how does difficult child treat siblings?

[sjexpress]

My 10 yr old difficult child ds can not leave his 4 yr old brother alone. No matter what 4yr old is doing, difficult child bugs him and sometimes it because difficult child wants to play with him but since difficult child wants to do and have everything his way, he starts to tease, ruin the activity, bug,poke, shove etc.....4 yr old who is wise beyond his years and has no tolerance for difficult child, won't give in to difficult child. So now all I have is screaming from 4yr old and fighting between the both of them constantly! difficult child just can't let 4 yr old be no matter what little one is doing. If 4 on the computer, difficult child wants to go on. If 4 watching TV, difficult child starts yelling it is his turn to watch something. We even made up TV/comp. time sched. but difficult child then complains because he feels he gets ripped off of time since he has camp, school, goes out with friends so he thinks when ever he is home is his time! husband and I can not take the constant fighting and teasing anymore! Even if we try "family game" it is a problem because difficult child has no patience for 4 yr old and gets so easily annoyed at everything. difficult child screams that 4 ruins everything and that he wished 4 was not around, etc... I feel so bad for my little one the way he is treated by his big brother(difficult child) It is not fair and beyond normal sibling treatment in my opinion. I dread when difficult child asks 4 if he wants to play. It never goes well because of difficult child low patience and stubborness to have things his way. Some days we forbid them to play or even be in the same room together! It is awful! Anyone else in this boat?

 

[JJJ]

She tried to kill them.

 

[JJJ]

Okay, that wasn't very helpful of me.

Tigger can be a pain in the butt to his sister. I try to separate them as much as possible. Do you have any adults that can help by taking the 4-year old somewhere when difficult child is home? If difficult child never has any time home alone with the computer/tv/you, he may be jealous of the 4 year old. Add that to social skills deficits and low impulse control, and you get to where you are.

Does he see a therapist? Maybe s/he will be willing to do some structured play sessions and basically teach difficult child how to play with 4 year old.

 

[crazymama30]

my difficult child can play with his sister every so often, it depends on his stability and her mood, she is a teen and moody I hope only due to that. It is awful, and I would not let them be alone unsupervised as your difficult child is much older and probably much bigger than the 4yr old and could hurt him.

If they can play at all together, it would have to be for an extremely short game and with your direct supervision.

 

[zba189]

My difficult child is six. His older brother (8) is one of his biggest triggers. He voices the fact that he is very jealous of him. difficult child will call easy child 1 names, push, shove, and ruin things all the while easy child 1 will calmly take it and not stand up for himself (we are working on that). easy child 1 is very athletic, outgoing, and just a happy go lucky kid in general. Because of that and the fact that difficult child can't see the forest for the trees when it comes to all of his wonderful traits it can be like WWIII at times when they play together. We do a ton of separate playtime and a lot of supervised playtime. One of the things that worked well for us was a project that they could only work on together and only when they could get along. If either one of them fought, we put it up. We bought a lego set that interested both of them and then they worked together to build it. It helped my easy child 1 to not be so bossy with difficult child and it helped difficult child to be able to do something with his brother that wasn't with a clear winner or a loser. It took 2 months, but it serves as a visual reminder that together they can accomplish something together.

 

[susiestar]

Wiz spent 4 months in a locked psychiatric hospital ward because I caught him trying to kill Jess. After he was in we learned it had been going on at night for a long time. She didn't tell us because he said he would kill thank you if she told. Of all the crazy things, our cat (who adored Jess and got us any time she cried as a baby) got me up and led me into Jessie's room! When I managed to make Wiz show his true behaviors at the psychiatric hospital he made a list of all he had done to her. It took 2 sessions with the therapist to go through it all. After each session I went to the bathroom off the ward and vomited until blood came up. It was the most incredibly awful and painful thing I have ever experienced.

Now, after a LOT of therapy and having Wiz live with my parents for the last 4 years, they have an awesome relationship. Wiz turned himself around in a major way and is a very protective and caring older bro. He is beside himself over her movement disorder because we have not been able to find a doctor to help her in any way. He even offered to find drugs like oxycontin if it would help her. We declined, of course, but it was a nice idea done with good motives. (Docs keep telling her to look six months down the road when the movements stop and she has an addiction to pain medications. It has been well over a year since it started and it only gets worse, so right now none of us would CARE about 6 mos down the road if she could just stop hurting now!)

For a LONG time (many years) we did not let them be alone in a room with each other. If only one of us was home, the same sex child went into the bathroom with us if we had to go!!! It was really hard for us, esp when husband worked days and I worked nights because we had to have someone home at all times because we got called up to school so much!

I didn't let them do the same activity at the same time. If a fight started then whatever they were doing stopped immediately.

We had one therapist who told us to give Wiz a token each time he did something that wasn't mean to Jessie. Five tokens were supposed to get a new book. It was the most outrageously awful thing I had ever heard of!!!!! WTH was Jessie supposed to think about herself when her own brother had to be paid to not be mean to her?????

The therapist was doing postgrad work supervised by a real therapist. His supervising therapist was NOT amused by this - and was NOT shy in explaining that you must take the entire family into account when you set up a plan, not just the child you are treating!!! (Our psychiatrist worked with them and was also infuriated by this suggestion. She made sure that both the baby therapist and the real therapist knew about it too.

 

[aeroeng]

We had to separate them all the time. And I mean separate. Dinner at separate times, separate places, separate rooms, separate outings, separate schools, separate churches. I have read that families should eat dinner together. Wonderful thought, would not work in our home. Dinner was a major area for explosions.

However, with time, for us, things have gotten better. The entire family went out for dinner last week. A registrant and everyone sat at the same table!!!! Only minor grumblings and boy nose. I cried when we got home. It had been so long since we could do that.