agonyaunt | (no subject)

DEAR HARRIETTE: I have a very inquisitive and talkative 8-year-old son. I am always impressed by the questions he comes up with and his eagerness to learn.

I try to feed his desire to learn new things by giving him books to read and finding new places for us to visit.

He has older teenage siblings who often find these activities boring.

How can I bridge the gap between my 8-year-old and his older siblings, who are not interested in the same things?

DEAR SIBLING COLLECTIVE: Think of incentives that your teenagers might appreciate, and offer them if they promise to spend a certain amount of time with your younger son.

Teenagers are often obsessed with the details of their evolving lives and don’t even notice their younger siblings. Presenting a desirable outcome to them in exchange for positive quality time with your younger child may work.

If your older children are not naturally inclined to participate in the activities that fascinate the baby of your family, your incentives will only work for so long. Look more closely at each of your older children. Notice if there is one thing that each might be willing to offer to the 8-year-old. Encourage that and see what happens.

Even more, you may need to create play dates and other engagements with your younger boy’s peers.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/03/04/harriette-cole-how-can-i-involve-my-teens-in-their-little-brothers-interests/

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

I think Harriette was trying to hint around the advice she should have given outright, which is this:

You can't expect any two random people, even siblings, to have the same interests. You really can't expect teenagers to be thrilled by the same things that excite eight year olds. It sometimes happens that interests align, but you shouldn't plan on it.

So stop planning your outings around your eight year old. Do eight year old things with him, and do teen things with the older kids, and do things of mostly general interest with everybody, but don't expect the kids to act passionately engaged because you liked it.

The way this letter is written makes it sound like she's doing all the things (or most of them) to accommodate the youngest rather than, if you're going to drag the whole family along, doing the better approach of alternating reasonably fairly through each member of the family in turn. I hope she's a poor writer, but if she's not, that's even worse.

I didn't fully grasp what was going on here until I read your comment! She's just dragging a bunch of teenagers around on learning outings for an 8-year-old and is surprised they resent it?! Wow. It also begs the question why this is advice column fodder. Surely negotiating whether teenagers have to come on every family outing is a no-brainer.

I think there is an age at which 'we all have lovely family outings together!' have a cut-off date, and it sounds like LW's older offspring have reached it. They do not want to do these, I suspect, whether or not they are focused around baby brother.

(Time for the Starkadders to leave Cold Comfort Farm...)

Edited (redundancy) 2022-03-05 12:43 (UTC)

I'm older than my brother by 8 years. Some years we were very close, some stretches we just didn't overlap, and we're a good case scenario of compatible people who now have a solid, frank, affectionate relationship as adults. I love him dearly, we each got differently trying versions of our mother, but he wasn't my peer until we were averaging 30yo. But it's always been OUR relationship to build (or not). That's my angle on this, which is hitting me raw I have to admit.

It's weird to me that LW has an 8yo, but it's the 8yo who has the teen siblings. The 8yo is an individual, the teens some inchoate mass of Debby Downer. Is this a step-parenting situation? Or is LW more confident/comfortable parenting younger ages, hence trying to recapture the magic of when the teens weren’t yet teens, just really good at being kids like the 8yo? Maybe LW was too harried with toddler and infant care earlier to discover what a fun age late childhood can be! But LW can't live there, and certainly can't drag teenagers back there, even if they did receive similar enthusiasm and attention from LW back then.

Teens aren't done cooking yet! They have different needs, which can be daunting, frightening, exhausting, or hidden from the parent (whether by preference, or for survival). As a parent with a 15yo now, I can state for a fact LW's foamy egg mass of adolescents has a LOT of socio-emotional needs being blithely unmet as they tag along to the science center or whatever like the 8yo's entourage.

Any good-natured teen can put up with a small amount of that, provided it only happens occasionally. This does not sound like that situation.

Right? For god’s sake, let the teens go hang with their friends or stay home playing video games. They’re at an age where they’re not looking to mom for 24/7 entertainment.

I was getting step family complication vibes from this too. Because otherwise the parent doesn't even acknowledge the teens as theirs, only the 8 year old (side eyeing here).

My teen gets along well with my brother's kids, 4 and 8 years younger than my teen, but mine doesn't live with them either. COVID has meant we haven't even seen them until my niblings got vaccinated too (I have congenital heart disease). We should be able to get together soon!!!! 🥰

I am 9 years older than Middle Sister and 12 years older than Smallest Sister. (My mother doesn't recommend having one kid graduate from high school and the other from kindergarten the same year, btw.) There are ways to get an older kid to participate in a younger kid's outings that aren't painful for anyone.

"We're taking [kid] to the children's museum on [day] at [time] if you'd like to tag along." "If anyone is interested, [kid] and I are going to the natural history museum on [day]." "Library trip on [day] if you want to come." The trick is to make it opt in for the teens. You can't structure the every trip around the youngest, you have to make sure there's something for everyone. Heck, even at home asking "[kid] needs to build a castle for history class, do you mind helping them?"

I hope all the kids manage to connect. The age gap between my sisters and myself is enough I counted as an adult chaperone for trips they took in high school. Those were awesome and there are a lot of good memories we made on them. I will say that now we're all adults, our relationships are easier because we're all roughly at the same life stage.

"Look more closely at each of your older children. Notice if there is one thing that each might be willing to offer to the 8-year-old."

What the fuck is this advice even

The letter does sound like Happy Family Outings (not sure if ALL outings are centered on the 8yo or if those are just the relevant problematic ones) and I am curious about the siblings (maybe half or step) but the advice is just wtf. It's not a teenager's job to entertain a younger sibling!

My middle and youngest children are several years apart; even if it weren't for the age gap, they have somewhat different interests. So if I'm planning a family outing, sometimes I do stuff that's more interesting to Middle, sometimes I do stuff that's more interesting to Youngest; sometimes I try for a place that has things of interest to both; sometimes I say "tough luck, we're going to do something Mom wants". More often I'll do things one-on-one with each.

But I'm also letting them figure out their relationship. They have times when one doesn't want to be around the other (as I'm typing this, Youngest is trying to interact with Middle and Middle is saying "No! I want to be left alone in peace!"), and they have times when they find a video or game that speaks to both of them (hearing the two play Nintendo together is a delight). It's my job to give them the opportunity to spend pleasant time together, but it's not my job to force them to enjoy each other's company.

He has older teenage siblings who often find these activities boring.

How can I bridge the gap between my 8-year-old and his older siblings, who are not interested in the same things?

It strikes me that LW refers to these teenagers only in relation to their 8-year-old son (his siblings) never in relation to themself (e.g., my children, or my step-children). LW's lack on interest in, and lack of connection to, the teenage children may contribute to this problem.

Yeah just let the teens do their own stuff. This one hits home for me bc I have a sibling >10 years younger than me and a parent who very clearly prefers parenting younger children to teens & adults.

Idk, obviously a younger child requires more responsibility and direct attention/parenting, but it's messed up for older kids when you just basically drop them, or make them feel like their acceptance in the family is contingent on babysitting, regardless of skill, interest, or aptitude in that area.

I guess the thing is, not all siblings are going to be close, and certainly not at all stages of their lives. Obviously if they're being assholes and putting down their brother's interests, that's not ok, but it's counterproductive to try to force a closeness that isn't there.

I read this as the advisor suggesting how to make sibling time more entertaining for the *teen* -- if you really want your older kid to spend time with your younger kid, then at least look for a thing that older kid is already interested in that they could do with younger kid, rather than expecting older kid to enter into younger kid's interests. (Though that makes me wonder how little attention the parent is paying to the teen, if they can't answer that question already.)

But if they don't have anything at all in common other than "we live in the same house with the same people", then you're not going to magically force a deeper relationship by making the teen bore themselves.