Sibling rivalry is a fact of life. I don't think it really matters if siblings are one year apart or 11 years apart. It's all part of the brother/sister gig. But when siblings are closely spaced, the rivalry in the early days can be tough when no one really gets the whole game. If you have a two-year old and the other is just crawling at 8 months, timeouts and the concept of "sharing" can be hard for either child to learn. You can't really expect much from an 8-month old and while you might think two is old enough to really grasp sharing....I don't think it is.
So what do you when you essentially have two babies trying to get along in the same house?
My kids didn't have an issue with getting along until my youngest became mobile. The mere thought that she might be able to touch one of his toys would send my oldest into a tailspin. And she did touch, not knowingly right away, but she soon learned how to push his buttons like the best of any little brother/sister.
When doing research for our book, I asked many people for their best tips on dealing with early sibling rivalry. Baby Buncher Tara (mother of four) gave me some of the best ideas:
Sharing (Baby/Toddler) If the older child wants a toy from the baby, teach the older child that he has to bring another toy to trade with the baby. The baby early on doesn't care what toy he has. The older child doesn't mind the "trade" because he just wants the toy. This teaches the older child that he just can't grab from the baby but he doesn't learn to resent the child because he was scolded for grabbing a toy. There will come a time where the baby cares, but this works really well in the beginning.
Sharing (Toddler and Toddler/Preschooler) After that (when the younger does care) you have to work very hard (and it IS hard) not to interfere the siblings' fights, arguments, etc. unless someone gets hurt. If things are getting out of hand, ask the child who has the toy, "how many minutes until [the other one] can have the toy?" And then set a timer for those minutes. Usually the child picks something like "two minutes" and has no problem handing it over when the timer goes off. If the child is older, and picks something outrageous (like 100), tell him to pick something more sensible or you will pick a number. It is important to let the child with the toy pick the number because he/she was playing with it first (as opposed to telling them when they have to hand it over). [Note: This is a good rule for playground/playgroup play with friends as well.]
But if the kids aren't getting along, even after the timers and negotiation, then what options do you have? Well, for some kids, timeouts are a pretty good consequence for not playing nicely. My son, while a very rambunctious monkey, would actually sit for timeouts. So by age two, he was sitting somewhere for the requisite two minutes (one minute for every year of the child's age). My daughter would never sit for timeouts. For her, we tried to put her back into her "timeout" spot over and over and over again. It was reminiscent of our cry-it-out days. She's relentless. So we usually ended up putting the toy in question in timeout.
Another solution, which worked well for us this week, is recommended by Baby Buncher Jessica. If the kids are fighting with each other, give them a time out together, under a parental watch. "Let the punishment fit the crime," she says. Then they each have to say something nice about each other. When we gave it go this week, Alex told Anna he liked coloring with her and she responded with liking that he's silly. And then went on to be BFF for the next 8 minutes.
I'm always up for hearing other ideas for dealing with "twibling" love.
*twiblings--silbings who are close enough to be twins, but not quite.
What, are you guys peeking in my windows to see that we're in the middle of this game? My oldest is 22 months and my youngest is 6 months and he gets irate if she touches anything. We're training him not to steal toys from his sister but I think the trade seems like a more reasonable idea. Thanks for the suggestions, as always!
Posted by: Casey | Oct 27, 2008 at 07:15 PM
We have mostly had the let-it-go-unless-someone-gets-hurt deal here. Since a 17 mo old and 11 mo old can't understand much/at all. We do take toys away if they fight too much about them, AND we have just started not allowing our 17 mo old to take toys from our 11 mo old.
Honestly? The getting along isn't as big an issue as the plotting together.
It's going to be a loooong 18 years! :)
Posted by: JessPond | Oct 27, 2008 at 08:20 PM
Ditto on everything above, except that instead of setting a timer, I made the kids count. At first it was to 10, then 20 and more as they got older. It helped teach them number sequence and in the meantime totally distracted them. Now, all I have to say when they're fighting over a toy is, "Count to 50 and then give it to your sister." If there's resentment from the one who had to give it away, then we repeat the counting for the other child to give it away. Eventually both will get sick of having to count and only getting to play with the toy for a small amount of time.
Posted by: Alecia | Oct 27, 2008 at 10:30 PM