Sibling Rivalry
The boys are fighting an awful lot lately. I don't mean full on punch ups but a lot of arguments and battles over toys, with some physical manifestations.
At what point does one intervene though? It could be argued that having these disagreements is all part of preparation for later life, and by allowing them to work through these emotions, ultimately they will learn more from it.
The main source of disagreement is other toys and other possessions as mentioned. Of the two of them, at present, Ollie is by far the worst. Every time he comes into a room and Jamie has got anything, it becomes the most important thing in the world that he has it. Even if it is something that he never normally plays with and has been gathering dust on the shelf for six months.
When I chastise him and try and point out that this isn't fair, he attempts to justify it by claiming that he is sharing. Unfortunately Ollie's definition of sharing appears to be along the lines of "I get to keep all of my things and you have to let me have any of yours whenever I want it". This has on occasion extended to food. If they have a biscuit each and Ollie eats all of his whilst Jamie has half left, then Ollie then attempts to procure that half as well in the interests of "sharing".
The sad thing is that Jamie is so good natured he will often offer to share - like offering Ollie a crisp, but then Ollie takes this as an invitation to take them all.
On another occasion they both had a pack of big crayons. Jamie's were still practically intact by the time Ollie had worn down and broken all of his. At this point Ollie decided the latest bit of sharing he'd like to to would be to take all of Jamie's nice new shiny ones and swap them for his old ones. It's not nice and poor Jamie being little, naively gets taken in a lot of the time. I think it's very mean of Ollie and have told him quite clearly it's not acceptable but he can't see what he is doing wrong.
Preparation for later life - well maybe, perhaps he's destined for a career in banking!
But Jamie is getting wise to it, and starting to fight back. In a way it saddens me, because his innocent, generous nature is being eradicated by Ollie's antics, and it's starting to reflect in his own behaviour. These spats frequently come to blows - it's not full on punching or anything like that, but slaps, and pushing each other over. This is when I have to intervene, but of course, it's always the other one's fault. Now you would think that with us dealing with a 5 year old and a 2 year old here that Ollie would easily have the upper hand, but in fact it's not to the extent you would think. Not only does Jamie appear to be the tougher of the two, there is really not that much difference between them in terms of size. If asked to guess you certainly wouldn't think it was nearly 3 years. You can see this in the clothes they wear, they may be 5 and 2 but Ollie is still in 4 year old clothes, whilst Jamie is already into 3.
Some of this will be to do with Ollie being born prematurely, but there are probably other factors too. Jamie eats twice what Ollie does which must be a contributory factor.
Unfortunately Jamie has also developed a weapon in his armoury that I am struggling to control. When Ollie is being really horrible to him, he has taken to defending himself by biting him. Now when it's just between the two of them, that is bad enough, but when it starts to manifest itself away from home, then it becomes a problem. We have had two incidents over the past week or so, one embarrassing for me, and one more serious.
Firstly when I was picking Jamie up from the Courtyard he ran up to me at the door all pleased to see me beaming and shouting "Daddy", flung him arm around and promptly gave me an extremely sharp and painful nip right in my nuts! This was witnessed, to great hilarity by Donna and Sarah who did not stop laughing all afternoon apparently. Why he did this I am not sure. Maybe he overheard Ollie talking the other day about how he wants a sister and decided he didn't and to try and administer a makeshift vasectomy. As you can imagine - I was not happy.
More seriously yesterday I was told that he had bitten another child in a dispute over a toy. This requires an accident form to be filled in, and Jamie gets time-out. I'm quite mortified that my little boy should do such a thing, but can't help feel it is caused in part by all these spats with his brother at home. So I've sat him down and had a serious word with him and he seems to understand that biting is wrong. All I can do now is hope it doesn't happen again. All part of growing up, I guess.
Jason xx
If you have enjoyed reading this blog, please take a look at my books on Amazon (Paperback & Kindle), where you can read lots more of the same! Click here.
At what point does one intervene though? It could be argued that having these disagreements is all part of preparation for later life, and by allowing them to work through these emotions, ultimately they will learn more from it.
The main source of disagreement is other toys and other possessions as mentioned. Of the two of them, at present, Ollie is by far the worst. Every time he comes into a room and Jamie has got anything, it becomes the most important thing in the world that he has it. Even if it is something that he never normally plays with and has been gathering dust on the shelf for six months.
When I chastise him and try and point out that this isn't fair, he attempts to justify it by claiming that he is sharing. Unfortunately Ollie's definition of sharing appears to be along the lines of "I get to keep all of my things and you have to let me have any of yours whenever I want it". This has on occasion extended to food. If they have a biscuit each and Ollie eats all of his whilst Jamie has half left, then Ollie then attempts to procure that half as well in the interests of "sharing".
The sad thing is that Jamie is so good natured he will often offer to share - like offering Ollie a crisp, but then Ollie takes this as an invitation to take them all.
On another occasion they both had a pack of big crayons. Jamie's were still practically intact by the time Ollie had worn down and broken all of his. At this point Ollie decided the latest bit of sharing he'd like to to would be to take all of Jamie's nice new shiny ones and swap them for his old ones. It's not nice and poor Jamie being little, naively gets taken in a lot of the time. I think it's very mean of Ollie and have told him quite clearly it's not acceptable but he can't see what he is doing wrong.
Preparation for later life - well maybe, perhaps he's destined for a career in banking!
But Jamie is getting wise to it, and starting to fight back. In a way it saddens me, because his innocent, generous nature is being eradicated by Ollie's antics, and it's starting to reflect in his own behaviour. These spats frequently come to blows - it's not full on punching or anything like that, but slaps, and pushing each other over. This is when I have to intervene, but of course, it's always the other one's fault. Now you would think that with us dealing with a 5 year old and a 2 year old here that Ollie would easily have the upper hand, but in fact it's not to the extent you would think. Not only does Jamie appear to be the tougher of the two, there is really not that much difference between them in terms of size. If asked to guess you certainly wouldn't think it was nearly 3 years. You can see this in the clothes they wear, they may be 5 and 2 but Ollie is still in 4 year old clothes, whilst Jamie is already into 3.
Some of this will be to do with Ollie being born prematurely, but there are probably other factors too. Jamie eats twice what Ollie does which must be a contributory factor.
Unfortunately Jamie has also developed a weapon in his armoury that I am struggling to control. When Ollie is being really horrible to him, he has taken to defending himself by biting him. Now when it's just between the two of them, that is bad enough, but when it starts to manifest itself away from home, then it becomes a problem. We have had two incidents over the past week or so, one embarrassing for me, and one more serious.
Firstly when I was picking Jamie up from the Courtyard he ran up to me at the door all pleased to see me beaming and shouting "Daddy", flung him arm around and promptly gave me an extremely sharp and painful nip right in my nuts! This was witnessed, to great hilarity by Donna and Sarah who did not stop laughing all afternoon apparently. Why he did this I am not sure. Maybe he overheard Ollie talking the other day about how he wants a sister and decided he didn't and to try and administer a makeshift vasectomy. As you can imagine - I was not happy.
More seriously yesterday I was told that he had bitten another child in a dispute over a toy. This requires an accident form to be filled in, and Jamie gets time-out. I'm quite mortified that my little boy should do such a thing, but can't help feel it is caused in part by all these spats with his brother at home. So I've sat him down and had a serious word with him and he seems to understand that biting is wrong. All I can do now is hope it doesn't happen again. All part of growing up, I guess.
Jason xx
If you have enjoyed reading this blog, please take a look at my books on Amazon (Paperback & Kindle), where you can read lots more of the same! Click here.
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