![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Dear Care and Feeding,
I have three kids: a 10-year-old son Eddie and 8- year-old twin girls Julia and Sophia. Sophia has diagnosed anxiety and has a hard time socially. She is also very sensitive. She and Julia are very close and Julia has been advocating for her sister at school, socially and otherwise.
About a month ago, Sophia came to me and confided in me that she doesn’t like the way that Julia and especially Eddie treat her. Sophia thinks they baby her. Sophia apparently came to this realization after something her therapist said.
Julia in general treats herself and her sister as equals, but if Sophia is feeling shy Julia completely takes over in a way that makes Sophia uncomfortable. Julia and Sophia have a good enough relationship that Sophia feels comfortable advocating her needs to Julia. Sophia talked to Julia, and Julia is working on being better at supporting Sophia in the ways she wants to be supported.
Sophia asked me to talk to Eddie about the way he treats her. He speaks in a much calmer and gentler tone of voice with Sophia than he does with Julia. He also very carefully chooses his words around Sophia in a way that she obviously notices. Eddie constantly offers to help Sophia with her chores, or just help in general. Extreme examples include stealing her homework so that he could edit it, taking her glasses to clean them while she was showering, and grabbing dirty dishes out of her hands to bring them to the sink and clean them for her. Every time those things happened, we immediately shut it down and he understood that he crossed a line with that behavior.
He says the reason he jumps in is because he knows that Sophia often feels like she is a burden on the household. While he said he would try to be a better supporter of Sophia, he has not. In the past month, it’s even gotten worse. I appreciate that Eddie is attempting to be nice to his sister, but he needs to communicate with her so that he can actually be helpful instead of harmful. How can I get Eddie to stop?
— Caring for a Confused Carer
Dear Confused Carer,
Have you tried explicitly telling Eddie that his actions are not only hurting his sister’s feelings, but hindering her as well? The butterfly parable comes to mind here—the story of a man who came upon a butterfly struggling to get out of the chrysalis. After watching for a while, he carefully pried the chrysalis open to help the butterfly out. The butterfly got out, but it immediately collapsed and couldn’t fly. Eventually, it died. As it turns out, that struggle gives the butterfly’s wings the strength they need to help a butterfly fly. You can find lot of print and YouTube versions of this story, but I like this one because, though cheesy, the introduction spells out the lesson just the way your son needs to hear it.
Sophia needs to learn to work with her anxiety, not avoid it through the beneficence of others. Your son needs to understand that by “helping” her, he is preventing Sophia from learning how to thrive. This understanding might help give him more intrinsic motivation to stop coddling Sophia. But he might still need reminders. A sticker chart or some other kind of positive reinforcement could be an aid here. (If he’s honestly not trying too hard to change his behavior, I might reverse that to a privilege removal system.) And if Sophia is having trouble advocating for herself to Eddie, you might consider a codeword that she could use to stop his behavior, like “butterfly,” or a word of her choice, which she can say when Eddie is overstepping as a signal to make Eddie back off. Codewords can be very helpful when direct confrontation is challenging.
At some point, perhaps Sophia would like to invite her siblings, or just Eddie, to a therapy appointment where they can have some guided conversations. It sounds like these three have the makings of a very tight and supportive relationship if Eddie can just learn to channel his energy differently. The therapist may be able to find different ways for Eddie to look out for his sister and keep their relationship growing in the right direction.
—Allison
https://slate.com/human-interest/2022/08/birthday-party-exclusion-teens.html
I have three kids: a 10-year-old son Eddie and 8- year-old twin girls Julia and Sophia. Sophia has diagnosed anxiety and has a hard time socially. She is also very sensitive. She and Julia are very close and Julia has been advocating for her sister at school, socially and otherwise.
About a month ago, Sophia came to me and confided in me that she doesn’t like the way that Julia and especially Eddie treat her. Sophia thinks they baby her. Sophia apparently came to this realization after something her therapist said.
Julia in general treats herself and her sister as equals, but if Sophia is feeling shy Julia completely takes over in a way that makes Sophia uncomfortable. Julia and Sophia have a good enough relationship that Sophia feels comfortable advocating her needs to Julia. Sophia talked to Julia, and Julia is working on being better at supporting Sophia in the ways she wants to be supported.
Sophia asked me to talk to Eddie about the way he treats her. He speaks in a much calmer and gentler tone of voice with Sophia than he does with Julia. He also very carefully chooses his words around Sophia in a way that she obviously notices. Eddie constantly offers to help Sophia with her chores, or just help in general. Extreme examples include stealing her homework so that he could edit it, taking her glasses to clean them while she was showering, and grabbing dirty dishes out of her hands to bring them to the sink and clean them for her. Every time those things happened, we immediately shut it down and he understood that he crossed a line with that behavior.
He says the reason he jumps in is because he knows that Sophia often feels like she is a burden on the household. While he said he would try to be a better supporter of Sophia, he has not. In the past month, it’s even gotten worse. I appreciate that Eddie is attempting to be nice to his sister, but he needs to communicate with her so that he can actually be helpful instead of harmful. How can I get Eddie to stop?
— Caring for a Confused Carer
Dear Confused Carer,
Have you tried explicitly telling Eddie that his actions are not only hurting his sister’s feelings, but hindering her as well? The butterfly parable comes to mind here—the story of a man who came upon a butterfly struggling to get out of the chrysalis. After watching for a while, he carefully pried the chrysalis open to help the butterfly out. The butterfly got out, but it immediately collapsed and couldn’t fly. Eventually, it died. As it turns out, that struggle gives the butterfly’s wings the strength they need to help a butterfly fly. You can find lot of print and YouTube versions of this story, but I like this one because, though cheesy, the introduction spells out the lesson just the way your son needs to hear it.
Sophia needs to learn to work with her anxiety, not avoid it through the beneficence of others. Your son needs to understand that by “helping” her, he is preventing Sophia from learning how to thrive. This understanding might help give him more intrinsic motivation to stop coddling Sophia. But he might still need reminders. A sticker chart or some other kind of positive reinforcement could be an aid here. (If he’s honestly not trying too hard to change his behavior, I might reverse that to a privilege removal system.) And if Sophia is having trouble advocating for herself to Eddie, you might consider a codeword that she could use to stop his behavior, like “butterfly,” or a word of her choice, which she can say when Eddie is overstepping as a signal to make Eddie back off. Codewords can be very helpful when direct confrontation is challenging.
At some point, perhaps Sophia would like to invite her siblings, or just Eddie, to a therapy appointment where they can have some guided conversations. It sounds like these three have the makings of a very tight and supportive relationship if Eddie can just learn to channel his energy differently. The therapist may be able to find different ways for Eddie to look out for his sister and keep their relationship growing in the right direction.
—Allison
https://slate.com/human-interest/2022/08/birthday-party-exclusion-teens.html
no subject
This is not just bad for Sophia, it's bad for them too, and I don't think LW quite gets it. In fact, I'd be willing to bet good money that until Sophia spoke up about this, LW actively encouraged this sort of thing in the other two kids.
no subject
They wouldn't be doing this if they had not learned to do it/been encouraged to do it. They need to know that if they stop doing it, there will not be blowback on them if Julia can't cope with something.
no subject
Honestly, I wonder if Sophia's sensitivity and anxiety have resulted in meltdowns or incidents (at school, or at home, but not ones that stuck in LW's adult mind) that made Eddie tiptoe around his sister to prevent them. This is not me blaming Julia, but thinking maybe LW should ask Eddie why he's doing these things. If he's seen his sister either in very dangerous situations, or blowing up in terror, or even just having a (scary looking, if she hyperventilates!) panic attack, he might be just desperately trying to prevent something to protect himself or Sophia.
Like, a 10 year old is not going to necessarily know that a panic attack doesn't mean his sister has legit stopped breathing.
no subject
and so Eddie/Julia are trying to be proactive so that Sophia doesn't melt down in public = Eddie/Julia don't get teased as much.
no subject
no subject
That definitely occurred to me.