Growing Discontent Leads To Sibling Rivalry
Although I need to work on my theme, I also can’t stand not posting anything for this weekend. Hope this is food for thought for all parents.
My boy and my elder girl is only one year apart in age. In exact, they are 19 months apart. My boy and girl fights everyday, but they are also very close. I always hear them saying:
Boy: Mum, I hate Meimei (in chinese, it means ’sister’).
Girl: I also dun like you (saying to my boy).
Within a short while, they are found playing with each other. But after a while, they fight again. I must say this is an accumulation of discontent for both of them. When my girl is a toddler, she always had her toys or whatever she take, snatched away by my boy.
Being a working mum then, I did not manage to detect the feelings of discontent had taken roots, as it only surfaced till she turns three years old. For my boy, its obvious, he is jealous of my shower of love for my girl. And since then, I try to take into consideration of his feelings.
She will try her best to win in every “battle” she had with my boy. It is very evident. So my boy has practically been losing the fights for the past year, and he’s pretty pissed. He gets physical, but in a mild manner, he will hit his sister’s head when he is unhappy with her.
And he ends up getting me angry with him.
Recently my boy had this problem of repeating the same words after saying once out loud, the other in whisper mode. My hubby found this particularly disturbing and whenever my boy did that, he gets a little lecture. This results in my girl liking to report her brother’s such act to us.
Girl: Mum, my brother’s repeating again!
Boy: Mum, I HATE Meimei ! (in chinese, it means ’sister’)
Subsequently, my boy has successfully overcome this problem, Yay!
BUT, our girl got this repeating problem too. Come to think of it, we should have discouraged our girl that such “reporting” this is not desirable as well, we did not know our mistake till:
Boy: Meimei’s repeating again!
Girl: ~gets stunned~
Well, What Comes Around Goes Around…. I had quite a bit of work to handle them. But there’s still something to be happy of, my boy had cut down on his little physical beatings on my girl, although its only a Slight Improvement. But I am glad.
