4 year old constantly annoying her baby brother

[Bevziibubble]

My 4 year old daughter will not stop annoying her younger brother. She went through the terrible threenager stage when I was pregnant and she was violent every day, anger issues, no reasoning with her etc, but as soon as James arrived she completely changed and was very rarely violent and was mostly back to her old self.

For the past four months or so she has been really annoying her little brother. It started with her not being able to control herself while hugging him and she would squish him so tight and squeeze his cheeks. She seemed to get worse and worse and now constantly seems to be in his face. From the minute she gets up she hugs him, squishes him too tightly, takes his dummy out, puts her face in his and pushes his head. When I ask her why she does this she says it's because she loves him so much and he's so cute that she can't help squishing him. I do understand this, but what is difficult is that she can also be quite rough and mean to him.

She will shout in his face, pull him down if he stands up, roughly push him over if he takes something of hers. She takes it upon herself to 'discipline' him. If he does anything 'wrong' in her eyes she will push him and call him a stupid baby. Sometimes when we have visitors and she gets anxious and overwhelmed she will start pushing and hitting James. I don't know if this is to put the attention onto James, to take anger out on him or just to show off.


She is absolutely fine on her own. Or if we go out and I'm baby wearing she is fine then. It's just when we are anywhere indoors and James is not being worn she terrorises him. I know she loves him, she is very proud of him and always introduces him to all her friends (before being mean to him) and I'm pretty sure if anyone else was mean to him it would upset her. He bumped his mouth the other day and it was bleeding. She was very concerned about him and then went back to her normal self. She doesn't respond to talking it out so we let her sit in her room for three minutes and then she is better when she comes out and genuinely apologises to him but before long she just cannot help herself. He can't do anything without her getting in his face and barging him out of the way.
People tell me that she just wants more attention. But she doesn't want more attention, she wants ALL the attention, and obviously that's not possible because I would then be neglecting my son.
I don't know if I need to change my discipline methods but she is constantly trying to egg us on for a reaction that she then gets upset about because she hates being sent to her room.

Anyone have any experience of this? Please tell me that they do grow out of it!

 

[Zephram]

Yep, my DS1 still does stuff like this to a certain extent and DS2 is already 15 months. It's partially attention seeking behaviour and partially that they don't quite grasp how gentle you have to be with a small baby. You just have to be consistent in how you handle it. DS1 has gone to his room countless times for being too rough with the baby, I just play it by ear, really, and try to distinguish between the times where he's just loving too hard and when he's being a little monster because of jealousy or to grab all the attention. If he's just squeezed too tight when he's giving a loving hug then I just remind him to be gentle, but if it's attention seeking I tend to separate them and if he keeps going he gets a little time out. There's a fine line between the two, but I can generally tell. I know I need to be better at prioritising one on one time with DS1, so maybe some more of that would help you guys too?

 

[Snufflepop]

You just exactly described my daughter and the way she behaves to her baby brother. I feel so sorry for him, he is either being ignored while I deal with her or being pushed/smacked/"cuddled" and screamed at by his sister. She is a bit younger than your daughter but the behaviour is the same so I'm following for advice.

 

[Willow82]

Wow, that is so familiar I could have written it myself. My 4 year old DS is really difficult around my 11 month old DD. He is constantly in her face, hugging, kissing, pushing, poking, manhandling her. It's so frustrating and I end up shouting at him especially when he's pulling her or trying to move her. I ask him to stop calmly which gets no response and then I have to yell. He does love her as he's so happy that she's at nursery with him. He's so proud of her, introducing her to all of his friends. When we're out he's also ok with her e.g. at toddler group. I really hope he grows out of it. That said my DD is a feisty little lady and has hurt him more than he her I think. He has scratches on his face from where she has swiped at him. I don't really know how to deal with it, anything significant results in a time out but if I sent him up to his room every time he di something to her, he would be constantly upstairs!