weefee
I Have a 4yr old son and 1yr old daughter, my son loved his sister until she started crawling.
My son is a very loving boy and is quite flexible and active.At first he loved his sister so much ,alwayskissing her.when my baby started crawling and moving to her brother and getting into his toys,he changed...for the worse.Now my baby can stand up at everything it even got more worse. My son hates everything she does. From touching his things,touching him,even standing up near him.He is always growling at her for everything.Yet he is very affectionate towards me.He only has bad behaviour towards his sister.Please can you help,I dont know what to do.
Jane ...
Answer:
This all sounds pretty normal, though I appreciate that it’s a challenge for you to see and deal with every day. Your boy is probably just irritated by her and her actions. Until she was more active she wasn’t seen by him as a “threat” to his space and his stuff, but now she is. Of course she doesn’t understand this, to her everything looks wonderful and is there for her benefit.
It’s important that he has some space which is just his, have you considered putting a gate across his doorway so she can’t get in? It’s important that you don’t separate them too much, siblings just have to learn to get along with each other. With time, he is likely to build some tolerance to her activities and for her, he won’t be such a source of amusement – she’ll learn to be distracted by other things.
Try not to be too sensitive to your boys demands, try to ignore what doesn’t matter, honestly, you will be saving yourself years of energy in separating them. But it’s important that he doesn’t ever hurt her or cause her to feel anything other than comfortable in her own home too.
Balancing both their needs may just take time and now that she’s at the new developmental stage of crawling he just needs to get his head around her being more like him rather than a cute little “toy” like baby.
Really try to “catch” him when he’s playing gently with her and praise him + when you do. This single act of reinforcing good behaviour will do more to encourage him to be nice to her than any amount of discipline you offer when he’s being inappropriate.
Give them time. They will be siblings for a long time and so many times in families, these situations just have a way of working themselves out without parents investing too much into them.
Cheers
Jane
It’s important that he has some space which is just his, have you considered putting a gate across his doorway so she can’t get in? It’s important that you don’t separate them too much, siblings just have to learn to get along with each other. With time, he is likely to build some tolerance to her activities and for her, he won’t be such a source of amusement – she’ll learn to be distracted by other things.
Try not to be too sensitive to your boys demands, try to ignore what doesn’t matter, honestly, you will be saving yourself years of energy in separating them. But it’s important that he doesn’t ever hurt her or cause her to feel anything other than comfortable in her own home too.
Balancing both their needs may just take time and now that she’s at the new developmental stage of crawling he just needs to get his head around her being more like him rather than a cute little “toy” like baby.
Really try to “catch” him when he’s playing gently with her and praise him + when you do. This single act of reinforcing good behaviour will do more to encourage him to be nice to her than any amount of discipline you offer when he’s being inappropriate.
Give them time. They will be siblings for a long time and so many times in families, these situations just have a way of working themselves out without parents investing too much into them.
Cheers
Jane
Answered:
10 Jun 2012