Thankfully i dont experience this very often, now my children are older.But i did recently & it took me by surprise. I have always tried hard to treat my children equally in all areas, but when they are at different ages, different schools & have different levels of hormones it is proving to be more challenging. My eldest son is causing me lots of difficulties recently at school, basically his total resentment of it and that he has to attend. Given we are now in the summer holidays, he usually goes to my in laws, its time i get to myself and to spend with my youngest son and he also gets to see his family. This year, we decided to delay him going to spend some quality time with his brother & I, as we spend our lives arguing daily and its quite tiresome, i wanted us to have some down time during the holidays and this is his last "summer break" before he will start college/work next year. So far so good and his behaviour has massively improved and our arguing has ground to a much needed halt. I have made the effort to praise his good behaviour and to make him realise that despite our tough times, i do love him very much and want to restore our tight mother/son bond. This again is having a positive impact, however his younger brother is seeing it as a negative impact on him, as he isnt now "golden balls" and isnt getting as much attention as he is used to. This was highlighted in a slamming door protest that i dont love him anymore. This of course isnt true I love my boys equally.
I had suggested to both of my children that they come up with some ideas of what we can do during the holidays that we can do as a family & also that we can do individually having some " mummy time", of course my 15 year old responded with the usual can i just go and have some time with my mates i dont really want to spend time with you or my brother. It does have a bit of a sting to it when i get these answers but it appears it is a normal teenage boy response. My youngest has come up with ideas and am looking forward to spending time with him on a one-one basis, but that didnt stop him from having his little tantrum. However it was quickly resolved with a sit down, lots of cuddles and me reminding him how much i love him and adding that its important that we give Josh as much praise as we can when he is behaving and lets hope it gives him some reassurance that his family love him very much and will continue to do so in the last leg of his school career.
How do you cope with sibling rivalry? Have you stuck at having one child because your worried about sharing the love? Is it yet another thing that makes you feel a failure as a parent when one is protesting that you dont love him/her? Is it difficult to make time for all of your children and give them some individual attention?
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