Sibling cruelty

[mountainboo]

Hi
I have a 3 year old niece and a 2 month old nephew. My niece is very spoiled and in my opinion receives little to NO discipline. She can, unfortunately be obnoxious at times. My brother recently told me that she regularly HITS her brother and not surprisingly he gets hurt! I asked my brother what their reaction to this is and I am told that they don't discipline the child because they are worried that she will become negative towards her brother all the time and that they try to ignore her behavior.

Am I the only one to be utterly appalled by this. My poor nephew is very tiny and fragile and I feel he is not being protected. Is this normal behavior and is it being dealt with correctly?

TIA

[annie0000]

Im sorry, but at 3 she should be old enough to know that that is wrong and if she doesn't then her parents need their backsides kicked. She should definitely be disciplined but also praised when she is behaving nicely to him. When my second was born, we kept his crib up high so that my eldest didn't hurt him, although at his age (13 months) it was inadvertent rather than deliberate. 2nd children do tend to have to be a bit more robust, but I couldn't sit by and watch my other child deliberately hurt my baby. They should be ensuring his safety.

[China Doll]

There's six years between middle sister and myself and as kids we hated each other and were really horrible. Mum spent most of her time refereeing. However although disciplined for bad behaviour towards the other, the message was very firmly that whether we liked each other or not we were sisters and it was my duty as the eldest to protect younger members of the family, (something that has carried on to this day). So while it was alright for me to be mean to Blondie, it was very much another story if I caught someone else doing the same thing.

I wouldn't say our relationship ever really improved much as children/teenagers but we learnt to rub along together and as we got older and found more in common we obviously became closer. I used to feel bad when she wasn't allowed to do things because of her age and as I go older would quite like acting the 'big sister' and buying her a sneaky archers if we were out or saying that myself and my friends would go out with my sister if mum would let her go out to see her friends in the evening. I suspect mum approved of this sort of ganging up on her of her daughters because it did mean that the relationship between Blondie and I grew stronger for it. It was even me that went with her to her college open days and parent evenings initially.

We're now very close even though she lives on the other side of the world so you can obviously grow out of sibbling rivalry. When baby sister came along a few years after Blondie, those two were very close and used to gang up on me if I was being mean so it's swings and roundabouts.

That said, the one time mum witnessed me slap Blondie around the face she turned around and did exactly the same to me while citing that I was twice the size of her and she was twice the size of me! It was a very short, sharp lesson and while I resented it at the time, the message was received loud and clear.

[tamborine]

A 3y old is capable of serious harm and death of a babe......innocently/unknowingly.

Parents are neglectful in not protecting the weaker but....if the worst happens, they only have themselves to blame.

[mountainboo]

Thanks for the responses. My SIL works for social services helping vulnerable parents so you would think she would know how to dicsipline her own child in the correct way. IMHO she is worried about hurting her daughters feelings if she dicsilpline's her for being violent towards her brother. Surely by taking this approach it encourages the child to carry on reacting this way towards her poor helpless brother. I would hope that they never leave the child unsupervised, maybe I should say something?

[cherrychapstick]

but this reaction (no reaction) will eventually hurt her more as she gets older she will probably be hitting him harder and sorry to say something is going to happen ,she works for social work how is she going to feel when her child ends up in hospital ,do you think social services are going to believe her or her husband hasn't done it,they will treat her like any other mother that has a child took into hospital through neglect (that is what it is) omg i just couldn't believe what i read ,big deal if she hurts her feelings ,it has to be dealt with now ,you sil is not in control and she is dealing with people who have similar lives ohhh dear