sibling stuff

[alison]

Maybe I'm putting far too much thought into this, but I want my kids to get along. M is wonderful to her sister. She's kind, patient, loving. I don't know what I'd do without her. She springs to action whenever help is needed, and just knows what to do.

On the other hand, C who is almost 17 months (not yet walking), can be really awful to her sister. She pulls her hair, grabs food out of M's hands, scratches her, head butts her. I know a bit part of it is her age and testing boundaries (when she gets told "no!" she cackles and is on to her next hijink). The problem is that M perceives this all as C not loving her or being the worst baby. I often tell M she should find a cozy spot somewhere where C can't get to her.

What's your advice on riding this through? I feel like sending M away to another part of the house to avoid conflict is only partially helpful, because M does want to be close to us/her sister. I can't exactly send the 17-month old off to another room. I do tell M that the hair-pulling is just a phase, and that C does love her, but oh man...does the latter push buttons! Any advice?

[Thirteen]

Removing C, or putting her in a "time out" (we put DS1 in time out in his high chair and faced him away from us, starting at 15 months, for one minute).

Edit: He often acted out at the table, so to me it made sense to set the microwave timer and sign "finished" to him for that minute. I also avoided eye contact.
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[alison]

I think I'll try that. M isn't the one who should be removed from the situation.

[TulipsAndSunscreen]

We have the same issue. I remove D and do not let her bully C who adores D more than anything. D is slightly older (22 months) but we have been doing supervised timeouts for a couple months and it's working.

[OrionGrad]

Ds2 is only 13 months, so a little too young for time out to work (at least for us), so I'll usually tell DS1 to climb onto something where DS2 can't get him. (Usually my bed or the kitchen stools.) When DS2 gets taller/older, we'll probably start doing time outs in the high chair.

[Pollyanna]

Awww, sweet M. It's hard for a tenderhearted older sibling to understand developmental stages. I'm not a believer in time out at such a young age. For those types of incidents I will pick up the younger sibling, sit them on my lap facing me, hold their arms down and say, "no hitting, pulling hair, or whatever the incident. That hurts M and makes her sad" I will then verbalize what I want the younger sibling to say along the lines of, "you tell M that you are sorry and that you love her" Obviously I don't expect the child to parrot that, it's just modeling behavior for her so she understands how to manage these dynamics and what will be expected of her when she gets older. I make sure the older child sees that I will protect them and the younger child is told that behavior is unacceptable. Of course sometimes the younger has a great deal of determination and will try to continue and in those cases I will just hold the younger and keep on doing what we were doing. My littles spent lots of time on my hip, lol.

M is also old enough and bright enough to talk to her about development and the stages of equilibrium and disequilibrium. All our kiddos know when the littles hit disequilibrium, lol. It's fun to talk about the things she did when she went through those stages and how her sister will go through the cycle as well.

Don't worry, I have confidence that they will be great friends as they get older.

[metroguy]

depends on kids.. dd1 was cognizant(meaning yelling works) at less than 3 months.. dd2 - arggh.. she might have been cognizant (yelling/timeout didn't work) but damn defiant even at 4 yr old...

[alison]

Hmmm... You know, we never did timeouts with M, but she never does/did anything that I felt warranted one. I do like your idea, Pollyanna. That's more in line with the way I parent, but I will say that I have been doing a loose version of this and while holding C's arms down, she head butts me. I thought she'd broken my nose! She's got a 100th percentile head that is like a wrecking ball. I'm going to keep at it though! Tiny little terror!

[TulipsAndSunscreen]

C needed fewer than 15 timeouts in her entire life. D has already needed that many and far exceeds her also in the number of temper tantrums thrown. Most of the time, I swear to you that C was born 40 years old (which so was I so I totally get it). Different kids seem to require vastly different things (duh me!). I also praise C's reaction when these things happen "I know she was hurting you and I'm proud of you for staying calm and letting me know". I really do drop everything when that happens to show them that we use "gentle hands" with our sister. D has started parroting "gentle hands" so I think she is starting to get it.

[Thirteen]

We do a lot of caveman talk/sign when they are small, and apologies.


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