YA’, it’s ‘ai-AI-ai-YA!” she directs, and Claudia gamely tries to hit the new syllables. Fern is unsatisfied, though. She emits a grunt of frustration, throws up her hands in a “Game Over” gesture and runs out of the room.

What is parenting if not an exercise in futility? I sometimes blithely attempt to engineer sisterly cooperation by starting a joint project or shared adventure. Predictably, these never last long before there’s a dispute about who gets “the best” paintbrush or scooter.

Once again, my girls show me that my biggest mistake is attempting control. Fern and Claudia are on a path to sisterhood that I can’t govern: whatever bond develops will arrive all by itself.

Just last week, I was startled from my housework by every parent’s most feared sound: silence. Assuming that the quiet meant that the sofa was being painted or snails were being hoarded under the bed, I went in search of mischief.

I found my girls cleaning the kitchen walls. From around a corner, I watched as they shared – shared! – a single water sprayer. Fern even pointed out an excellent smudge for her sister to wipe and Claudia said “Thank you” before giving Fern her turn. I was dumbfounded.

The girls are realizing independently that they can be playmates. Every week, they share more moments of mutual comfort, affection and even sharing.

Of course, it helped that the water sprayer wasn’t pink or blue. Even between loving sisters, friendship has its limits.

Graham Charles blogs at Doodaddy.net.