Jealousy is a natural and universal emotion. The child wants to attract more attention from his mother. The basis of this feeling lies in the feeling of inadequacy and the fear of losing the mother.
The child takes your every sentence and attitude seriously and believes it. Such attitudes cause the child to behave in stereotypes throughout his future school and business life and not be able to be himself.
Mother and father should not confine the older child who is jealous of his sibling to a certain role or label.
At home. If there is more than one child, the older child is given the role of sister or brother.
For example; “You have grown up now, you have become a big sister/brother, you should act differently!”, “You are the older one, you should be an example to your siblings”, “take care of your brother!”, “I only have two hands, you can be a mother to your sister too!” and similar discourses and attitudes cause the older child to be labeled by his/her environment.
And more importantly, it creates the feeling that the older child's childhood was stolen from him at a young age and that he had to grow up very quickly. In such a case; If a child's childhood is stolen, when he becomes an adult, he emerges as an adult who does not know how to play with children.
If we look at the situation from the younger child's perspective, having the older child act like a parent can also be trustworthy for the baby.
What Can We Do?
Although we have many responsibilities as parents, we should determine our behavior by taking the relationship between siblings more seriously.
We should try to make everything fair, not equal.
We should provide regular time to the older child every day, independent of his sibling, and satisfy his emotional needs.
We should treat your children who are jealous of their siblings equally. Instead of trying to allocate time, it is necessary to allocate time to each child according to their own needs. It should be explained to the older child that the baby is too young to meet his own needs yet and therefore needs more attention.
When you feel jealousy between siblings, we should create environments that will bring them closer, not push them away from each other.
We should not take on the role of referee in fights between siblings. When parents participate in children's discussions, each child He thinks his parents are taking the other's side. This leads to intensified competition. The older sibling hates the younger sibling who can provide the protective support of the parents. No matter how impartial the parents try, it doesn't work, so siblings must resolve their disagreements themselves. In cases where there is no physical violence, the parents' failure to intervene makes it easier to solve the problem.
Instead of focusing on the child who causes problems in discussions, dealing with the harmed child leads to describing the sibling as "victim, oppressed".
"Who started it?" We should avoid asking the question. Because trying to find out who started the incident will cause children to blame each other. Considering that each child is equally guilty in starting the fight, we must ensure that they bear the consequences equally.
We shouldn't worry about children fighting. Because children gain experience as they fight. When they fight, options can be offered or rules for getting along can be established. Thus, they know what the outcome will be when they fight and get along well.
No matter how intense the jealousy and discord between siblings is, they miss each other very much when they are apart. This explains that even though you may think that their relationship is very broken sometimes, they actually love each other very much.
It is useful to separate the clothes that your sibling can wear, that are too small for him, and the toys that he can play with, but we should not force him to give things that he does not want to give. Giving something that belongs to the child to his/her sibling may upset the child and increase his/her jealousy.
The feeling that the family is whole should be felt by everyone. For this purpose, activities that the whole family can do together, such as excursions, picnics, shopping and watching movies, should be included.
Read: 0
