Siblings

Oo and T are becoming more lovey with each other. It's not uncommon to find them snuggling on the couch together if they're watching TV. And one always kisses the other when tears are being shed over a boo-boo or hurt feelings. But...

Just as their feelings of affection toward each other are growing, so are their feelings of contempt.

Oo is a very gregarious girl. She needs to have people around her and engaged with her. She loves to let her imagination run wild and to take everyone along for the ride. T, on the other hand, can be very content playing by himself. He needs periodic moments alone throughout the day to get lost in his thoughts. You can tell by the look on his face that he's imagining something pretty fun, but it's unlikely that he'll want to tell you about it.

Put these two personalities together in the same family room and soon fur will start to fly.

Take today, for example. I hear Oo wailing (kind of a whiny wail, which means that she's not in as much pain as she's pretending to be). She tells me that T smacked her in the head. T confirms that, yes, he did smack her.

Time outs don't really work with T — he enjoys the time alone, so the threat of a time-out is not much of a deterrent. In fact, that little stinker has begun putting himself in time-out immediately after hurting Oo. It's kind of like, "Yeah, I did it. She pushed my buttons, so I hit her. Now I'm just going to sit over here on the 'naughty step' and chill out for a bit."

Instead, I talk sternly to T — he doesn't like it one bit. After the head-smacking incident today, I held his hands in front of him and said, "Do not touch Oo with these hands. Keep these hands to yourself." He looks back at me with sad eyes; I can tell he listened to me and will not smack her again today. Five minutes pass before Oo starts wailing again — T had head-butted her. So this time I knelt down to his level, looked at him with a serious scowl, and told him, "Do not touch Oo with your hands or your head or your feet." Notice how I threw the feet in there? I'm such a clever mom: always thinking ahead.

Shortly after that, he bit her.

The fights don't start when I'm in the room, so I never know who started one. I can guess who the instigator was — based on who's in a crabby mood that day or who really wants some attention (good or bad) from Mommy — but I never really know for sure. Not knowing who caused the tiff makes it hard to administer a punishment, so I'm starting to punish both of them. Now, after every fight they both have to sit in a time-out and they both get a stern talking to.

We'll see how this works.