Increasingly violent/miserable 9 year old

[recyclingbag]

I'm at the end of my tether with 9 year old DS1. Our weekends are increasingly spent dealing with his stroppiness and violent outbursts and I'm at a loss what to do.

His behaviour always stems from his feeling that we love DS2 more. This is not true and I'm not entirely sure what specific things make him feel like that. They certainly get equal attention, affection, everything else.

However he picks up on every little thing as a major slight and goes off in a massive strop. He's also becoming more and more violent and he is a BIG 9 year old.

It's not uncontrollable rage, it's almost measured and calm. For example he's just casually turn over the chair in his bedroom, or take all the posters off the wall. Or he'll sit methodically kicking the door/wall.

Also, he is becoming more violent and I'm nervous that it is going to get out of hand. Yesterday DS1 got hit in the face by DH. I was there and saw what happened - DS1 was trying to hit DH from behind (and he had hit me), DH turned round to stop him and caught his eye with his hand. DS1 now saying "Daddy punched me in the face." He genuinely didn't but I don't think DS realises the consequences of what would happen if he started repeating those things.

I can't remember the last weekend which was incident free. His poor brother is also missing out because DS1 is being so disruptive.

The problem is, if we sanction his behaviour it just reinforces in his mind that we favour DS2.

He kicks and yells and strops, we react and then he says "see, I told you so".

It is making us all miserable and is only getting worse.

It's always worse when he's tired. He doesn't have devices in bedroom etc but has always found it difficult to sleep.

Also, he's 9 now so I can't keep using that as an excuse for his behaviour.

ok so try rewarding the +ve instead of punishing the-ve. Pick a behaviour you want to eliminate and each day that he does not do that he gets a star.After small amount of stars maybe 4/5 he gets to pick a reward. He might like a reward of doing an activity with you or his dad without the brother being there. It sounds as tho he needs more individual +ve attention to turn this around. Once you get stuck on an ever increasing downward spiral of punishments you are on a hiding to nowhere. Your goal is to make this work as each success will foster more success. You must do this with a happy belief in your son's ability to turn this around. Turn a blind eye if he forgets momentarily. Success breeds success. Set it up with him to get his input and get him on board and make sure that no one sabotages it. As it sounds as tho your family has the golden child and scapegoat syndrome. The golden child needs this son to be the bad one so he can be the good one. If this has been developing for years it will not turn around overnight. You may benefit from family counselling.