I am currently at the end of my tether with my 2 boys. They are 7 and 8.
No matter what we do together it is never enough.
They just do not want to either be with each other and fight or they decide to them do a tag team and make life he'll for everyone in the house.
I just don't know what is wrong anymore. We have 2 problems that we are trying to sort out but don't know how to do it.
2 months ago the morning and evening routine was done with hardly any drama, but now it takes my 7 year old 90 minutes to get ready for school. Where before it was a 30 minutes and no drama. Now we seem to have to shout at him for him to do anything.
Evening are even worse. It's takes him 2.5 hours to get ready for bed in the evening, and now is up until gone 10 arguing with us. But before they had some independence to watch tv, read a book etc for 30 to 45 minutes and it was lights out by 8pm. Now it is just one big fight.
When he is like this he usually gets punished by either removing a privilege or a toy. But now we are getting comments along the lines you always believe my brother, you always give this to him etc.
My eldest is no angle and does get punished when he does wrong, but he understands to a certain level what is expected from him.
May be we are expecting to much from him, but but me and my wife cannot take much more, as this is causing to much tension in the house.