My daughter seems to derive pleasure in terrorising her sisters and her parents. She is constantly tormenting her sisters, she talks to me and my husband like dirt and is very demanding. On the other hand she can also be extremely loving and affectionate (although these moments are few and far between). I ALWAYS make sure that she gets positive one on one attention from me and I always try to see things from her point of view. Whenever I try to talk to anybody about this it just gets dismissed as middle child syndrome which I dont agree with, as she was like this long before her little sister came along! Her big sister (1 year older - no problems at all with her) shares a room with her and ends up in our bedroom most nights in tears (as do I). I am desperate as I dont want my children to remember their childhood as a miserable time with constant shouting and arguing. Please help!
I Have the same problem, but with my eldest daughter who is 7 yrs old. Everybody says to me its because I don't give her enough attention, but I give all my children equal amounts.
My daughter is disruptive, constantly lies, disrespectful to me and her dad. Actually she has an attitude of a teenager!!
So if anyone can help you they will help me too...
Being only one year apart, your oldest 2 children are very close in age. Maybe your 8 year old is trying to establish her place in the family. Maybe she can keep up , but not quite enough to feel really secure with her big sister.
She sounds like my youngest who is 9 now. She has never wanted to be the youngest and terrorised her brother (middle child) when she was little. She wanted to make her mark within the family, and she did, sometimes by biting her brother when they were in the bath, or scratching him. These were things she could do to make her presence felt. It wasn't because she was ignored. We had lots of time together, as her elder siblings were at school/pre-school etc.
Even yesterday, I picked her and her brother up from a rehearsal for a pantomime. She said to him "You're not going to sit in the front of the car" (as I don't allow her to as she is too young) and proceeded to slam the car door on his legs. When I asked her why, it was because she didn't want him to sit in the front if she couldn't. Needless to say, she was in a fair amount of trouble.
Try not to label your 8 year old as this difficult child. It's her behaviour you want to change, not her. She is probably just asserting herself the only way she knows how. Help her to find other ways of expressing herself! My daughter became less aggressive to her brother when she could argue verbally with her brother! I try to listen to her and not to take sides. One thing I learned when my children were little was that I hadn't usually seen the whole event escalate... and if I had, sometimes the other 2 did wind her up until she flipped. Unfortunatley, when she flipped, she did it big time, and so I always had to intervene!
If she is being rude in the way she speaks to you, how about working out what makes her tick, and punishing her with that. For my 9 year old, her friends are pretty important. She was going through a rude patch (she has a 13 year old sister and sometimes thinks she is a teenager!!!!) and I said "You are being rude. If you carry on speaking to me like this, you will not have your sleepover on your birthday"... and she didn't have it. She was really shocked. I think I hadn't really threatened something like that and carried it out (which is my fault). Now if she begins to be rude I can say,"If you speak to me like this once more, then this will happen" and she believes me.
And good luck.... it's really difficult to deal with siblings. They are all in each others space. Now, it is not usually my youngest 2 that fight, but my girls (and they are 4 years apart)... but they are the same sex and are more competitive. If you have 3 girls... that must be hard work.
Would it be possible for maybe there to be a room change, and the yougest 2 share (to ease the problem for the time being).
I love what Dr. Aldort says here:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=JooO_c3tBs4
And, I you sound like you want to understand your daughter rather than punish or stop her forcefully.
I had the same problems with one of my sons and when I found out what the reasons for his behavior, and why his reasons were valid and how to prevent the cause... I changed things and he became peacefu.
Aldort's book, Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves,
teaches how to understand the reasons behind a child's behavior and how to remedy the problem kindly.
