Parenting Forums

Posted: 19 May 2007 at 9:18pm | IP Logged

   Have posted this in teens section as it is to do with dd 15 but also ds1 11.

          Ds is constantly annoying his sister , saying she has a big nose etc, in fact he is doing his uptmost to annoy anyone at the moment. I don't know what to do with him. He has just hit dd with a coat hanger because she wouldn't move out of the way when he wanted to come out of the bathroom, so he has had his playstation etc unplugged for the night and sent to bed. In this case though it was just as much dd fault as she started winding him up. I don't know what to do with them except keep them in their rooms so they don't meet.

         Dd is doing her standard grades at the moment so is under a lot of pressure and I haven't had a lot of time for him recently with my course but that will now change. I have tried to spend time with him everyday and I though he was coping well with all the stress that has been in the house. He is also due to start secondary school in August where he will be back with the boy who was bullying him. He says he is Ok about this, but I wonder if deep down he is really worried and by being annoying is a way to hide his anxiety.

        Hope this sort of makes sense. I would just like some peace in my house for a while and not their constant bickering.

Posted: 20 May 2007 at 8:21pm | IP Logged

Hello. Not sure how much use I'll be as mine are not as old as yours, and there are days even now when I wonder if it would just be easier to stick them out in the garden, tell them to get on with beating each other up, and just come get me when they need bandaging! Am dreading them being so much bigger and stronger...

However, I have a friend who has older children, 2 of hers are 12 and 14, and they fight a lot. In the end, she got them round the kitchen table for a bit of a fmily conference type thing and explained to them in no uncertain terms how much their behaviour was drivcing her insane, and that she wasn't prepared to put up woth it any more. They also have a 4 year old son who'd been quite poorly and had some speech/developmental issues, so she'd been preoccupied with him, so she apologised for that in case they felt they'd been ignored a little, but that whatever had happened in the past, they were all in the family together, nothing was going to change that, so they have to learn to get on or there would be serious repercussions.

She didn't let them get into a 'but he does that' ' she said that' ' he started it' argument, just said she wasn't interested in anything that had gone on in the past, they were going to decide what they were going to do now, and she got the two of them to draw up a proper agreement. The brother promised not to make hideous comments about the sisters appearance if she didn't embarass him in front of his mates, that kind of thing. It sounds a bit extreme, but it seems to be working. They also agreed what repercussions would occur if either of them broke the agreement (no pocket money that week, reduced pc time).

Good luck. I can't wait until mine can all be a bit logical. I seem to just keep trying to explain that I can't tell Noah off for hitting Joe if Joe was sitting on Noah's head trying to pull his nose off at the time!