Jealousy between siblings
Today we share a very personal post. As many of you already know, relatively recently we expanded the family. With the arrival of our baby, many new things came. For me, it was a wonderful postpartum. Much more physical than the first, but infinitely better emotionally.
As we have said in previous posts, the experience is a grade. And with it, you learn to take motherhood more serenely because you have the certainty of what is really important for you and your baby.
However, with this new motherhood, I was still like a new mom in another aspect: jealousy. And, really, it has been a topic that has touched us strongly. You can prepare yourself, you read about it and at the beginning everything absolutely goes smoothly. Mainly because the baby itself is new. Your first son or daughter is delighted, eager to discover everything. He/ she helps you, you get him/her involved ... And she was so happy! But ... oh no! One day, she decided that she did not want to help anymore.
As a good new mom I am not even aware that this could be a risk. On the contrary, I thought: look how wonderful. She is totally over it and she is even tired about helping. In short, in a short time, the small / big house began to act silly. Suddenly, she stopped eating and anything I said was: NO! The tamper tantrums returned, bad faces constantly for me and, well, a little apathy towards her little brother.
In the school itself they realized that she was less willing, that she was confused. She did not attend to what the teachers said. As you can imagine, I was broken on the inside. My daughter does not even want to see me. From time to time she would let me go: again breast? And yes ... of course. The little one spent a lot of time on top of me, because he needed me.
And what did we do? First of all I would like to clarify that I do not consider that it is over. It is a process ... and little by little it has improved. But I am aware that this is something that we will have to take care of every day.
We must also comment that we find our solution, considering our routines, habits and tastes. But this does not have to work for everyone. I just wanted to share our experience with you.
To try to turn the situation around, we did the following:
- As I slept a little at night because the kid spent all night in the chest, Daddy took Elisa to school. At that time, the older one even began to cry that she did not want to go to school and in one of the crisis "she ran away" she did not want to go because I stayed at home with him and she also wanted to stay. So, although for me it was more comfortable for Daddy to take her to school and I picked her up, we had to change routines and I now take her and pick her up. Now, you accept that some days, if I do not go, someone else can take you. In the time of crisis, not even this accepted.
- In the afternoon I went to the park for a while with her to play with her friends. I interpreted that it was going well because it was so venting. Nothing could be further from the truth. She was "stressed" much more to get home and have to go straight to the shower, eat and sleep. So we changed the park for playing time at home. Come, play with me or Daddy and her baby brother. And after a little while, take a shower!
- They both love the shower. It is a moment that we have always enjoyed and, since then, I decided to shower them together. To make that moment magical for both, a shared moment. Now they have "teta" playing together in the shower. Of course, how is the shower!
- Dinner was one of the most stressful moments of this whole situation. Our daughter refused to eat. He stopped eating. I did not want anything Each night was a fight to get him to eat a piece of fish, vegetable or meat. Night after night, I did not eat. Weeks passed and, you can imagine the anguish we felt each time dinner approached. So we change the focus. We told him that if he did not want to eat, nothing happened, but he could not get up from the table. This was the time spent eating and had to spend all the time we ate, sitting there. By making her aware that it was an important moment, and that ultimately she had the option of choosing whether to eat or not, it was an automatic change. He started eating. Little, nothing extravagant. But at least I already ate.
So, this is the situation we are in now. We have returned to a "semi-normality", where we are very aware that this is a process and how all processes can come and go. With which we remain alert and willing to spread pampering everywhere!