397. Q&A: How do I handle sibling rivalry when my baby keeps touching my toddler’s toys?

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:02):

Ever wonder what psychologists moms talk about when we get together, whether we’re consulting one another about a challenging case or one of our own kids, or just leaning on each other when parenting feels hard, because trust me, even when we do this for a living, it’s still hard. Joining me each week in these special Thursday shows are two of my closest friends, both moms, both psychologists, they’re the people I call when I need a sounding board. These are our unfiltered answers to your parenting questions. We’re letting you in on the conversations the three of us usually have behind closed doors. This is Securely Attached: Beyond the Sessions.

(00:43):

Hello. Welcome back to the Beyond the Sessions segment of the Securely Attached Podcast. We are going to answer a listener question and we have Dr. Rebecca Hershberg to share her wisdom with us. So good to see you.

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (00:56):

It’s great to see you too. I love this stuff.

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:58):

Me too. So you got two kids. I got two kids. This question is about sibling rivalry, so I feel like we might have something to say about the matter. You ready? Yeah. Okay. So this mom writes in, she says, “Hey there. So I know you’ve done episodes on sibling rivalry and getting kids ready for a new baby, et cetera, but I need some advice for a very specific stage right now. So my daughter is three and a half and her baby sister just turned one. Lately, my baby has started exploring more and crawling over and touching all her big sister’s things, and big sister is getting super annoyed, rightfully so. How can I support my toddler’s feelings while still letting baby explore? Also, what often happens is that my toddler will be working on a magnetile structure, et cetera, and then the baby will come and start touching.

(01:55):

She gets hysterical, so I separate them. One in the kitchen, one in the playroom, but people are telling me that’s not really teaching them how to work together. Would love some support. Thanks. I’m so in love with this mom right now.

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (02:10):

My kids are 21 months apart and I’m listening being like, oh God, I still feel it in my body. I mean, I have a few reactions. You want me to jump in or you want to jump in?

Dr. Sarah Bren (02:22):

Yeah, run. Run with it.

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (02:24):

My first reaction is, I don’t know who’s giving you that advice and I’m sure they’re lovely people, but you’re not getting them to work together at this age. Your baby can barely find their feet. You know what I mean?

Dr. Sarah Bren (02:38):

No, but the baby can find big sister’s magnetiles and is going to be … I so appreciate this mom gets … She’s like team toddler in this moment and I’m like, “Good, that is the team to be on here.”

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (02:50):

Or, I try to explain they’re just a baby. It’s like, no, that’s not going to help.That’s like at a job when someone’s like, “I’m sorry, they totally messed up your presentation. They only just started here.” It’s like, “Okay, but I’m out because it’s my … ” But that’s what I would say. They’re not going to work together because the baby doesn’t understand what the toddler does and what in this question, thankfully, the parent does, which is that people have things they care about and not everybody’s things belong to everybody and not everything is something to explore. Exploring someone’s art project by dumping red paint all over it is not exploring. It’s maybe exploring to a baby who’s sweet, spray paint on the wall. I think the word explore is a little bit being used too liberally here. I think that is wonderful attunement on the part of the parent that that’s what it’s like through the baby’s eyes. Everything is exploring, right? Hitting is exploring, screaming is exploring on the floor is exploring and I love that this parent gets that and it’s still okay to put a boundary around it.

Dr. Sarah Bren (03:54):

Which she’s doing, right? She’s saying, “Baby, you’re going to be in here.” I’m going to guess in this circumstance that, well, I don’t know which one’s going in the kitchen, which will go in the playroom, but she’s separating them because I think she just intuitively understands they need some territory.

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (04:09):

Right. Which I think is great. And then she said something about how do I help my toddler but also let my baby continue to explore? And to me, the answer is quite simple. You let your baby explore other places, right? I mean, this place where your toddler is building a magnet child structure is off limits and you get a little baby fence or whatever it is and you talk to your toddler about how if this is special to you, we’re not doing it right in the middle of the living room floor. I mean, that’s a little bit of education.

Dr. Sarah Bren (04:43):

Right, because boundaries go both ways. I do think there’s something really important about territory that needs to be discussed because I actually think that our ambivalence around giving kids territory is a relic from the world of everybody must share and you must give and share and give and share. And I actually think, while I absolutely understand why people hold that narrative and why we like that, because it feels really comfortable to think of making kids learn to be kind and to share. And I do think we want to teach that as a value, but we need to understand development and we have to do it in the right order. If you want, I think this is, I can’t get off a bigger soapbox because if we want kids to share when they’re older, forcing them to share when they’re little interrupts a very fundamental part of development that they must get comfortable with in order to move to the next stage of being flexible with territory so that they can get to the next stage of abdicating territory.

(05:55):

And so if you do not allow a child to have territory and name that that is an appropriate drive, an appropriate want, an appropriate trigger when it is violated or encroached upon or taken away from them, that’s the foundation, that’s the secure base. I trust that this is mine and it will be here when I come back. If I don’t trust that, it’s really hard to relax and to play and to be flexible and patient and interact and negotiate and do all the things that require emotional effort. If we feel like, okay, mom gets it, this is mine and no one’s going to take it, no one’s going to make me give it up and it’s going to be here protective when I return. I can go play and do these things and if something goes awry, I can bounce back a little bit more easily. And then when I get older, I will be more comfortable, again, giving up parts of my territory because I trust fundamentally, I know I believe in my own ownership of things.

(07:02):

If you are ambivalent about giving your child territory, and again, it doesn’t mean they get the run of the roost and it doesn’t mean they get to take every toy from their baby sibling either, but if they’re working on something special, we say like, “This is important to you. Where can we do this so that it’s in a special place that’s just for you, that’s protected from your sibling? I’m going to help you protect this. ” And if we model that to both kids from the get go, they’re all going to be much more equipped to share with one another when they’re older and generally have less threat around territory and have more capacity to like navigate rivalry and competition and share resources.

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (07:54):

Yeah. I agree wholeheartedly. I don’t have a lot to add. I would just say that that’s some … The only other thing I would say that I sometimes talk to families about is helping kids recognize that if you leave something that’s special of yours out on the dining room table, that is going to signal that it’s okay for everyone to touch it. I mean, I still do this for 10 and 12 year old. It’s like, “That’s mine.” It’s like, “Okay, but you weren’t here and you left it on the dining room table. And so how would anyone know they weren’t supposed to touch it? ” So also teaching a little bit of personal responsibility, not so much with the magnet child structure thing in terms of where you build, but this particular birthday present I just got, I really don’t want to share with my baby sister right now. Okay, so then let’s keep it in your room on the shelf. And when you want to play with it, you take it out and you play with it. And I’ll know that that’s a special thing of yours you don’t want to share with your baby sister and I’ll keep your baby sister away, but then when it’s done, we put it back because we do live in a home together and so the idea is that the toys that are in the playroom or in the living room or whatever it is are kind of communal unless they go in that place that is your territory.

Dr. Sarah Bren (09:04):

Yeah, I think that’s so important because it models both ways. It models the territory, it models that boundaries are two way process. Yes, you have territory and there’s also a boundary around where your territory ends and where it begins. And there are spaces that are not yours. There are things that are not yours. There are things that are yours and there are spaces that feel like they’re special spaces for you. That is your special. Let’s put that somewhere safe. And helping a child, it’s just as important I think to help the three and a half year old or any kid say, “Oh, this is the edge of your territory.” Out past this edge, it’s not. And like, so yes, your sister is allowed to play here. This is okay. I also think that the one other thing I would say, and you sort of touched on it, Rebecca, is the, how do we get them to work well together, apart from giving appropriate tools around territory and negotiating territory, really understanding that that will come, like developmentally that will come. It’s kind of like when I talk to families of really little kids who are like, “We are supposed to have family dinner.” That’s like what we do, right?

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (10:18):

I know, and they’re like two and three.

Dr. Sarah Bren (10:19):

Yeah. And I’m like, “You’re never going to eat again if you do that. Like you are allowed to do family dinners when your kids are older and can sit at the table and actually have a conversation with you. And if it doesn’t work when they’re little, you don’t have to do family dinners. You can actually eat not with your kids and be a really acing at parent because you fed yourself first or after in peace and quiet.” It’s kind of the same thing here. It’s like, we don’t need to force something until it’s developmentally going to come online. They will, yes, definitely teach your kids how to work together. You are teaching your kids how to work together by giving them space from each other and…

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (11:04):

That’s what you said earlier that’s so valuable, which is that letting them know that their things and their space are protected actually encourages them to want to be together because it takes away the threat. So this is kind of phase one of teaching exactly that skill.

Dr. Sarah Bren (11:23):

Yeah. And you, and you, as time … And don’t forget, this is like playtime. They also have like life together where they can’t be a part. They’re in the car together. They’re sitting in the grocery cart with you together. They’re doing … There’s a lot of stuff that they’re having to negotiate on how to work together in the day to day of life. Let them play separately because that’s their restore, reset, recharge, create, construct time. Let them work on that without having to also negotiate working together with two very different levels of development and skill and just allow that to be sort of a sacred, protected space because they’re going to have to practice working together in like the bathroom and the kitchen and all these other places anyway. They’re going to get that. Those reps are getting put in for sure. So you can also say very authentically to yourself, “I am doing a really good job of teaching them how to work together in life.” And this is a time where they are also learning the building blocks of what will eventually be fantastic sibling collaborative skills, but by letting them have some space and that I’m doing exactly the right thing by them and by myself, by my values and enjoy. Have a cup of coffee while they play solo and you’re not refereeing.

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (13:01):

Exactly. Exactly.

Dr. Sarah Bren (13:03):

Well, I hope that answers the question. And Rebecca, thank you so much as always.

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (13:09):

Absolutely. It’s always a pleasure.

Dr. Sarah Bren (13:13):

Thank you so much for listening. As you can hear, parenting is not one size fits all. It’s nuanced and it’s complicated. So I really hope that this series where we’re answering your questions really helps you to cut through some of the noise and find out what works best for you and your unique child. If you have a burning parenting question, something you’re struggling to navigate or a topic you really want us to shed light on or share research about, we want to know, go to drsarahbren.com/question to send in anything that you want, Rebecca, Emily, and me to answer in Securely Attached: Beyond the Sessions. That’s drsarahbren.com/question. And check back for a brand new securely attached next Tuesday. And until then, don’t be a stranger.