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Pushing, hitting, screaming, slamming...wwyd

lil_lady's picture

My ss is 4 and bs is turning two in a few months. They absalutely adore eachother, love going to play in eachothers rooms and attached at the hip. Problem is as bs gets older ss is getting more and more physical with him. BS is large for his age not even 2 and wearing 3T clothing so I think SS sometimes doesnt really understand how much of a "baby" he is. As BS gets older they will be playing and I will hear BS start crying like he just got hurt or whining. I go and check and SS will either slip up and tell me he pushed him/took something/hit him or I will have heard SS close a door in his face or I hear him screaming at the top of his lungs BS's name. When they are playing together in my view and I see these things SS is generally screaming right into his face. I would say it is a good 50% of the time that BS is getting this crappy treatment, on a good day. To be honest no matter how hard we have tried for the last year it has gotten progressively worse. Well this last set of days have been worse of all. I thought the pushing had subsided and BS was just starting to get more of personality and they where simply being boys. I thought letting them figure it out was best. Then I spent a few days really paying attention to what was going on. Turns out BS is being pushed at least twice a day for literally standing in the wrong spot, screamed at I cant even count, getting doors slammed in his face if its a bad day and hit to boot... I am so dissapointed and have no idea what to do. BS just barely started talking... he cant even stand up for himself because SS is also a big boy wearing size 7 and 8 clothing. Not to mention he cant even vocalize what is going on. We asked SD 9 where this was coming from and turns out BM is watching two older boys who are extremely physical with SS and just today after school pushed SD so hard at school she completely lost her footing and feel a good 2 or 3 feet from where she was standing. Now I understand that what happens in BMs house is fankly her own business... my question is I feel like BS is getting the brunt end of all of this and I am not sure how to approach it in our own home. We dont spank, we dont hit, we dont scream in our home so this crap is absalutely against everything I stand for. Any creative suggestions?! Some that dont involve seperating these two boys that clearly love eachother?! I am so lost.

lil_lady's picture

Forgot to mention: We have tried spanking (have stopped spanking all together it didnt make sense to have the same result as what he was getting in trouble for), grounding from a toy that was causing the issue, grounding from cartoons for the day, no more room playing for the day if they couldnt "play nice", took all the toys out of SS room so he could earn them back one at time (this was from him deliberately screaming during DS napping and me sleeping as I was on night shift after SO had asked him to stop for about an hour), time outs/quiet times to think about his behaviour then told to apologize... I think thats the gist of it... we have also have jewels he can earn for good behaviour and can loose for bad he gets to buy extra TV time with them. I dont know what else to do.

irishgirl0727's picture

We had the same type of situation with our girls. A lot of it stemmed from SD's jealousy of my BD that she got to live with her dad and SD didn't. She felt replaced and her mother didn't help the situation by telling her that they had been by my daughter and I. So there may e more to this than just what SS is experiencing at home. In fact he may feel that it's not fair he has to deal with that type of thing but BS doesn't and since he can't lash out at DH he lashes out at BS. I would recommend family counseling sooner than later. We didn't and now that SD is 17, she now has lashed out at her dad over these issues so bad that they do not even have a relationship. She has said point blank she felt abandoned by him to live in a horrible home environment (we did try and get custody at one point, but BM manipulated SD into staying with her, promising things would change.) She said she hated him for raising another mans child.
So there may be far more to this, start paying attention to little comments etc. if you see jealousy there are bigger issues. Our girls would seem as though they love each other as well and I believe they truly do, but the jealousy has gotten in the way several times over the years.

LikeMinded's picture

I have an SS10 who has issues and is rough with BS4.

I agree with the other suggestions here, expecially just picking one consequence and sticking with it.

In addition, I am trying to teach SS4 to leave the room and stop playing with SS10 when he is not being nice, because in the long run BS4 will need to be able to handle mean boys at school.