I’m at a total loss on how to get my daughters to get along. My first three children are all two and a half years apart, our third and forth children are one year and two days apart - they fight constantly- calling each other fat, stupid etc. Until we moved they shared a bedroom with bunks and seemed to get along quite well. Now that we have moved they have their own rooms and fight like crazy! Their fighting escalates to where they are slamming doors and throwing things at each other waking our youngest. Even their older sister is getting frustrated by their fights saying she can hear it downstairs (her room is the only one downstairs). Our eldest doesn’t enjoy visiting our home because they are so over the top and when she does come over for dinner she leaves if they start. I’ve never had this issue before as the two eldest have always gotten on fantastic rarely squabbling. The third gets along well with both the eldest and the two youngest. The forth loves the two younger siblings but gets easily frustrated by not being able to stay up as late as the older children- she goes to bed at the same time as her 13 year old sister - she’s 12, they go to bed at 9pm, their 16 year old sister goes to bed at 10pm.
Is there anyway I can encourage them to get along? My husband thinks we should put them in the same room again. I’m seriously considering it.
Just to add the 13 year started high school this year and the 12 year old is in year six - she’s the only one still in primary school as the younger siblings haven’t started school yet.
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4 Replies
This is something I'd be dishing out serious consequences for.
I don't expect my kids to love each other and be best buddies, I just expect them to leave each other alone if they can't get along.
They don't get to fight to the point they're constantly disrupting the peace of the whole house and they definitely don't have the right to fight this badly in front of visitors leaving them so uncomfortable they literally can't stay!
I have 2 girls this age so I do get it. Loss of privileges (particularly social privileges) is usually how I get through to mine.
Listen a bit closer and see which one is the instigator. It's hard to know when all you hear is the end result screaming match and it seems 2 sided but there usually is one that's being a bit of a bully/overbearing and the other that retaliates. I have 4 within 5 years and I was amazed after years of kids fighting and pulling my hair out, 2 went on camp and guess what happened for the next week, absolute silence. I had the eldest and the youngest and they just didn't fight, had different interests and just did their own thing. It's not like these 2 were innocent, they just didn't clash. The two that went away clashed with the two that were at home. So I started piecing together what was going wrong, second youngest had anxiety and found school stressful so he took that out on the youngest, usually by nit picking, the youngest would retaliate and they would fight. The second eldest just had no boundaries, borrowing things without asking, embarrassing the others in front of friends, eating things to themself instead of sharing etc. Separate them if you have to, send them away one at a time for a few days to try and find out what's going on. Talk to them to see if anything is happening at school. Get them to keep a diary of the others behaviour instead of retaliating and then show you so you can deal with it without it turning into a fight.
If they have phones or technology take it all away from them until they can respect your family. Stick them back in same room. They have to behave to get their own room.
It could be to do with the move, my kids got anxiety about the new house and the result is they rely on each other but are also very highly strung/scared/short tempered and it causes fights. They also shared before the move. I eventually moved one’s mattress into the others room for a week and it helped.