How often do your kids hurt each other?

[notenoughteaintheworld]

I’m an only child and my wife has an age gap of 12 years between her older sibling, so neither of us have grown up with sibling rivalry. None of my friends kids are close in age.

Sometimes my 5 year old DD1 and 2 year old DD2 get along. But most of the time, they don’t. DD1 remembers a time with no DD2 and views her as a pest and resource hog (despite demanding and receiving more attention). DD2 worships the ground DD1 walks on, but is rough with her hands. I feel like my life at the moment is 60% refereeing squabbles because DD2 kicked over DD1’s blocks and caused WW3, or DD1 snapped and hit DD2.

I’m kind of looking for advice but mostly I’m looking to know, how often is normal for squabbling, physical or otherwise? Or other accidental avoidable hurts?

There's 19 months between mine and I think we are lucky. DS1 hit DS2 on r when they were 4 and 2 and it was the one and only time I put him on a naughty step in his whole childhood. He still remembers it apparently!

Having said that I have friends do with 2with a 3 year gap and despite being 12 and 9, they fight and hurt each other constantly.

Most days they low level hurt eachother. 18 months between them (girl & boy) and they really are best friends 90% of the time but that other 10% they are brutal.

Is the eldest getting enough 1-1 time?

Mine are 10, 9 and 5 and have never deliberately hurt each other.

Ours are same age (DD almost 3) and DD does attack DS occasionally. She went through quite an acute phase of it around 2y5m to 2y7m. She is getting much better about this since approaching 3. DS was the same at that age, he used to attack me occasionally. I think it's an age thing. DS doesn't ever attack DD though, we have made it clear many times when he used to try during the terrible twos that he is to never, ever, ever hit, kick, scratch or bite his little sister who is much smaller than him. DD is slowly getting this message too, but I find you just have to tell them a billion times for it to sink in.

I have 3 boys, now 22, 19 and 16. We have a no teasing rule in the house and absolutely no fighting. Play fighting is fine but mean fighting gets punished the two younger boys shared a bedroom until they were 14 & 11.

there were definite accidents, one or two that required hospital treatment but no fighting.

2 yrs is quite young and annoying for a 5 yr old but keep trying to help their relationship. They may not get on always but they can be polite and respectful to each other. This is looong project!

We encouraged the following

• sharing fun times together and letting them choose in turns what to do or what film to watch.
• same with meals. Letting each of them choose a meal or treat a week and everyone respects that decision
• doing chores together
• not always getting involved in their bickering. We had a "sort it out between yourselves" attitude.
• getting them to choose a birthday gift for each other and making a card
• celebrating each other's achievements together
• respecting each other's boundaries

Thanks, I needed to hear that.

More than I think most kids with siblings. Her sister will be napping when she comes home from school so she gets about an hour a day, she doesn’t share her room so her bedtime routine is another half hour of 1-1 and then on Saturdays she does a class that’s an hour away, that one parent will accompany her to, so 3-4 hours on a Saturday morning, and the full two hour nap on a Sunday.

Friends have 8yo and 4yo (almost 5) boys, and they fight quite a bit. They will play fight and things can escalate, and they get hurt by accident. But even when playing 'nicely' together, if something goes wrong they will quite often default to fighting - yesterday the 8yo bumped his head, then he shouted at his little brother saying it was his fault and he laughed (incorrect on both fronts) and then the 4yo will run off crying. Or the 4yo is playing happily by himself, the 8yo intrudes on his game and takes over, the 4yo will either scream or lash out. Yesterday I was working on if he does that tell him no I don't want you to do X, if he doesn't then tell an adult who will stop him, just to try to reduce the amount of defaulting to screaming!

The 8yo makes up rules in their games and the 4yo doesn't like it, or the 4yo wants to do things the 8yo doesn't agree with and they end up in a stalemate - I regularly try to intervene and help them to work it out between themselves, 'If A wants this and B wants that and you can't agree then can you find another way to do it? Or you'll have to stop and play something different.' When supervising them playing together I think about half the time is refereeing, it's quite emotionally draining!

Watching with interest as we have exact same ages, I think the older one starting school has been a mixed blessing, on one side he knows how to be more careful, but on the other hand he's used to a class of 5 year olds who are a lot more robust than 2 year olds.
What's working in our case is not shaming either of them, using the same language with both (so the 5yo feels like it's fair) and also teaching them to repair their relationship properly after a rupture.
Luckily kids seem to be pretty robust and forget things quickly so no harm done permanently so far!