AboutLeslie Truex Expertise I am a parent of two, but also I'm a social worker with over 15 year experience working with children and families. I can provide many tips and techniques to help with child behavior, interventions for specific behavioral issues, ideas to help children through difficult times such as divorce or grief, hints on keeping the family running smoothly, and tips for developing confident, happy children.
Experience I have a master's in social work and over 15 years experience working with children and families. I have worked in schools, public health, mental health and adoption agencies providing parent education courses and children's groups.
Question I am the mother of two boys-ages 10 and 7. they fight constantly, and i do not know what to do anymore. I punish them, I take things away from them, but it just does not work. It is mostly my younger one starting up with my older one, he hits him all the time, and bothers him so much. Any suggestions before one of them gets seriously hurt..
Thanks
Answer Hi Pam,
Clearly something about your intervention isn't working. The stakes are not high enough to get the younger brother to stop. Your failure to stop it can also have a negative impact on the older brother.
When you take something away, what is it? For how long is it gone? The key is to take something really special (ie no television, GameBoy, etc). And it should be gone long enough to make an impact, but not so long that he forgets why he lost it in the first place.
What ever you do, you have to stick to it. In my experience, parents end up giving in to stop the storm, but this in fact only makes things worse. Whatever you say you're going to do, you HAVE to do it no matter what or your children will learn that you don't mean what you say.
In the case of violence, I would say that your son needs to lose all privilege. Kind of like a time out where he loses all fun things. You may also want to consider an anger management group for him or some other group counseling.
If you find you are not able to be effective in your interventions, you may want to take a parenting course which can help you identify where its not working as well as give you more tips and tricks. And finally, you may want to consider family counseling which can help identify the dynamics that are pitting the boys against each other and help fix them. For example, your younger son is causing problems for you and that makes you resent him. He feels this, gets mad or jealous and acts out, which makes you feel mad and resentful. Or it could be something else. But a counselor can help identify what it is that is going on in your sons' minds and create strategies to fix the behavior.
