Do you worry that an older sibling might harm a younger one?
There are many times a day when we leave our 2 children alone together for stretches of longer than 30 minutes. For example, when preparing dinner or after they wake up in the morning but before we come to get them.
Every once in a while, I think to myself: If our older son got some crazy idea, like covering his sister in sheets & blankets, or something along those lines, where she could really get hurt.
But, it also seems to me that he has more common sense than this, and we haven't seen any tendencies of intentional malicious behavior between the two. In fact, they usually enjoy this time alone together, so we tend to encourage it.
Do you ever worry that an older sibling might do something that would really harm a younger one?
2 Answers
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I do worry about this. But not for the reasons you have. I have evidence that my boys will hurt each other when left alone together, because they DO! Unlike your children.You are very fortunate that your children get along and don't want to kill eachother. I envy you. :-)
However, I leave them alone anyway, because they need to learn to be together without hurting each other. With mine, when someone gets hurt it's easy to tell, there is VERY LOUD SCREAMING. So I just go in and deal with it.
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I do worry about this a bit, so I try to always keep some sort of an eye on them every so often, and reinforce to the oldest that he always has to be gentle with the youngest.
