Advice dealing with the jealousy

Re: Advice dealing with the jealousy

• shj5u member

  September 2013

  It's not never-ending!  Sounds like your oldest just hit the jealousy phase a little earlier than expected.  My oldest is occasionally jealous and more frequently just acts out and tests boundaries by bugging his bro because he knows he can get a rise.  Everybody has there own way of handling all this, but here's what I do/have heard/tell myself:  

  1. I tried to make sure that DS1 felt like DS2 is his baby, not just mine.  We did everything together, he helped me, we were a team: the 2 of us taking care of DS2.  And then I realized something... DS1 didn't have a baby, he didn't want to help all the time, he didn't really care who's team he was on.  All he really wanted to do was be himself and do what he used to without focusing on someone else.  So, I started to make sure we were doing plenty of activities where DS2 tagged along, but the activity was geared for DS1, or even better, I got DS1 out on his own while someone else stayed with DS2.  That helped a lot.

  2. Kids that age can touch LOs with a little too much oomph.  Is it that or is he actually hitting with intent?  For too much oomph situations, I threw a party for when he was a gentle big bro, and I redirected when he was too rough.  Our pedi told me that until DS1 was over 2, he wasn't going to have any real ability to control how hard he touched DS2.

  For when he hit or bit with real devilish intent, I physically removed him from the scene, lavished DS2 with attention (the victim gets the attention), and then dealt with DS1 after DS2 was happy again.  I found that as soon as the attention was taken away from his negative behavior, he pretty much stopped it.  I learned this trick the hard way and after a lot of making a big ugly deal out of the offense.  DS1 learned really fast that he could take a bite out of DS2 while I was nursing, and I would drop everything to pay him attention (it wasn't his favorite kind of attention, but he took it).

  3. Get outside if you're not already.  I found that the playground or just somewhere else was like a great equalizer.  Everyone was distracted by being out, and everyone got along, or at least didn't pay any attention to each other.

  4.  Remember that DS1 is still a baby.  I know you know that, but I remind myself of that all the time bc I find myself thinking DS1 should be capable of controlling/doing things that he really shouldn't be yet.  The stakes are higher when you have a baby at home that he can hurt, but it probably wouldn't be so bad if you didn't.  I find that when I cut DS1 some mental slack in my head, that I have an easier time dealing with his antics.

  5. You really can't leave them alone for a second yet.  You will be able to, just not yet.

  For DS1, the difference between 18 months old and 2 years old was huge!!  At 18 mo, he was a reckless, dangerous, looney little thing that didn't listen to anything we said.  At 2, he was really understanding commands and executing them, he started to develop a little more empathy, and everything got easier.  I think that right there is why there's a support group here for 2u2.  It's tough and exhausting to have more than one kid under 2.  It requires constant vigilance, and even with that, someone's bound to get hurt, in trouble, or something.  There's a lot going on.

  
  

  So, I'm no expert, and am totally learning this as I go, but I hope some of these lessons I've learned the hard way might spare you a little aggravation.  Lord knows we all get plenty of aggravation already.  

  
  

  
  

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