Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Put your dukes up, sister!

I know there are perfect children out there that never fought with their sibling; however, those perfect children were not me and my sisters or unfortunately, my own two daughters. I wished for perfect children, but I got these two instead. That’s okay though. I like them better than any perfect children I would get.

Sarcasm aside though, for you parents of nonperfect children, how do you deal with the fights? I kind of feel like sisters fight more than brothers, but after talking to a couple readers about rough housing and play swords and other “boy” things, I’m thinking maybe little brothers fight a lot too. I am fortunate because they really don’t fight that often, which I feel is because of the temperament of my oldest. I find myself defending my youngest a lot.

But here’s the thing. I was the oldest. The oldest that liked to torture my little sister. I’d boss her around. Like crazy! When I wasn’t telling her what to do and bugging her to do it my way, I was telling her she was too little to play with me. I wonder sometimes if I come to the defense of my youngest as a way to redeem my evil big sister me from my youth. Because the little one can be quite the bully, and she can hold her own. She will get so mad at her sister. Sometimes she just starts shaking her fist and yelling baby gibberish at her sister. I’m pretty sure she’s telling her off, which we just haven’t been able to translate yet. And she’s hauled off and smacked her sister a few times. I don’t know if Averi’s ever hit her period, and if she has she wasn’t the first one to do it. But she does boss her around something fierce and when Kenzi resists she just keeps pushing and Kenzi just gets madder and madder. It’s the same thing if Averi is telling her no and doesn’t want to do something.

Luckily at this poinit their fights are brief and two seconds later they’re “best friends” again. Of course Averi often tells me she wants a baby brother because “my baby sister is mean sometimes.”

I don’t know. I do the usual sit them in timeout and make them hug and make up. They tell each other they’re sorry. I feel for Averi because as the oldest I know how it feels to sometimes feel like you’re always getting blamed and to just do something or act a certain way because you’re the oldest. I also feel for Kenz because her and I share the same temperament. We get frustrated, don’t feel that people can understand (and when you’re talking gibberish sorry but we don’t) and so we sometimes let our anger get the best of us. It’s so hard to figure out how to deal with children that are two totally different children fairly. You’d think as a teacher I should be like some kind of expert or something on this. NOPE, far from it. I don’t want one to feel like I’m cutting the other a break because they think I like one more than the other.

Thoughts?

My other thoughts on parenting different children the same.   Parenting should come with a differential manual like teaching.  

4 comments:

  1. Well when you figure this out let me know! lol The three year old makes the eight year old cry at least once a day. When he does fight back he usually loses. She will cry and then get mad and go after him, which may be where miss Kenzi gets it :) So all I can say is good luck!

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  2. Mine are much older (boy almost 15 and girl almost 13) and I still haven't figured it out. I've always drawn the line at violence. I've taught him that boys (men) should never hit girls (women) for ANY reason and I won't let her start it either. I tend to leave bickering alone but will step in when they become disrespectful to one another. It's not a perfect system but it's all i got

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  3. mine all fight constantly and sometimes I feel that all I am ever doing is being referee. The way I look at it is be as fair and equal as possible - matching punishments to their "crimes" and holding them accountable...sounds hard because they are kids but they learn. Just avoid the blame game as much as possible. If you don't have "proof" then they both get in trouble because you don't know who started it, etc...that way they learn to avoid getting in trouble.

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  4. My younger sister and I used to just rip each other's eyes out constantly. We would hit and punch each other until one of us was so hurt, we tattled. We still throw out zingers to each other now but we can joke about how mean we were to each other.
    The punishment we hated the most was sitting knee to knee until we could say 3 nice things about each other. We started ignoring each other so it wouldn't happen lol

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