Older child still jealous of not so new baby brother

[Rob1982]

My little girl is still being an absolute nightmare with regards to her behaviour.

She is 6 & our little boy turns 1 next week.

The problems seem to be endless with her & while everyone says "oh its ok, its normal", its bloody frustrating.

She will do things she knows are wrong & try & tell us it was the baby or just be constantly naughty & having us at wits end with her.

I say we are going to do something together so she doesnt feel left out, then she is naughty so we end up not doing whatever we were going to do as punishment. She then gets jealous because the baby gets attention (just normal attention a baby needs - not favoured or anything).

People like my mother or friends say 'Just do the activity with her anyway' but I dont want to be seen in her eyes to be rewarding her bad behaviour. But at the same time I want to stop the bad behaviour.

Sorry for long post. Any Ideas anyone?

Thanks in advance

No ideas but will watch with interest as DS1 who is 11 is the same over DS2 who is 2

can you spend some time just with her like the old days? Do some girls things together without the baby (do you have husband/partner/parent/friend who could take care of the baby for a couple of hours?)

Rob - we are in the same boat. DD is 4.5 and DS has just turned 1. I think the jealousy is getting worse. Yesterday we were all excited because DS cruised all the way round the kitchen holding onto the cupboard handles and DD said 'look I can do it too'. DH lost the rag a bit and said 'I know you can and quite frankly don't care as you are 4 and I'd be worried if you couldn't'. I must point out that this came at the end of a long day with no nursery as the heating was broken so his fuse was well worn. We have tried to explain to her that when she was that age we got all excited about her doing these things too but she just can't remember, and we also have told her numerous times that she was lucky as she had all our attention, while DS has to share us with her - but to no avail. We are trying to praise her for things she does but at her age new things are few and far between and it's hard to get enthusiastic about the 700th rendition of song X etc. Like WooWoo said we do try to have some DD-only time and it is always good. Anyway, not much help, just empathising.

I hate to tell you but my dd2 is nearly two and it's only just started improving. DD1 is nearly six. Time alone with the first one does help, well it does for us. But it is hard and for me has gone on way longer than I expected. We've had lots of 'she's your sister and she's not going anywhere, get used to it' which I'm sure isn't what you're supposed to say but honestly it's nearly two years for god's sake!

Some children never grow out of it I'm afraid - I'm 36 ....

Always make sure they have the same of everything. Love them both equally, hope for the best.
I never bullied my brother, but some older siblings do, so watch out for that, and nip it in the bud early on.

We have a 6 year old ds and a (almost) 4 month old dd. So far, so good re jealousy!

We do try to involve him e.g. he will feed her - and of course he gets thanked/praised for doing that. And when we drive anywhere, they are in the back seat and we told ds that he is in charge of dd to make sure that she is OK.

It has worked well for us so far, but no idea if this would work for others.

Good luck!