Taunting sibling - advice please

amother

Lemon

Wed, Sep 09 2015, 1:32 am

My preschoolers (ages 4 1/2 and almost 3) are for the most part best friends. The older one has always been very nice to the younger one. I also do my best to make sure that she gets her own space and stuff and isn't just "expected" to always be nice... but I did come to expect it also. It's nice when kids are nice to each other.

Recently she seems to enjoy picking on the younger one. Like she'll provoke her and then look for her to get into trouble. For example she might take something the younger one was playing with and then when the younger one tries to take it back she'll tell me "Sara's grabbing from me!" or even if it isn't provoked like that she seems to get a special enjoyment out of tattling. On one hand I don't want to encourage tattling with attention, on the other hand I can't really ignore it either. What do you do?

Another example is sharing. The older one has a lot more stuff than the younger one. For example she got as a prize in school a little stencil. She finished using it and left it on the table. Younger one started to pick it up to use and I told her she needs permission because it belongs to sister. She cooperatively stopped using it and politely asked "Can I use your stencil?" Sister (who used to share so nicely, with appropriate limits and sensitivity such as if there was something she didn't want to share would do her best to keep it private and not flaunt) immediately said "no!" with this big smile/smirk on her face, you could tell she was saying no just to aggravate her sister and not because she cared about the stencil (it is durable enough, and I was supervising, she was not worried or possessive about it - she just wanted to antagonize. You could just tell.) The little one then started crying which makes the whole situation that much more annoying - especially as this is happening quite a lot lately. On one hand I want to continue to enforce that each person is the boss of their own property - but I also want them to be nice with each other about that!

in this case it happened to be that I had a similar stencil of my own so I made a big show of saying how she (younger one) can use mine because even though it's mine I'm not using it for drawing now so I would like to use it for a mitzvah by making her happy. Younger one did not actually want to accept that offer but older one turned around and decided to let her use hers. So that went pretty well, but I am still worried about the pattern of wanting to make the little one cry (for entertainment? or what?) Also, I won't always be able to rescue the situation like that, and I don't really want to either - it's not real life, you know? Besides, that was the happy ending but in between I think some damage was done - DH was there too at the time and his reaction was pretty negative (something like "Does it make you happy to make her cry like that?" but not in a thoughtful emotional-reflective way, more in a sarcastic putting-down tone that made me really sad but a DH brain transplant is not an option here) and I also did a bit of mussaring before I switched tactics (would have been better not in the moment- I basically told her how it is true that she is the boss of her things and she can decide what to do with them, but she needs to think whether it is worth choosing to use them for good or for sad... a fine lesson but way too mussary and pointed when there is an actual item in question and crying sibling right there and dad in the background telling you off...)