Jealousy is the inability to tolerate the sharing of a loved one or a beloved object with someone else. It is normal to have jealousy wherever there is love. When this feeling of jealousy turns into a gnawing passion, that is, envy, then love disappears. We see many couples harming each other around us or on newspaper pages. The spouse who does not let his wife out of the house has become a prisoner of this feeling of jealousy. To explain why an adult is a prisoner of this emotion (pathological jealousy), it is necessary to look at the feeling of insecurity in childhood.
If we look at sibling jealousy, it would be abnormal for a child not to be jealous of his mother, his most valuable asset, from a stranger. The mother is holding another child in her arms. With the birth of a sibling, the child begins to experience separation anxiety from the mother. The feeling your child experiences when he sees his sibling and his mother together is no different from the feeling you will feel when you see someone else next to your spouse.
What does the child experience in his inner world when he finds out that he will have a new sibling?
The mother not holding the child in her arms due to her pregnancy. Lack of tactile contact and anxiety can make the child feel unloved. The mother's attempts to test her limits also lead to "I wonder if they don't love me anymore?" It means that it started as an effort to find an answer to the question. The child begins to wander around the mother and ask her more questions. The moment he sees his brother in his mother's arms and what he hears when visitors come to the house reveal the cruelty of adults and that clumsy bad baby. That little thing that managed to attract all the attention without doing anything caused it to be pushed into the background. The child who feels this way may become irritable, irritable, and have crying spells. Regressive behaviors such as using the baby's bottle and wetting the bed may be observed.
Some children may show excessive interest in their siblings. Parent: “My son/sister got used to his sibling quickly.” can say. When observed carefully, we can see that the child's love and excess are far from sincerity. While the child caresses his brother's cheek, he may actually try to hurt him. The child is jealous of his brother A mother who knows that sibling jealousy is very natural, receives the message given by the child correctly, shows the child that she has not lost her love, and helps the child calm down over time and gain the ability to cope with this feeling. During this process, feelings towards the sibling will fluctuate. While he may love him at times, he may hate him at other times.
The child should not feel like he has to love his sibling, and he should not be blamed when he expresses his negative feelings towards his sibling. Expressions such as "your brother is a shame, can't he be loved, brother, your shoes are on the roof now" reinforce the child's anger towards his sibling. Instead of these, "You are right to be angry with him, sometimes I get angry too." Expressions like these will both surprise and relieve him. It means that the mother understands him.
Expressions such as "don't touch your brother, you will hurt him" further intensify his anger towards his brother. Of course, we will not allow him to hit his sibling, but we should do this by taking a short, clear and definite attitude, not in the form of constantly protecting the sibling and intervening in himself or rejecting the child.
From time to time, the parent also has a share in this jealousy between siblings. . For example, a mother who identifies more with a child who is physically or temperamentally similar to her may engage in behaviors that highlight the sibling with whom she identifies at the behavioral level, even if not verbally, in the environments she enters.
Sometimes, two siblings may not be able to share a toy and argue. Parents can start to examine who is right and who is wrong. However, children are not given the opportunity to solve their problems among themselves and acquire problem-solving skills. A neutral attitude will reduce the reactions of the siblings to each other by taking away the toy that cannot be shared from both siblings.
The newborn will create a change in the lives of all family members, but we must make the older sister/brother experience this change at the lowest level. The birth of a sibling should not be the time to separate beds for the mother and the child, who slept together until they became siblings.
The child may have wanted to have a sibling very much, but thinking that he might regret it after birth, he said "we did it for you." In other words, we should not allow the child to hold himself responsible for this situation that he is not happy with.
Let's not forget that it is normal for your child to feel jealousy towards his newborn sibling, but our attitudes should prevent this jealousy from turning into passion.
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