The Oldest Fight Known: Sibling Rivalry

My son got off the bus today for the last time as a first-grader.  Next year starts second grade and he is very, very excited!  In fact, he told me that he wishes that second grade would start tomorrow.

In some ways, I do too. 

First of all, I don’t want him to lose the passion he has for school.  I want to encourage his natural curiosity and know that he thrives in the structured environment school provides.  He is comfortable in the classroom and really feels good about what he is able to accomplish while he’s there.

My other purely selfish reason for wanting him to jump right in to second grade is that he was off the bus for a whole fifteen minutes before he and my daughter (who will be entering Kindergarten in the fall) began squabbling.  And it was only about an hour into summer break before I lost my cool, frustrated already by the constant “he said” and “she did” that looms over the next two-and-a-half months.

Oh, sure, it will be punctuated by swimming lessons and ball games (baseball for him, t-ball for her), but the majority of the summer will be all four of my kids all together all the time.

One of the twins is insanely jealous of anyone trying to get my attention.  She’s only 13.5 months old, so temper tantrums are a new thing and we’re both trying to help her figure out how to deal with the boiling jealousy that she feels when I assist one of my other kids.  The other twin is, thankfully, not nearly as needy of my physical contact.

But between the tantruming baby and the bickering older kids, my fuse is dangerously short right now.  We have simply got to figure out a solution to the “we’re all too close to each other” thing and soon, before it becomes a black cloud on the glory of an Iowa summer sky.

One of the most obvious things is to get the older kids involved in things around the house.  Last weekend, we put in a small duck pond for our five ducklings.  Both kids enjoyed helping with digging, placing the pond, and backfilling.  They loved riding the tractor over to the spot where we were dumping the overturned earth and had fun watching the ducklings take their first swimming lesson.  Yes, the adage “like a duck to water” is true – no lessons needed for the fuzzy babes to speed across the pond joyously.  This activity was, for the most part, fight-free (for kids and duck-kids).  Once there was a shovel per kid and they negotiated a tractor-ride schedule, they were fine.

But right now, the daily chores are vastly less appealing.  We did a toy room organization that went pretty well, though both kids tried to tell me the other wasn’t working as hard as they were.  Both kids are capable of helping sort clean laundry and of putting away much of their own clothing.  Both kids take pride in cleaning and organizing their rooms – provided I can get them started on the activity and they are in the mood to show off to me about how much they can get done.

And that’s the issue – the competition.  My son had to be the first, the fastest, and the loudest at about everything because he firmly believes it is his birthright as the oldest.  My daughter would like to get the upper hand at every chance, but she is younger, smaller, and cannot yet read, so she feels like she is at a disadvantage all of the time, leading her to anger when, yet again, big brother gets to the house first.

Sigh…  I know that this is just how it is when you have siblings – I remember being overwhelmed with insane jealousy when my sister accomplished something before I did.  I just wish I had some idea of how to make the sibling rivalry less bloodthirsty.  Got any pointers?