Endless fights!

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Hi All

Really just feel like ripping my hair out and screaming. My two girls 4 (almost 5) and 2 fight all day. From the moment they wake up and it's bloody exhausting. I know kids fight and parenting is exhausting but I just feel no one else can relate to me and it makes me feel like shit.

The fighting is mostly instigated by the eldest who is quite honestly a little brat. She huffs and puffs and says everytinv is annoying and boring,has the attitude of a full on teen. The youngest is really sweet selfless loves kids and will quite happily give up her toys. They are opposite personalities and they rrlefuse to ever play together. I'm always sitting in the middle and the best way I can describe it is i feel like I have two wives who want me all day and despise each other because they see it as competition.

It doesn't help that everyone in my social circle has two kids or is having their second and keeps going on about how the eldest is just loving having a baby to kiss and cuddle and the only experience I have is my eldest scratching the babies face right before the health visitor came and then being bombarded with questions about the safety of the baby!!!

Is it that they're both girls? Or my eldest daughters personality? Everyone I know has one of each gender I feel like its less competition that way.

We have 3 and they would often fight, I would let them get on with it listening for it escalating, but generally it would stop when I didn’t interfere or ‘take’ sides, they would work it out.

DH on the other hand would get involved and it would end badly with kids crying because daddy didn’t take their side!!

Best stay out of it.

@BluebellsGreenbells as I was typing that I hid in the bathroom and to my surprise they've been getting on. I have left them on ocassions but the eldest will kick and pinch so tend not to leave them too much

Yes, so here’s what you do, as you are clearly the prize.

I’d the eldest does hit kick pinch, remove the younger one and ignore the eldest, give the younger one lots of cuddles and sympathy. Oh sweets are you hurt, come and sit with mummy and we’ll have a story, can I get you a drink, there there.

So full on attention - the eldest will see this!

Then later speak to the eldest and say ‘mummy isn’t happy when you hurt x’
So make it about your feelings - ‘mummy would like it if you have kind hands’

So you take away the emphasis from the younger one - Sarah cried when you hit her - more ‘mummy was upset when you hit Sarah’ As she clearly doesn’t care about Sarah but does care about you

are they fighting to get your attention? do you have a structure to the day? Any nursery / homeschooling? Do they get a time-out for fighting?

they might fight out of a combination of boredom & uncertainty and wanting your full attention. So if you can give structure & positive attention, that might help. The kind of timetable I would do would be a page on the fridge saying:

9am - walk
10am - snack
10:30am - craft or cooking for DD1 (DD2 play quietly)
11am - game together
11:30am - TV before lunch if there was no fighting all morning.
12 lunch

and give the 4 year old the responsibility of knowing the timetable & following it. Focus on getting her engaged & it sounds like the 2 year old will follow along.

My dc are 10 and 9 now, they are constantly bickering.. whis turn it is to choose what's on TV etc. I generally leave them to work it out themselves. If it does escalate into fighting then neither of them get tv.

I wish I could say it gets better... it doesn't and its draining. They have to learn how to solve conflict themselves without resorting to violence. So bickering I ignore but hurting each other has a consequence.

@parietal thanks for your suggestion, we do have a general routine to the day on my days off. The days I'm at work k they spend with my mum and pretty much run wild and are spoilt but that's another battle!

My routine tends to be wake up a bit of free play while I make breakfast then usually a trip out leisure or errands back for lunch and a bit of TV after while I tidy up.

Dd2 still naps in the afternoon for a couple of hours so during that time it's usually 1:1
Time with dd1 doing the activities sent by her nursery or puzzles/play doh.
The problem then starts again when dd2 wakes up
She really resents her sister! Her task yesterday was to draw a picture of her family and she refused to draw her sister saying that dd2 wasn't born yet!

Really hoping that somewhere along the line this changes

No advice but I’m their with you I have a 3 nearly 4 year old daughter who thinks everything is boring! And a 2 year old son who won’t share they’ve fought loads and it’s just got worse as we are in isolation my daughter caught covid from preschool!! X