DD (5) jealous of baby sister

[cat88]

Our DD2 (5) has always been spirited. However over the last few months she is constantly being aggressive and jealous of her little sister (DD3 11 months.) She can be very loving and very helpful when she wants but increasingly the only way she is wanting attention is negatively - shouting, refusing to help tidy up etc. If I try to give her one on one time she is great but then much worse once her siblings return. She gets an easy time from her older sibling who is much more laid back. However DD3 is now starting to walk and needing constant supervision which DD2 is getting increasingly jealous of and her behaviour is escalating. We do call her on it and use time out, taking away treats but they seem to have little impact. Any ideas what to do?

i can.sympathise with you. my ds is 3 my dd 2 and since she was born he not.keen on her he.hits her pushes her screams at her and.he has now started to moan and scream like baby.he gets plenty attention from us we try.ignore bad attention time out etc n sometime he nice to.her but.not.often dd loves.her brother always hugs him etc he has dif dad and he.youngest at his dad so i think he enjoys being baby there and not.so keen on being older brother here

thanks leeanne - good to know we are not alone. Yes DD2 does that i'm a baby too thing - crawling around and wanting me to help her walk. I've tried reassuring her that we love her just as much, when she was a baby we looked after her the same and her older sister had to accept that baby's need lots of attention once they are on the move. DD3 loves her though even if when she gets a cuddle she ends up crying as DD2 is too rough with her :( :(

Sympathy here too, my DC1 (DD) is 5yo and DC2 is 2yo, and yes, DC1 is very jealous and demanding lots of cuddles! She has been this way for quite some time.

I have made childcare arrangements since she started school so that DC1 does get 1:1 time with me every week, and we also try to carve some out at weekends, but she still isn't happy.

To make matters worse, over Christmas my DMum said we were giving DC2 more attention than DC1, which just made me feel like shit. It isn't true, I am very careful about it, and the specific incident she observed was me ignoring bad behaviour (a tantrum) from DC1 and praising the good behaviour of DC2. It could easily have been the other way around. DC2 is capable of very naughty behaviour and sits on the naughty step far more than DC1 ever did at that age.

But I find the naughty behaviour easier to shrug off as typical toddler behaviour than DC1's jealous, emotion-driven behaviour, which drains me.

Sympathy to you TW too. I agree its the jealousy and emotion-driven behaviour that is really difficult to deal with and very draining too. How is the 1 2 1 time going? We tried that a couple of times but it just seemed that once she had my full attention her behaviour would worsen until I had to discipline her. She did not think - great got mummy to myself - lets do fun stuff. Although she has said she likes it best when its just her and me.
With DD3 i know typical toddler behaviours are something she will grow out of and to be fair she is a dream baby so far....but DD2 constantly demands attention doing ANYTHING to get it. Trying to ignore the naughty stuff and praise ANY good behaviour is our strategy at the moment.

Like you though, when other family members get involved it does not always help the situation...

One thing that might help (a bit) is to big up to your dd2 just how much her little sister likes and admires her. 'Oh look, she's smiling at you', 'can you show her what to do dd2, she listens to you', 'dd3 is always so excited when you come home from school, she really loves her big sister' - that sort of thing. Tell other people how good dd2 is with dd3 too.

We also bought our youngest some totally age-inappropriate toys for his first birthday so he had something desirable to share w ds1 whose baby toys he actually wanted to play with.

A bit of sympathy about how annoying younger siblings can be also went a long way. There are quite a lot of children's stories that deal with this type of thing too.

thanks BM - things is she can be really really good with her sometimes so we try lots of praise then. It is DD3 birthday soon so that sounds like a good way forward - thanks for the suggestions. Also DD3 will soon be running around so much more opportunity to spoil DD2 stuff - will need to work on that.