Tell me it would be fine if I have a little girl with an older brother?

[mummarichardson]

Starting to plan baby no2 and I currently have a 22 month old DS. I really want another baby but I am terrified that if I have a girl then he will be as awful to her as my brother was to me. I am not talking a little bit of sibling rivalry but he actually abused me emotionally and physically regularly from a very young age. He HATED me. Still to this day although we are civil and I would be very upset if something happened to him we don't have a close relationship at all and I still feel scarred by some of his actions. Can someone tell me that it would be okay and this isn't the norm? Please tell me some stories of older brothers being lovely to their younger sisters? I know I could very well have a boy and all of this would be redundant but I am so worried about having a girl it's putting me off trying for another. My son is in a happy and secure family, we love him and he is such a happy go lucky little boy who gets on really well with his female cousins.

DH's sister is three years younger than him. They get on very well, always have.

one bit of advice that I've found really useful is to keep the first involved all the way through the pregnancy and with the new baby - helping out, etc. Gave our oldest a stake in the whole affair which helped with jealousy.

I have a brother that is 3 years older than me, we hated each other as children, he used to hit me all the time, we then grew much closer as we got older but then life got in the way and we hardly speak any more.

I have 4 dc with ds being the eldest. He is an amazing older brother to his 3 sisters. He is now 15 and dds are 12, 9 and 2 and he has never once hit/pushed them or bullied them. Yes he winds the two older girls up sometimes (what teenager doesn't) but apart from that he can't be faulted. His relationship with 2yo dd is lovely to see, she gets his full attention when she asks for it, he will sit and play silly games with her for ages and he seeks her out when he comes in from school for a kiss and a cuddle. She loves to sit next to him with his spare Xbox remote and pretend to play along with his games and he pretends she is controlling the game.

As much of a little swine he can be with his teenage attitude and laziness I can't fault him at all with being an older brother, I couldn't have wished for a better brother for my girls.

My oldest two are boys and they bicker - they don't hate each other though. They get along most of the time. They are both protective of their little sister and she gets away with anything - she's 4. They are 6 and 10. I argued with my little sisters all the time as a child but we all get on well now.

That's really sad that your brother was so cruel. And that your parents didn't protect you. Have you ever had counselling?

My 5 yr old DS is an absolutely amazing brother to his little sister and I will never let him hurt her or be unkind to her.

It was your parents who let you down fundamentally so you can ensure that doesn't happen with your children

My husband has a younger sister (and a younger brother) and he adores her. For reasons I won't go into, he almost raised her himself from when he was about 7 years old and he's very protective of her and they get on like best friends.

I wonder if your brother would have hated a brother as much as he hatd you as his sister and that it's not the fact that you are a girl at all?

My big brother is three years older than me. He was horrid to me, but within the range of normal, and I think I was probably pretty obnoxious back, though in a different way. We're very close now and I actually still really look up to him. (In fact DH - who gets on very well with him - sometimes comments/moans that my brother can do no wrong in my eyes. Which is probably a bit true. )

I have a dd of 13 now, her brothers are 25 and 22 respectively.
From day one they have loved and cared for her, watched her grow up and have been/ continue to be good role models.

I'm sorry you had such a bad time with your brother and can understand how you'd be worrying.
but, I believe there was plenty your parents could have done from the off.
Involving the other sibling from the start is important and letting them bond. Stepping in as soon as it becomes more than usual sibling rivalry, fostering care, support and love between your dc.
They still have their moments, as all kids do, it's normal. But if you practice good behaviour it becomes second nature very quickly.

Pleas don't worry too much, the fact you are aware of this will mean you will parent differently to your own parents and find your own solutions that work. I can't see you allowing it to drift to your experience.

Just had a thought that you might (hopefully) find reassuring. There must be a fuckton of data on sibling status, going back literally centuries, and there's loads of people studying childhood development and looking for statistical patterns. So far they seem to have found that:

A) Oldest/only children do a bit better at school
B) Children from very large families do worse - but that's probably mostly down to the correlation with poverty.
C) Girls with younger brothers have slightly better immune systems.

The point I'm laboriously trying to make is that if having older brothers was generally bad for girls it'd show up in the data - and it clearly doesn't.

Oh OP I could have written your post. My older brother (by six years) hated me too. He delighted in being cruel to me. He was physically abusive and never missed an opportunity to remind me how loathsome he found me. He crushed my self esteem at an early age and the truth is, I never recovered. I have to make a conscious, thoughtful effort to negate it with logic but the notion that I am worthless and an embarrassment is innate. It's what I grew up with.

My mother (god bless her) told herself that all siblings fight and certainly had a set of blinkers on when it came to my brother. I don't think she ever accepted that her son was a sadistic shit who bullied his much younger sister with hateful glee...but that's exactly what he was.

My brother and I 'get on' these days but I don't love him and I never will. The damage was just too great to forgive.

After what I went through with him, I always swore I would never allow my kids to hate on one another. My tolerance level for fighting, name calling, tormenting, humiliating etc is zero.

Here is the good news. My eldest child is a boy and has two siblings that are six and seven years younger respectively. A boy then a girl. Ds1 is a lovely big brother to his little brother and sister. He is warm, affectionate, encouraging, loyal and protective...all the things you would want your big brother to be. Ds2 and dd are also very close and the best of friends.
Of course they all squabble (they are normal kids)...but ds1 has set a great example and they are all completely confident in one another's love. Ds1 thinks the wee ones are cute and funny...the wee ones think ds1 is safe and kind.

I think it's largely dependent on what you will allow and tolerate.

How horrible for you to have grown up that way. Your parents are the ones to blame for all that. My son and daughter are 2 years apart and are extremely close and always have been. They are 20 and 18 now, and love each other to bits.

My dh's sister was awful to him when try were growing up, he had the same worries as you about two children. Ds adores his little sister, despite her being a pain

Oh OP I went through similar - my older brother physically and emotionally abused me well into our early twenties until I finally cut contact. In our case it was undiagnosed MH issues with him that was driving a lot of it, though by the time I was an adult that was of little comfort.

I had a two year old DS when I became pregnant with DC2, a girl. I cried and cried when I found out she was a girl. I was absolutely terrified of it happening all over again. I was so conflicted over my feelings about my beautiful, lovely little boy and terrified for my unborn daughter.

My husband spent a lot of time talking it all through with me, telling me I am not my parents, he is his own parent who will not let that happen, that my son is not my brother, that we are a new family.

We are now a family of a four year old boy, a two year old girl and another girl on the way. My children adore each other, though that's not too different to how my brother and I were at this age. However we talk a lot as a family about how we look after each other, care for each other, that in this family certain things are not acceptable - we have a family statement up on the wall about what we can expect and not expect from each other. It's positively driven but still, we hope to reinforce that we take care of one another and help each other, that to be part of this family is a special thing.

But I don't think the residual fears have truly gone away and in my heart of hearts, I do think part of the driver in having another DC, whatever their sex, was to create a different dynamic to the one I had. I wish you well for the future OP. What we both experienced was not a normal sibling relationship, I do know that much