HELP! 4yo having HUGE trouble adjusting to new brother

[painefaria]

I don't know what to do... We had our second son after a long process of trying,1 year and 2 M/C later we have our rainbow baby . I was able to take almost the entire summer off so we can have some fun but, DS1 who is now 4 has turned into a monster . He is rude, nasty and at times just mean. He targets me primarily, today at nap he punched me in the eye for no reason. Last night while I was dealing with colicky DS2, DS1 colored all over his walls with crayon. We have tried rewarding his good behavior, keeping him busy, sticker charts, special time with me, etc. I am not sure what to do. His behavior is causing DP and I to fight because he doesn't do these things to her. We have tried time outs - but he was destroying things, taking things away - he states that he doesn't care, Time in which is usually walking with a parent - but he tries to hit/kick/bite me, etc. It is really sad, I am actually in tears writing this, I don't know what to do. I am considering therapy to help him through the transition but I am not sure if that would be helpful. I am at the end of my rope; please help!

[steph66]

I'm so sorry you're going through this. Ive BTDT and to be honest, alot of days still there. Its hard and I see that you've tried a lot of things without success. For us the thing that seems to work the best is time alone with a parent. My dd really responded to the visual aspect of reward/sticker charts. We let her help pick the rewards so that also really helped motivate her. We also gave her an opportunity to earn an "extra" sticker everyday, which is the "caught you being nice to your sister" sticker. We look for the little nice things that she does for her sister and praise her. You need to find something that your ds likes and go with it. Like I said, time alone with one parent really helped. And yes DD1 took out most of her frustrations at me only. Not to say DP didn't get it too though, but she was mostly mad at me. I also let her know that if she doesn't want to be around the baby or needs time alone for a while she can go in her room and either shut the door or put the baby gate up so the baby can't go in there. But out in the common areas she needed to be nice to everyone. We also do timeouts on her bed. Its hard at first but she knows that if she keeps getting off the bed that we will take her back and put her on the bed and add more time that she is in timeout. We started out using a timer and I think that really helped her a lot too. If he's not used to timeout it might take a while for him to get the idea of it and you also will probably have to keep taking him back there every single time he gets out. As far as his destroying things etc. I would have him help with the cleanup. Usually I will give dd1 the things she needs to clean up whatever it was, and she does the cleaning up first while I supervise and then I will go over it when she's done. She hates having to do this. If she has a nasty attitude I will usually tell her to go play in her room until she can come out and be nicer to everyone. We've made a lot of progress, but I assure you it didn't happen overnight and a lot of it was just time. She's matured a lot in the last 10 months that DD2 has been here and I know a lot of that was just time. And I think the most important thing, at least with my dd, is being consistent. She knows that I consistently will not put up with her nasty attitude anymore and I will not tolerate her being mean to dd2. She has a place that she can go to be alone if she needs that time.

I really hope that some of this helps you or at least gives you the knowledge that you're definitely not alone in this. I'm nursing a squirming baby and also playing "cats" with dd1 so I'm so sorry for the ramblings!