Sibling rivalry
Vivienne
Toucan
Joined: 22 Dec 2009
Age: 45
Gender: Female
Posts: 276
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
25 May 2010, 10:45 pm
My 8 yr old son (Aspergers) is so extremely jealous of my (almost) 11 month old son.
He tries to become a baby. He cries. He stops using proper sentences for show. He asks to sleep in my bed.
He (aggravatingly and totally inappropriately) feels my breasts up (in private and public - because "the baby does it " --I'm nursing. )
He digs in his stubborn heels and refuses to co-operate when I ask him to do things independently (ie: take his trash to the garbage. Put on his clothes. Do as he's told.) .
He just doesn't understand, no matter which way I try to explain it, that I love him as he is, and that he needs to behave like a big boy - which he is.
He keeps on telling me that I only love the baby - he's not part of the family - the baby gets all the attention, etc etc. It doesn't matter what I say back to him, or how many times, he doesn't believe me because he sees me nursing/changing/hugging/kissing/talking to the baby.
I can't stop being a mother to my younger son because my older one has a problem. That wouldn't be fair.
This, I know, is normal for a previously only child who now has to share his mothers attention with a sibling; but I don't know how to explain it to HIM. He doesn't seem to "get" my (including extended relatives who've tried as well) explanation.
In the mean time, he's shutting his brother out. Yelling at him. Hitting. Being cold towards. And being deceitful about what he's doing to the baby when my eyes aren't on him.
I'm starting to worry that he's going to hurt the baby. Who is only trying to play with him - but my older son always takes these attempts to play as assaults/annoyances.
Any advice? How do I get through to him and how do I protect my younger son?
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Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.
~Thomas à Kempis
"Be plain, good son, and homely in thy drift;
Riddling confession finds but riddling shrift"
~Shakespeare
26 May 2010, 12:04 am
Maybe you could try setting aside some regularly-scheduled time to do a one-on-one activity with him - going to a favorite store/restraunt, engaging in one of his special interests, things like that. Or, if you can't do those things, try putting handwritten notes in his lunchbox when he goes to school.
When some of my nieces and nephews were born, I was jealous of them too. But when my mom set aside time for me, I felt better, because it was just a little way she reminded me that she cares.
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Veteran
Joined: 23 Aug 2009
Age: 42
Gender: Female
Posts: 598
Location: Washington state - *Do I get bonus points if I act like I care?*
26 May 2010, 12:55 am
You could give him a role to play in interacting with the younger sibling. My eldest niece was often jealous of her younger sister and tried to shut her out of everything and vied for attention until we started asking for her help on things that required a "big girl". After a while she really took to the role and enjoyed showing the baby how to do things and how to play games, etc...
_________________
Those who cannot tell what they desire or expect, still sigh and struggle with indefinite thoughts and vast wishes. - Emerson
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. - Oscar Wilde
26 May 2010, 10:01 am
He (aggravatingly and totally inappropriately) feels my breasts up (in private and public - because "the baby does it " --I'm nursing. )
He digs in his stubborn heels and refuses to co-operate when I ask him to do things independently (ie: take his trash to the garbage. Put on his clothes. Do as he's told.) .
This is called "regression", and it's completely normal in older children, especially first borns, when a younger sibling comes along. For example, here is one article about it:
http://babyparenting.about.com/od/presc ... ession.htm
The key points are to ignore it as much as possible, and to make sure that the older sibling gets some "alone time" when you are spending all of your time with him and ignoring the baby. Apparently the older child usually gets over it after a few months.
We recently had our second child, and having read about this in a parenting books we got as a gift, we've tried to be proactive in preventing it. If both kids have needs at the same time, we don't always put the baby first, sometimes we make a point of putting the baby down to pay attention to big sis even when that means allowing the baby to cry a bit, etc. It seems to have worked well so far - big sis, who in our case is only 2, has gotten protective of the baby, sometimes points out when he needs a change, etc. When I remember, I pay more attention to the kid that is being less demanding or noisy; that hasn't changed the infant's behavior, but big sis is now great about being quiet and well behaved when the infant is crying, which is a great help.
Basically our general approach has been to make the new baby as much of a good experience for the older child as possible. Of course we haven't got to the point where the infant is mobile yet, which is supposed to be the most frequent time for regression in older siblings, so maybe we just haven't hit the problems yet.
