How do women do this? Do what? Raise boys. Birth precious baby boys and mold them into good men? I’m at a loss right now.
My boys right now are 13 & 8. They are like oil and water. Everything from breakfast cereal to movie choices becomes something they argue about. Everything from sports to music becomes blatant competition.
I am so worn down from the fighting, from the hateful way that they talk to and treat eachother…I’m out of ideas, I don’t know how to get through to them.
The younger one feels like he’s lost in his older brother’s shadow and hates him for it. And yet at the same time I see him trying to be like his brother. The older one hates the younger one for trying to be like him and yet I see him become protective if anyone tries to mess with him.
They won’t tell each other sorry, thank you, or give one another a hug unless I pin them down and make them do it. It’s a constant battle between them and I’m exhausted from it. I can only afford a two-bedroom apartment so for the time being they have to suck it up and share a bedroom (in private I have cried about not being able to provide them with separate rooms). I think that having their own space would alleviate a lot of the stress and friction between them.
I just wonder…how is it even POSSIBLE for two boys from the same mother & father to be sooo different and sooo hateful of one another? I had no sisters, I only had a younger brother, is this normal for same-sex siblings????
My 8 year old has been having trouble at school. He’s making very bad choices and I can’t seem to get through to him. Calls from the teacher are the norm as of late. Just absolute disregard for rules on his part. He’s a very smart boy, he has a very tender heart, I cannot understand where this is coming from. The latest infraction almost got him suspended (he’s only in 3rd grade!). Some bullies started beating up on his friend on the playground so he jumped in (instead of running for a teacher), and when he jumped into the fight he REALLY jumped into the fight. **sigh** that warranted a call from the PRINCIPAL. When I hung up with the principal a wave emotions washed over me, from anger to sadness…
This weekend we attended a guitar hero competition, both boys signed up for their respective age brackets. The 8 year old lost his competition and I had to console him as he cried and said “I never win anything” while watching his older brother win his competition and a gift certificate to the video game store. Of course his brother won, his brother wins everything.
Do you know how hard it is to sit there and support one child while consoling the other? I’ve gone through that bittersweet consolation of one while trying to congratulate the other too many times to count. Does it make me a bad mother that for a fleeting moment, deep down in my mind, I was wishing my older son weren’t so good at everything so his brother could have a time to shine?
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It’s not that my older son is perfect, he excels in most things he does, but he has his own troubles. He was recently invited to be in a band outside of school. He was thrilled, musician daddy was thrilled, my musician brother was thrilled and got on the horn and sent him his first locking guitar strap as a birthday/congratulation present, I was thrilled for him because he is a bit socially awkward and thought this would help his standing with his peers. When I picked him up from school on Friday he was very quiet, with his head turned away from me he told me that the boys “let him go” from the band because “they had too many guitar players” I could hear the crack in his voice as he told me… I was ready to go find these monsters and beat them upside the head for hurting my son’s feelings and pride. I said…”why would they do a stupid thing like that? You’ve been playing guitar since you were born, I’m sure you’re better than the others” he said…”because mom, I’m the nerd”
OH HELL. How do I deal with this one? I tried to tell him…no you are not a nerd. But he smiled as he informed me, “yes, mom, I am the nerd, I am the nerd because I’m smart, I’m the nerd because I’m not afraid to use my brain and show that I’m smart, I’m the nerd because I don’t care what anyone thinks, and I’m not going to change that to try to ‘be cool’ and that’s okay with me” through his speech though, I could see the fresh pain. And I felt that pain for him as if it were mine.
So…how do mothers do it?
