Siblings

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My daughter, who is 11, just came back from staying ar her grandmother's. She seemed happy and was playing with her little sisters. Just before she went to bed we chatted. I asked her if she had enjoyed the peace and quiet at granma's. She said yes. I asked her if she would like to live like that all the time. She said that she would. She told me that she felt able to be useful (helping oma around the house), She feels unable to do that as much here. It's too noisy and stimulating in our house for her to concentrate and peacefully tackle a task. She added that when she came back from a school trip a month ago (when they had camped for 5 days) she found it so raucous at home wbecause of her sisters, she had wished that she could turn around and go back camping.

Her sisters are 8 and 6 and I don't think that I can change them in the short term to make them less noisy. (I expect that it'll just happen as they age.)

It makes me feel sad though to think that the 11 year old is living in conditions which are less than satisfactory even though she does seem to enjoy her sister's being around. Does anybody have any insight/advice into this sort of predicament?

I think my son often feels the same way. But he still loves his sister, and there has been value in learning how to adapt to the noise and chaos.

I think it is really important to have strategies that allow them to find peace and quiet when they most need it, but outside of that no one gets to live in ideal circumstances all the time, and everyone has to learn how to balance the needs of multiple people against their own - unless they are able to live as hermits.

Does your daughter have noise canceling headphones and a room she can escape to to be alone? Both would help a lot.

Yes, she does have a room where she could escape to, but mostly she doesn't want to go there (unless she wants to read or put nail varnish on or something.) She actually seems to want to be around people (and the chaos). This seems to be contradictory, but I can't explain it either.

oops, duplicate.

Thanks for your reply. She loves her sisters too. I'll ask her if she'd like headphones. Even though she likes peace, its probably healthy to have some degree of noisiness (and she often joins in or is the noisiest.) Perhaps if she'd been away for longer, she might have started missing us (and the noise)...

Thanks for helping me put things in perspective.

It sounds like a conflict similar to what I experienced as a kid - needing peace, quiet, time alone - but also wanting to keep up with what was going on. One can feel sort of left out of the flow of things off alone in one's room if there are others in the house doing other things. Even if it's killing one not to have a little more peace. I'm not sure there's a solution to that, except maybe to schedule certain quiet times for the whole family, but at least she has a place she can get away when she needs to.

I was lucky that I was one of the youngest. Some of the things I really enjoyed that we did together were playing cards (Canasta, cribbage, etc.) and board games, and doing jigsaw puzzles either alone or with others. They required some concentration and structure so there wasn't a lot of chaos.

I'm grateful for your response, because I believe that this is how she feels too. Coincidentally she too brought out a card game, and they started playing it, followed by dressing up in gala dresses and pretending that they were dancing at a ball.

I'm going to be alert to the need to establish more quiet times in the home- it's a great suggestion- I'll have to be creative and see what would work for us. Thanks!

I have a sibling on the Spectrum (Aspergers) and he can drive me crazy sometimes. He has his days.....where he's excited about going somewhere special or getting a prize. For example, if my parents say that we're going to Target to get a prize later in the day.....my brother obsesses over this and will ask everyone about it all day. There are days when he stims and makes noises over and over.....or repeats something he heard from television. This gets annoying after a while and sometimes I ask him to either stop or stim at a lower volume. when it comes to his meltdowns....I let him cry or throw pillows and generally give him his space until he's done.


I'm in my early twenties by the way, and my brother is ten. I just remind myself that he can't help it sometimes, sometimes I step outside for a few, or take deep breaths.