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Originally Posted by gaialice
Maya,
I have not yet received the Wolf's book from Amazon (I live in Europe) but I have tried (ever since my post of a month ago) to put your ideas into practice with my siblings' fights. I have to say I find they play a lot more now than they used to and surprisingly the little one now that I protect her less cries a lot less. Hahaaaa.... I now have a couple questions: 1) as you said, when the fighting is getting out of hand, I need to separate them. So, say if they did not work things out by themselves in the crayon example and start to pull each other's hair. I go in and say stop this now. Not working. So, I have to separate them. But the key question is. Who gets to keep the damn crayon? Sorry if it is a stupid question.... 2) Do you think it is ever OK that an act of aggression goes unrecorded? When listening from the other room, I sometimes hear an isolated act of meanness (like one takes a crayon from the other and gets a smack) and then if I just do nothing to my surprise they often find a solution for the crayon. However I feel guilty that I let hitting pass by without doing anything. I do try to say later to the victim that it is tough to be the younger sibling and I know because I was a younger sibling ....However I am not cmfortable with doing nothing.... |
I will ocassionally take the "damn crayon" and say "When you guys can work out using the crayon, let me know and you can have it back" I guess some would consider this "punishment" but I am a believer in removing the source of a problem, TEMPORARILY while the problem is resolved. As soon as they tell me they have worked it out they can have it back. I don't care what "remedy" they fashioned. [If they have been physcially seperated for some period of time I will take the crayon until they are together again, which generally both are happy about because they would rather me have it at that moment that their sibling. Or if I think one genuinely needs the object at the time (like for a school project) I will give it to them in private. ]
2) Yes, I let the hitting go by. Though like you I comment on it to the other one, that it sucks to be hit by your sister. I think the benefits to their relationship of letting it go to their relationship outweigh anything to be gained by saying something. If it were a repeated problem, with one hitting the other, I would talk to that one at a neutral time (not when it is occuring) about why they are doing this, if the feel provoked etc... and why I think hitting is wrong. But it never was really terribly one-sided at any time in our family.
BTY, Wolf's theory is that if you stop taking sides and "protecting" the younger one, the older one will have less resentment and will indeed be more likely to want to play and get along with the younger one. I have found this to be true also.
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