Sunday, July 11, 2010
Sibling Rivalry
Help! My children are ages 3 yrs 9 mos. and infant. My daughter (the three year old) was initially so excited about her baby sister. She still talks adoringly about her, and to her. However, in the past week or so I've noticed some newfound aggression. She has been a lot more rough with her, including most recently, biting her finger...hard. So hard that my poor baby screamed the loudest, most heart wrenching scream I've ever heard from her. For a few moments I saw red when I realized what my daughter did. I am at a total loss about what to do. It's pretty obvious that it's for attention, but how can I not give her attention when she does things like that? Biting obviously called for a punishment. I've tried talking to her about how it's her job as a big sister to protect her, not hurt her. I've tried the usual time-outs and taking away privileges. I know this is not a rare problem. Does anyone have a solution that works?
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3 comments:
My daughter did the same thing when my son was born, though it was slapping in the face! I think that the time outs and the time in the corner were somewhat effective for bad behavior, but the best solution was making sure that my older child got individual attention, like story time, cuddle time, or simple play together while the baby slept before anything happened. It is hard to learn to share! It took a lot of time and patience - and her poor baby brother, I had to keep my eye on them, every second, but things got better and things will get better for you.
I was going to say exactly what Sarah said. Margaret wasn't taking anything out on Daniel, but she was on us and her friends... whining, throwing things, hitting... all things she had never done before. Michael and I decided to give her as much positive attention as possible. That included Mommy dates and occasional daddy dates. When we started the Mommy Dates the bad behavior went down drastically. I also let up a lot on her. I realized I was expecting a lot more of her after Daniel was born. Expecting her to do more things for me, and help a lot more. I took a step back, realized what my expectations were of her, and tried to change. I'm not nearly as hard on her and I take every moment to be with her. Now feeding times are reading times. We pick out a stack of books in the morning, stick them on the couch, and every time I have to feed Daniel, we read. It was little things like that that changed her and me.
Surprisingly with all my kiddos I never really had older sibling aggression problems toward the new baby, but a lot of my friends did. I agree with what the other ladies said about making sure that your daughter gets individualized attention from both mom and dad. Just make sure that when she does act negatively toward the baby you don't then go and do something fun with her. She is old enough to know that it is not ok behavior and a punishment is definitely in order. Another thing would be to highly praise her when she is acting positively toward the baby. Really reinforce that it is so nice that she is being nice and loving towards her sister.
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