The fighting must end!!!!
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My DDs are 2 years and 9 days apart (11 1/2 and 9 1/2). They have recently started fighting with each other about absolutely EVERYTHING. Anyone have any experience with this? I have tried to seperate them, but they get mad at me because they want to be around each other. I have also tried talking to them about how it makes me and everyone around them feel and they don't seem to think it upsets anyone or makes them uncomfortable.
This morning they fought from the time I woke them up until I dropped them off at school about an hour later, and this is not a rare occassion. My DH works different hours than I do so he is normally trying to get a little more sleep while we are trying to get out of the house in the mornings and I wakes him up and causes him to be in a bad mood all day long also. When my mornings start out this way I end up having a horrible day and can't concentrate on work or anything else I need to do.
It is absolutely wearing on my last nerve. They are making it so I don't want to be around them and it makes me feel like a horrible mother. HELP!!!!
Tara, i feel for you. My kids are 18 months apart (ages 5 and 6) and they bicker a lot also. My ds (the one i aske for help with in my post "Help Me!") acts up even more when his sister comes home from school. And they either get along like best friends, or they fight like cats and dogs.
I'm sorry i have no advice for you on this. (((HUGS))) I hope someone else can help you!
Tara, I think you hit the nail on the head already. You said they hate to be separated so what better punishment? If they get mad at you, so what. My sisters and I were all two years apart and we beat the tar out of each other at those ages.(overexaggerated, well, a little, LOL) The only way my mom could get any peace was to separate us. You are on the right track and you are a good mother to care about their feelings so much. Unfortunately, at that age, their feelings vary from moment to moment otherwise they wouldn't want to be around each other one minute and fighting the next. It is up to you to be the steady one. Whether they know it now or not, your steadiness is really what they crave and need. Good luck & (((((Tara)))) 
I have boys that are 2 years apart. They are a little younger then yours, almost 6 and 8. I seperate mine, and send them to their own rooms when they start fighting. I tell them that if they want to play together, then they have to do it without fighting and talking nasty to each other. I am lucky that mine don't fight often, but when they do, seperating them for awhile always does the trick.
I have 2 daughters, 14 and 16. We have had mornings like that! DH gets home around 1am if he's lucky and he is also trying to sleep. What has made it better for us, is the 16yo finally realizing that she needs more sleep and getting to bed earlier. She wakes up in a better mood and it's a lot better all the way around.
Sounds the same at my house. My oldest two are 12 and 10. It is kind of funny, the oldest has started babysitting, she is very mature and responsible outside of my house. Get her with her brother and she forgets that she isn't 3. I let her babysit my youngest, but I always have to take the middle kid with me, everytime I have tried it I walk into mayham. One day I walked up to the school, was gone 5 minutes came home and he was sitting on her and he had visible scratch marks on him.
What do we do about it...well, first off as I said, I don't leave the two of them alone together But also, they spend a lot of time in seperate rooms. I punish both if there is a fight because I keep saying one should walk away. Also I try to catch them being nice and giving complements, I always say, when you play like this is makes me so proud to be a mom I also keep talking about how they make choices every day, every moment. They can choose to be best of friends and be nice or they can choose to act like immature brats, I will choose my parenting to match their choice
The other big big deal...TV. I swear I don't know why we own one. In the summer we will go a full week screen free, no tv, no computer, no game cube, etc. By day 4 they are just so much better. They pick up so much on tv, name calling, fighting. Just think about the shows they watch, there is always a conflict that has to be resolved, I think my kids find conflicts because of it. I urge you to give it a go...the first few days can be hairy, but if you can get past day 3 it is AMAZING the behavioral differences in all of my kids.
Here are my two cents.
My kids (DS: 9.5, DD: 7.5) used to fight like cats and dogs with occasional tender sibling moments. I read a sibling rivalry book, and it was quite helpful. The name escapes me at the moment, but I'll dig it up later. It basically said to allow siblings to work things out on their own whenever possible. YES, definitely step in if/when necessary, but stay out of normal bickering. I tried it and it really works! DS and DD now get along much better. Sure, they still have their rough moments but they are not nearly as often as they used to be. The book also warns parents to be very careful about what they say because parental statements and comparisons can actually set up sibling rivalry.
My kids are 5 yrs apart, and they fight and argue ALL THE TIME. It drives us crazy. They do have moments where they play nice together. But,.those rare moments are maybe 5% of the time. For us, the best thing to do is to separate them. They each have their own rooms, their own tv's so thats really not a big issue.
My dks are 6 and 10 and polar opposites. The fighting is unbearable at times and we have tried several thing to get them to stop, but only recently (a few months ago) found something that really works for us.
We began giving our dks allowance - $.50 for each year of life. We have three jars on our kitchen counter, one for dd and one for ds to hold each child's allowance in quarters and one for "lost" quarters. We posted a list of our major house rules on the refrigerator (no fighting, no lying, follow instructions, do daily chores, etc) so that there wouldn't be any question of whether or not it was a "major" rule. Each time one of the major rules is broken they have to remove a quarter from their jar and put it in the "lost" jar. In the case of fighting they both lose a quarter and go to their rooms for a standard time-out (10 min for dd, 5 min for ds). We do not argue with them about this. It takes two to fight, they are both at fault, and we refuse to play referee. The time-out is in place to give them a little breather to calm themselves down and it really works quite well. It's losing those quarters that the kicker. They really don't like having to "pay" to fight. On Friday evening, each child is responsible for counting the money left in their jar. Once we pay them the amount of money left in their quarter jars they can remove their "lost" quarters and put them back in their jars to begin the new week. Then they have to put 50% of their allowance in their banks and the remaining 50% is theirs to spend any way they choose. In addition, I no longer buy extras for them at the store. Not toys, bubbles, movies, etc. They have their allowance and they have to save if they want something. Because they don't want to lose quarters, they are much better about trying to work out their problems. We have not yet had a week where they both get 100% of their allowance, but we've had a couple of weeks that were close. We've also had a couple of weeks where they received very little of their allowance, but that was back in the beginning. We have also noticed a few added bonuses of this system. They are both learning money management. When they see something they really want at the store they calculate how long it would take them to save up for the item and then they work towards that goal. Even my 6yo is adding and subtracting money on his own and recognizes that there is also tax, even though he doesn't know yet how to calculate it. He will see something for, say, $10 and ask me how much more than that he will need to pay for taxes. They are looking for things to go on sale so their money goes farther, and in the last couple of weeks they have also stopped complaining about putting 50% in their banks and they just automatically do it. My 10yo did ask me recently what we were going to do with the 50% they save and I had to think about it. We decided that in a few months we will open the banks and count what's inside and either open real savings accounts or purchase bonds. I'm leaning towards saving accounts so that the dks can actually deposit their money in the bank and watch the accounts grow.
Sorry, I kind of got a little long winded and a little off track explaining our system. It really is quite easy to do, takes little time and effort, and it has works so well for the fighting, as well as other areas that I figured I'd share the whole thing.
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