Our 4 year old (5 in march) became a big sister in October (baby is now 9wks old)
She initially dealt with it better than we expected....very helpful, motherly and sweet with her.However I think the novelty has gradually worn off somewhat and whilst she still speaks about and interacts positively with her alot, and clearly loves her, we have also had some challenging behaviour emerge in the form of being very overbearing, controlling, boisterous and at times unkind to her sister, to the extent we don't feel safe leaving them together right now.I am not surprised at her annoyance at having to suddenly share our attention and wait more to have her needs met- we were expecting that, but the fact she is nearly 5 yet being physically rough without any thought of the affects has surprised us.Sometimes it seems to be done on purpose to try to seek attention (such as shouting loudly in her ear and laughing when she jumps, or squeezing her hand oe cheeks too hard) and sometimes it seems un-intentional (like yesterday where she threw plastic ice creams over baby's head and was sad when I told her off because she was apparently letting off 'fireworks' for her) We have tried firm verbal discipline, giving her lots of positive attention when she is kind and gentle, spending more 1-1 time with her, reassuring her how much we love her too and acknowledging her feelings of being left out or having to share us, getting her positively involved with helping, aswell as distracting/diverting her onto other things when we think its caused by boredom, but still we have issues and just feel like we are constantly raising our voice and telling her off about it, which isn't good for her, us or baby. I don't want to damage the loving bond she has with her baby sister by stopping her getting close to her or constantly hovering over her, but ultimately she is a tiny baby and we have to protect her.As much as I love having our little girl at home for the holidays, I'm hoping it will get better when our she returns to school next week and we can all have space, as I think the lack of routine, structure, and intensity of christmas hasn't helped her behaviour.
But if anyone with 2+ children has experienced similar issues, and can offer any advice, please do! Thankyou.