You see, we’ve come to the point in our child rearing that there is a distinct difference between the personalities of the Chaos Twins. No longer are they so similar that I think they are, in fact, twins. LittleMiss is strong willed, and for lack of a better term – a girl. She knows how to manipulate, scream and tantrum until she gets what she wants. SpacePirate is quieter, more thoughtful and as strong as an ox.
Okay, well, where does the guilt come in? Simple: Second Sibling Syndrome.
SpacePirate is now doing all the things that at just over a year and half ago, his sister was doing. Being defiant, being purposefully contrary, doing everything he can to stay out of bed at night. Here’s where the guilt comes to full steam. There is not nearly as much yelling, fussing, screaming, fighting, timeouts and such on my part.
Why?
I’ve already been through it all with LittleMiss. I have now added to my “parenting knowledge” the fact that the yelling, fighting, threats of punishment and timeouts do nothing in the grand scheme of things except give me a raging headache and cause the offender to scream and cry and argue in return. I’ve learned that it’s all now just about his testing the boundaries, exploring his sense of self, and just being a toddler. So I skip all that stress for what ultimately worked in the end… redirection, extinction, letting him come down from bed but completely ignoring him (because he’s just looking for the attention in the first place), even bribes! After all is said and done the same goal is reached, just in a more sane, less head-achy fashion. Don’t get me wrong, there are still plenty of timeouts, threats of punishment for SpacePirate, but I am not crying in the end and, usually, neither is he.
And I feel GUILTY for this. I feel bad for LittleMiss. Does she see this? Is she noticing that I just ignore what little brother is doing, instead of yelling at him?
Am I wrong in feeling this way? Is this normal?
This “Guilt” has been consuming my thoughts of late and I really just can’t shake it. I think that some of it has to do with the fact that I suffered from Second Sibling Syndrome. I was the first and had to endure the yelling, screaming, tighter rules – and then got to watch as my kid brother got rules that were more lax, getting to do things earlier than I was, easier punishments, and the like. In the end, we’re both well adjusted adults and the teenage years were better (in a sense) – so why does it bother me so much?
