Conflicted after DS hit DD and she fought back and beat him up?

[ForAmpleRobin]

Bit of sibling drama today and I’m not sure if I’m handling it right.

My DD is 9 and my DS is 11. Lately there’s been a bit of tension because she’s actually stronger and faster than him at a lot of things like running and general physical things. DD and my niece have started doing cross country and the girls have been practicing whilst we’ve been out on family walks as well as racing each other. DS is quite competitive and I think it bothers him more than he lets on that DD and his cousin are faster and stronger than him.

They were messing around earlier in the garden doing races and silly “strength competitions” like who can get who on the ground first and DS got increasingly annoyed when DD and DN kept winning. It escalated into him hitting his sister and trying to subdue her but she fought back.
She ended up properly beating him up. DN quickly came and told me about it and then I had to carry him inside and DH took DN home. He is covered in cuts and his bruises are starting to show up.

Obviously I’ve told them that hitting isn’t acceptable, but if I’m being completely honest I also felt proud that she’s confident and doesn’t back down. At the same time I know DS is feeling humiliated by being beaten up by his younger sister and that DN will spread it to the rest of the family. However this would help him learn his lesson!

AIBU for feeling conflicted about this? How would you handle it with both of them? I feel like I don’t know what the best punishment would be? I was thinking of grounding them both for fighting but then DD was in self defence so is it unfair and shall I just ground DS?

Your DS should never have hit your DD, your DD went way too far in retaliation. A shove or hit back I could understand, but beating him to the point he’s bruised and bleeding is unacceptable.

I’d impose consequences on them both and completely ban wrestling/roughhousing type of play altogether as they can’t handle it. My DS and his friends can’t handle roughhousing either, it always ends up with someone getting angry and hitting. So I and the other mums step in very firmly and put a stop to it the moment it starts, if they don’t stop immediately there are consequences.

I’d also be having a firm discussion with DD about the difference between self defence and unacceptable retaliation. And, separately with your DS that hitting his sister was a) unacceptable, no matter how salty he was feeling and b) stupid, as he found out. I’d be clear that it was wrong that she beat him so badly but point out that this is a good lesson for the future that if he starts a fight, he may well come out of it worse.

Not RTFT but I always told my kids that the person who raises their hand first is in the wrong and that whatever they receive from the person they attacked, they should accept as consequences.

So DS was in the wrong for attacking her, and he cant get cobby that she belted him back bigger and harder. I would say the same if DD had attacked him and had retaliated.

Wow. It's an 11 year old boy who has been badly beaten up! Wtf is wrong with you thinking that's OK? I can't believe some of the posters here thinking that it's great that somebody got beaten up because he's a boy!

There's standing up for herself and going too far which is what she did. I grew up with two brothers and these things happened all the time but it never went anywhere near the level where any one of us had cuts/bruises/had to be carried.

She also needs to learn that people will be bigger and stronger than her and in a couple of years that's likely to be her brother. This competition between them needs to stop now and they both need to learn.

I assume they're both involved in sports at school.

I would bollock both, but seperately - and I would come down hard on him for hitting his sister and taking out his frustrations on her, or attempting to.

Ask him what he thinks would happen in competition if he got frustrated at either a team mate or an opponent being better than him, and he decided to start hitting or trying to provoke them - he would likely be barred from competition, lose his place on a team, etc etc.

Some people will always be faster, stronger, better, than you. That it is his younger sister is hard, you can acknowledge that, but if he has got to learn to handle it or give up competing entirely. There is no room in sports for violence and aggression at losing!

OP please, please don't punish her. Please. You will be teaching her not to defend herself. That there is something shameful in defending herself. That if a male hits her, she has no right to fight back. I'd say punish neither. Your son learned a lesson and is unlikely to ever hit her again. Your daughter will now recognise her strength and will learn to respect it.

But please, please, PLEASE don't punish her. Take the phones off them tonight and then 'call it quits' and call it even. If you punish her you are sending her the wrong message about self defence. Please don't punish her for merely defending herself. That will break her spirit and make her less likely to fight back when she needs to.

I think the ‘competitions’ need to stop. A strong talking to for both of them. Hitting people is wrong. Find something your son is good at.

Which wouldn’t have happened had he not started it.

She needs to sort out both kids. They should not be fighting, full stop and their parents should’ve have guided them away from this behaviour years ago.

No pride to be had. Parenting fail.

Neither of them should be hitting each other.

Obviously needs to be consequences for both of them but to offer some reassurance, I used to fight with my two years older brother all the time, play fights would turn into real fights very easily (but still glad my parents didn't stop the play fights because we did enjoy them, though grew out of them by the time my brother was about 12 or so, so perhaps yours will grow out of this soon) but we are good friends now and were mostly good friends throughout childhood. We absolutely still compete.

Well shes under the age of CR but the parents may well still have called the police given that it appears to have been an assault. It wasnt self defence.

No, its people saying that a person attacked another person and got their arse handed to them. Nothing to do with sex or age!

So many concerning things. DS being embarrassed about losing to girls. Where did he get that from? That’s the first thing to fix. Then he hit his sister. Then your pride at your daughter beating him up so he had to be carried. Did DN join in as well? The fact that your DN will now mock DS.
You guys have some strange gendered family dynamic.

I am not even going to comment on the 9 year old having a phone and that being the punishment.

I agree with your DH. Too harsh, and also too far away - punishment needs to be the same day, or close to.

If you've taken their phones away for the night that may be enough - along with letting them both know that you are disappointed in them. I feel this is an issue that needs talking through rather than punishment.

Your DS at 11 is getting too old to lash out out of frustration (he's not a toddler) and his school certainly won't put up with it. Can you try to talk to him about how he felt; work with him to find strategies for managing his emotions; maybe a little bit of counselling/therapy?

Like you, I would be proud of your DD for standing up for herself. However, she also needs to learn control, (1) because self-defence should be proportionate as pps have said, and (2) he's her brother ffs. Again, what's needed is some serious conversations about what she felt, how she reacted, what she could have done differently.

OP - I can't understand why, when you saw your son clearly struggling with his sister being faster/stronger/whatever than him (prior to this fight), you didn't offer him some support and reassurance? Your post sounds a bit gleeful, but back in the real world you are raising a potentially problematic man-to-be.

As for the fight, everyone's right, boys do outgrow girls quite quickly, and your daughter's going to need eyes in her arse living with a growing boy who hates her.

Yep, this forum hates men so much that a male kid getting beaten up, aged ELEVEN, is just desserts and happy days.

Why do both of them act instinctively on this way- it is very violent.

I would approach it as: what lessons do you want your DD and DS to learn? It sounds like you want them both to learn that fighting and physical violence is never okay, which is a really important lesson to learn.

To help them learn, I’d suggest cancelling privileges for both of them. To keep it proportionate, perhaps cancel a one-off occurrence of a regular privilege they have e.g. cancel their ‘pocket money’ this week, cancel a fun treat you had planned for them this week. And also talk to them separately first - and then together - about why they behaved as they did and why it’s not okay.

I wouldn’t recommend cancelling your son’s birthday treat as it’s not completely unrelated to what he did. It’ll just upset him and make him feel resentful and he won’t learn anything from it.

They both get punished. Your DD is actually the worst offender. She was undoubtedly deliberately provoking her brother with the competitive games and then she went far further than self-defence. They are 11 and 9 this is not about violence towards females. This is 2 children fighting and you should have boundaries and appropriate consequences in place. I'd be extremely disappointed in my DD if she'd beaten up her brother so badly, not proud!

So because a boy will be bigger at some point she should take whatever crap he gives and back down now so she doesn’t hurt his fragile little ego?

If cuts and bruises are involved it’s because he went too far and she had no choice but to defend herself in my opinion.

Opening him up to teasing and bullying could make this worse. Any adults in this family to take control and direct that violence is wrong.

No, she retaliated and clearly went way too far. Both were out of order.

I'll remember this thread when a poster starts a thread about her son, who wrongly hits a male peer at school and then gets beaten the crap out of by that peer in 'self defense', to the degree that he has cuts and bruises on him

Well Im sure the boy just deserved it and the peer was provoked yes?

I don't think it's a good idea to promote violence as the amswer, don't you think there is enough of that in the world?.