Sisterly rivalry

[JaneyT]

My daughters are 2.5 and 14 months, and since youngest has started standing and walking, my oldest spends a lot of time pushing her over, and also screams if she thinks little one is going to take her toys. Youngest does take things and 'pull' at older daughter, but seemingly only because thats she wants to play...House is like a battle zone...is it because they are so close in age??

Not really, it's just because they are siblings!

Seriously though, your eldest is 2.5, which IMHO is a hard age for everybody concerned. When my ds was 2.5 his sister was still a baby and unable to move, so couldn't get at his things. Now that she is 2.5 she sometimes behaves like your eldest dd, but her brother at 4.75 is big enough to take care of himself!

Just hang in there, they'll probably always squabble a bit, but this is just an age thing. Mind you, your age gap means that just as one moves out of the terrible twos, the other will be starting...

JaneyT - Yes, it's the age gap - but it will get better, I promise. My eldest was 2.5 when youngest started crawling - he was 9 months. For 12 months it was really tough. The eldest was not old enough to be expected to be 'understanding' about the little one wrecking his trainset or jigsaw, or whatever. But within 12 months, they were using language to communicate much more, rather than pushes and shoves, and generally get on very well now. (Eldest is almost 5). So hang on in there!

My dds did the same. I got around some of it by making a place higher up that dd2 couldn't reach so that dd1 could put/play with the toys of the day. In our case it was a wide window sill. It worked well until dd2 could climb, but then taught dd1 to give her something similar to what she had. I used to help her by giving her something to distract dd2 if she started "playing". It does get better, they're best buddies now (4 1/2 and 2) and miss each other terribly if parted.

thxs for the advice - i'm a new user of this site that I found yesterday, its very addictive! and its great getting feedback from parents that have experienced and been through these things.