My daughter's sibling jealousy is becoming aggressive (throwing, screaming, ‘you’re stupid!’ ... and you feel like you’re failing your kids)

Welcome to the Parent Coaching Chair Podcast. I'm your host, Julie Fragnito, and your partner in parenting. Here we'll talk with real parents about their real moments. Come along as we grow from each other's experiences and receive practical, high-structure, high-nurture tools that you can use to lead confidently at home. Before we dive in, if you're struggling with something at home right now and wish you could just ask me what to do in the moment, You can. Ask Julie is my 24/7 instant parent coaching service. Send me your situation and get a personalized response rooted in my high structure, high nurture approach. It's unlimited messages every month. And if you sign up for the year, you get 2 months free. Learn more at transformingparenthood.com. In today's episode, I sit down with a mom of a 5-year-old who comes home and erupts screaming, throwing, calling mom stupid the moment she sees her 3-year-old brother with something she wants. If you've got a child whose jealousy of a younger sibling keeps turning into aggression, the grabbing, and the meltdowns, this conversation is for you.

So my daughter is 5. My son is 3. My daughter is struggling. With behavior in her outbursts, especially when it's something that's involving my son. If he has something she wants, if he's doing something she wants, if she's doing something and he wants to join her, or if she sees him quietly by himself, the way she goes about trying to join him is not ideal, and it's a lot of I'm gonna win. I'm gonna race you.

It's mine.

I was here first. I'll race you to the bath. I'll race you to the car. It's a whole lot of competition. Mm-hmm. Luckily he's very laid back and chill, but it's a lot of her, the way she's reacting and the way she's trying to, I'm gonna say, gain control of situations. It's just not working. Yep.

Yep. I hear you. I appreciate your introduction. I just want to get a little bit more of an understanding of these moments. If you have a specific situation off the top of your mind, do you have one that you could kind of walk me through where this has happened maybe recently?

So it was the last day of school actually. That morning she had been playing with something. I honestly don't remember what it was, and it was something that sometimes I allow things to come in the car with us. Some things are just not. Like playable in the car. Mm-hmm. So it was something that I, it was, she had to leave it home. I brought her to school. He did not go to school at this point, so he came home with me. I do work from home. Mm-hmm. So he came home with me and then when we went and picked her up from school, she came home empty book bag. She busied herself with coloring. She didn't even remember what she had been doing before we had left for school. That's not what she came home and immediately went to. She started coloring at the kitchen table. She had looked over and my son actually had had the item that she had prior to going to school. And as soon as she noticed that he had it, she was off the chair running towards him.

That's mine.

I had that. I was playing with that. I was coming to get that. Mm-hmm. And so I put myself in between them and I was trying to explain to her, yes, you had it this morning. He has it now. It wasn't like a, I said to her, You can have this as soon as you get home from school. So it wasn't like a promise or something that I had made to her that she was getting this item as soon as she got home.

Sure.

And she started screaming. I had asked him to move to a different spot with what he was playing with, and I was trying to calm her down. And it did. We have a bin full of balls. She started picking them up and throwing them at me.

Mm-hmm.

And screaming that I was mean. Mm-hmm. Get a little emotional. I apologize.

When we're recalling situations with our kids, it's painful and it's hard to relive it. And I can hear that you're at your wits of overwhelm and frustration and disappointment. And that's what tears are, right? They're helping you make room so that we can let solutions come in and relief come in.

So she was throwing the balls at me and screaming at me that I was mean. So I took her hand and I walked her upstairs to her room and I just said we needed a moment to calm down and that throwing things at me, screaming at me, that's not the way to go about it. Mm-hmm. I asked her if she wanted me to sit with her and she screamed at me that I was stupid and I was a jerk. When she's frustrated or not getting her way, that's what she screams. You're stupid or you're a jerk. Mm-hmm. I told her to let me know when she was ready. Her screaming continued, so I walked away. It was about 15 minutes and she finally called for me. And when I said yes, she was like, okay, I'm ready to come. I'm ready to come out. And I did not leave her for this 15 minutes. I was near her bedroom door and anytime I peeked my head in or screamed, are you okay? Or are you ready to talk? She would just scream at the top of her lungs. Mm-hmm. So then she told me she was ready to come downstairs, and when we came downstairs, she literally just resumed coloring at the kitchen table like nothing had happened. Mm-hmm. She didn't even go for that same thing that she wanted.

This, okay.

This situation, this happens frequently. Okay. Similar stuff. Yep.

Yep. Tell me what's coming up for you in your in your tears? What are you feeling when you're recalling this situation?

I feel like I'm failing her. Like, I don't know how to help her. I don't know what she needs. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Well, I appreciate you recapping that for me, as difficult as it is to replay these moments. And I wanna just first say the obvious. This is hard stuff. It is so overwhelming and so frustrating. And being screamed at, being called names, even having things thrown at you, it all takes a toll. It wears you down over time. And so I want to acknowledge something that first you did really well. You didn't ever let her behavior change your leadership. You protected your son. You held your boundary. And to me, it sounds like you pretty much stayed calm. And that stuff really matters. And that stuff is what sticks. Now, does that mean that you have to, you know, go through this every time until it somehow disappears?

No.

That's why you're here, right? And I want to just mention that I know that some days you're not as calm as others. We're all like that, right? Where it's like, one day I was calm, but the other day I screamed at her. And so tell me, tell me a little bit about that. Have there been times where these things happen and you don't handle it in that way? Yes.

And I definitely lose it and I have screamed and it does nothing to help the situation. It just makes the situation worse. I do try to be very good about apologizing for when I do lose it and I'm unable to keep my calm with her. Mm-hmm.

But sometimes it's very difficult. Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate your honesty and I think every parent who is listening is going to be nodding their heads and saying, yep, sounds like me. And so every parent has moments where they lose their footing. It could be some days more than others. Some days we could go through flawlessly saying, wow, I didn't yell once, you know? And then there's other nights where we go to bed and we say, whoa, tomorrow I need to do better. And the bottom line is that. We're just human. And so what matters is that you're here, that you care enough to have this conversation and to say, hey, I could use another pair of eyes on this situation. And that shows me how much you love, love, love your kids. And so what I'm here for is to help you come up with a plan, right? Something that you can come back to, something that resonates in your brain to say, hey, I remember this. It's going to stick with me and this is my plan. I have some tools, like always. I wanna give you some practical things to walk away with, but before I give you those things, I wanna just help you understand what's going on, maybe in a way that you haven't really thought about yet. So when I hear this story, I don't hear a daughter who is mean or spoiled or entitled or bratty. I hear a young girl. Who's having a hard time tolerating disappointment, and especially when it involves her younger brother. That is like the one trigger for her. And in this moment where she comes home from school, it's not really about the toy at all, right? It's just the toy is exposing this— I don't like using the word weakness, but this lack of skill that she hasn't quite developed yet. And so every time this trigger happens, this skill deficit shows where she's just like, oh, I was just about to play with that. I was gonna, right? It's all defense. It's all a mechanism to show I actually can't handle when I have to share something with him. I actually can't handle when he gets something that I can't have. And so right now her brain is telling her, if he has it, I should have it. Or if I don't get it, something is wrong. And so our goal isn't just stopping the tantrums of her screaming at you, throwing things, saying hurtful things, and having these big emotional outbursts. But instead, we have to start by helping her build the ability to tolerate the frustration that comes along with sharing a space, sharing a house, sharing toys. Without becoming aggressive. So we need to kind of backtrack to that initial point of like, okay, how do we actually build these skills in her that she's lacking?

That makes sense. I do need help in that area of her. I know that it's not him and I know it's not what he has. And I, I, not to go off subject, I did notice I, I didn't always work from home. Mm-hmm. So, and she was, had already started school before I started working from home. So I did notice a change around that time cuz she knew he came home with me and she did not. Mm-hmm.

It sounds like you're sensing feelings of jealousy maybe from the start. Yes. Okay. And so I'm curious to know, is my question for you briefly before we jump into the tools, just in the interest of time. If you could point to something, moms know best, parents know best, we know our kids better than anybody. Do you find that she's fighting for attention in moments where she's like, do you see me? Do you see me? Do you see me? When you're giving it to him, tying into some level of your attention.

I do feel like it's has to do with my attention. Okay.

Can you speak more to that?

She will say things like, Uh, you're, you're sitting next to him. You're not sitting next to me. Mm-hmm. You're doing this with him. You're not doing that with me. But I was probably just doing it with her. Mm-hmm. And then I had moved on and do something with him. We do do a lot of playing together as well, and she's always trying to take control. Mm-hmm. Of how we're playing, what we're playing, what he's allowed to do while we're playing. Mm-hmm. Even if it's just me and her, she does that. It's very her rules on the game that we're playing always. Okay.

And can you just briefly speak to that? Let's say she's just playing with you and she's like making all these rules. How do you react to that?

Sometimes I do go along with what she is asking of me and other times, for instance, if we're playing with Barbies and I try to dress the Barbie a certain way and she's like, no, that Barbie has to wear this.

Mm-hmm.

And I will say like, you can play with people, but they're allowed to play their own way as well while they're playing with you. It's not only what you want to do all of the time. Mm-hmm. She does not like that answer. Mm-hmm. That's—

will she continue playing with you? Will she just give up and walk away?

Sometimes she'll continue playing, but she'll still try to sneak bossiness, I'm gonna, I don't wanna say bossy, but bossiness into it on how we're supposed to play. Other times she'll get up and walk away and then it's, well then I'm not playing with you.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Okay. And then will you be like, okay, I'm gonna go make dinner? Yes. Okay.

Okay.

That's helpful information as well. When she started with, he has a toy that I want and started throwing things at you. What did you ultimately end up doing with that toy? Did she get it?

No, I allowed him to keep it. I took her away to calm down, and once she was calm and we were ready to come back into the living room, she didn't even acknowledge him or the toy. She went right back to coloring, right? Which was what she was doing prior to noticing him having it. Okay.

And because of that, I'm assuming you were like, okay, I'm not even gonna bring up that situation again cuz it was so bad. She's happy. I'm not even gonna bother. Or did you have a follow-up conversation after she was calm?

I did not. I let them be at that point.

I, yeah, no, I hear you. I have some things that are coming to mind. I wanna get to the practical stuff. So the first thing that I wanna mention is that we don't wanna solve, you know, because of the opening that I gave you, it's never the thing that's right in front of us. It's not about the toy, right? It's about the skill. So what we wanna do, we, we always, we could fall easily into traps into believing the conflict is about the toy. And I love what you did. She didn't end up getting it. Your son was separated, so he was safe. You got her to head to her room and you set a boundary and it sounds like you handled it in a pretty structured way, which is really, really hard to do in a moment where there's high feelings and high aggression and intensity. So that was awesome. If you have any moments, right, maybe in those yelling moments or those harder moments where it's harder to stay calm, sometimes we fall into explaining, negotiating, arguing, deciding whose toy it is, refereeing, but none of that actually will teach the skill that she's missing. And the skill is, in this particular case, someone has something I want and I can handle that. That's the skill she's missing right now. It's someone has something I want, or someone has something that's kind of mine, and I can't handle that. So our job, when we say it that way, becomes kind of simple. I know you want it, but he's using it right now. You can have a turn when he's finished. And then we need to stop talking. No convincing, no fairness lecture, and When she's dysregulated, she is not learning from anybody. So I appreciate the steps that you took to say, you need to go calm down, right? I will not have a conversation with you if you're acting this way. This is totally unproductive. And so she came out calmly and we never took the step to build the skill she's missing. So what's gonna happen? It's just gonna happen again tomorrow. She's not gonna learn from mom putting her in her room and saying, you need to calm down. Because calming down is not the skill that she's missing. She's got that. She did it. Even if it took her 15 minutes, she got there. The skill that she's missing that was still unaddressed is that when my brother has something I want, it makes me want to burn the house down. Right? And so how do we handle that? Oh, well, we have to teach communication. And so how do we do that? Maybe we have her come down and say, thank you for coming down here so calmly, but before you touch that coloring, we need to redo that situation because the way that went was not okay. Right? He has your toy and now you can guide. Now you can teach and support because she's calm. And you say, I'm gonna give you the words to say. When you're done with that, can I play with it? Try it and have her say it with you there in a calm and protected way. Now, your 3-year-old might have no idea what's going on. He might say, no, you can't have it. Okay. Of course.

Right?

That's how this moment would go. But what I want you to remember is that you're in, you're in charge. And so you're gonna say, sure. Wow. Thank you for asking so nicely. Here's what I'm gonna do because you are the leader. I'm gonna set a 2-minute timer. And once that goes off, you can give it to your sister or I can do it for you.

Done.

Go wash a dish, go fold a blanket, and let it be. Don't indulge in a conversation. Don't have a lecture. I'm not about that. What I am about is teaching, and the teaching is what she needs because she's lacking communication skills. She's saying, I really want to play with that. That's what she's saying.

Uh-huh.

She's not saying, I hate my brother. She's not saying, I wish he wasn't here. She's saying, I really wanna play with that. Okay, so let's handle that. Hey, when you're done, can I have a turn with that? And we need to reward it like crazy. Wow. Maybe you don't want the 3-year-old to give it up in that moment. That's okay, because maybe it's keeping him peaceful and happy, and maybe you wanna give her something else. Whoa. Because you just asked him so nicely, even if you had to feed her every single word, because you asked for that so nicely. I'm gonna let you play with this thing over here, or me and you are gonna play with this thing over here for 2 minutes before I have to start cooking dinner. Little reward. Doesn't have to be that big, but we need to start teaching her good communication and immediately rewarding her for it. Because what you're doing currently is you're drawing the line really well. You're like, nope, that's not gonna fly. But the thing we're missing is the replacement. We need to teach her how to do it differently.

Mm-hmm.

And it's very hard to do when you're in the moment cuz you're like, my kids hate each other. My daughter is jealous. She's a brat. I just, I have to put her in a room. And when she's fine, it's like nobody wants to wake the sleeping lion. We're tiptoeing around her like, okay, she's happy now, so I'm not even gonna bring it up. But we're not helping her. We're not teaching her how to be better.

That makes sense. I'm not teaching because of, just like you said, poking the bear. Mm-hmm. And I know that that needs to be done or else we're just going to be stuck in this cycle. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yep. And so, and that also goes for the situation where she's sitting with you and playing and trying to control the way you're playing with her. You're really good at drawing the line, like I said. You know, good character versus not good character. And I appreciate that. You're like, hey, you can't do that. You can't, when you're playing with somebody, you cannot tell them how to play. Otherwise, people are not going to want to play with you because that's not what play is about. Right. And so you have that part down. The part you're missing is teaching her how to ask in a different way because we're jumping to, well, then I'm just not going to play with you. That's not teaching her to fix that skill. Skill. What's the skill she's missing is that she wants to be a leader. We see, we say bossy. I say leader. She wants to be a leader in some way. That's not how people lead. So how do we teach her how to lead? Hey, you know what? You can't tell me how to dress my doll, but something you can do is suggest a make-believe game and say, hey, I have this idea. Can we dress them so that they could be on a beach? And then after we do that, you can pick a place and we could dress them so that they could be going to the movies. And now what you've done is you've given her a skill to practice that leadership, to turn that bossiness into collaboration. And maybe these skills will transfer through to communication with her brother. And I say maybe, but I mean, it definitely will, right? Because that's where these things start. She needs social foundations. She needs communication because there might be a leader in there somewhere. We want to build that fire. We just need to do it in the right way by teaching our communication, not isolation. Let's move into tool number 2. This is something that you're really good at, so I'm gonna go through it really quickly, but holding the boundary and don't fight the feelings. So a lot of things that I liked is that you You blocked the grabbing, you protected your son, you removed her as soon as she became unsafe. A+ in holding your boundary. But one small thing, instead of saying things like, you need to calm down, not you, but I statements. I will not let you throw. I am taking you upstairs to keep everyone safe. I will be outside your room when you're ready. And notice what changed. You're not asking her to do anything, right? Because it's all in your leadership. That's what you're communicating. Because when you start saying you, you need to calm down. You weren't even playing with that toy. You need to be nice to your brother. Well, you know what she's going to do? She's going to throw that you right to you. You're stupid. You're a jerk. And that's the only way she knows how to fight it. Because that's what we're feeding her. And so what we wanna do is understand that when she's dysregulated, those you statements are inflammatory for her. So we need to just say I, and if they still come, they come. That's dysregulation, but they will fade as we teach her, like I said in the first tool, how to communicate what she's feeling better. But that's just a little tweak that I could offer you in the moments, the heated moments.

That makes sense. Okay.

Okay. Awesome. And the third thing is to basically teach the skill before she needs it. So in the first two examples that I gave you, it was kind of like as it was happening, we need to redo that. I'm sitting here playing dolls with you. I will not do that, but here's what you can say. We're coaching her in the moment. We also need to try and teach her the skills that she's missing outside of the moments. And so what stood out to me is that you mentioned that this doesn't just happen with toys. When she wants what her brother has, she always wants to race. She wants to win. She wants to be first. It tells me that this is not just one isolated behavior. It's a pattern. I love patterns. Why? Because it's predictable. We know exactly when it's gonna happen, and so we can prepare for it. That makes our job as leaders a lot easier, right? So we know. On the drive home from school, maybe she's really calm and at peace, or maybe before playtime she's calm, or when she's having a snack, she's calm. We know when she's gonna be like that and when she's not gonna be like that. And so we need to kind of take note of those times and before she enters into a situation that's likely going to be challenging, because you know every day it happens and no, you're not, you're not poking the bear by doing this. We're helping expose her weakness so that we can help her grow. We need to say something like, hey, before we get out of the car, when we get in that house, your brother might be playing with a toy that you really like. If that happens, I'm gonna help you, but here's what I want you not to do. You cannot yell or scream, and if you wanna ask him nicely if you can use it when he's done. I will be there to help you find the words. And do you see what I'm doing? I'm getting ahead of it.

Right.

It's like, whoa, I know you're gonna do this. And maybe you're scared cuz you're like, well, maybe that day she wasn't gonna do it. I don't care. We know that she has a skill deficit.

Mm-hmm.

And so as parents, and I know how much you care, you're willing to take that risk because it's going to help her be better. And you're just opening up that line of communication before her dysregulation happens. And so once her emotions take over, it almost feels like we failed. It's like, oh my God, I'm too late. It's just too late. And that's not always true, but we can certainly do something about it. And that's where this tool comes in.

That is probably going to be super helpful to stop her or try to help her before the situation happens, since it is a frequent thing that does happen. It's a daily struggle.

Hmm.

So trying to get ahead of it and to prevent as much as possible will be super helpful. Yeah. Yeah.

I think, I think the proactive nature of it also helps kids like this so much. I don't know anything about your daughter. I've never met your daughter, but my assumption is that she's really intense. She's got a huge heart and she loves just as much as she could turn on the aggression. And at the end of the day, right, she's just she's trying to figure out this flood of big, big, big feelings she has. So every moment that we could give her a heads up or a plan is just helping kind of lower that, that wave just a little bit more each time.

That sounds good. I was just gonna say before you said that she, her and her brother can go from, she's playing with him as the best big sister ever, and then it just flips so quickly.

Mm-hmm. And I love that you said that because that just shows you she is the best big sister ever, and we just need to help her be more successful in the moments where she's struggling. We have to build on our kids' strengths. And so when she is doing the right thing, pointing it out, like, hey, that was awesome how you actually did ask before you grabbed that from him. Or, I loved how patient you were while he was trying to figure that out. That could be so frustrating. And just building on her strengths and not pouring as much attention as we, we are doing in the moments where she's struggling, which feels really hard these days when the hard moments are happening more than the good moments. But when we do highlight the good, it actually grows. And so I think that's a really big realization that you shared here is like, no, she, she could go from being unbelievable to like, oh my gosh, what happened to you? And so I think we know that that she's unbelievable. And so we need to highlight that, bring it to her attention, pour ourselves into her when she is like that so that she knows, oh wow, okay, noted. I'm doing the right thing. I'm gonna remember this. So I think the big thing here, and I'll wrap up with this, is that this is not a sibling problem. This is not a toy problem. She doesn't have an anger problem. She has a frustration tolerance problem. She has a disappointment problem. She has a, maybe we'll just call it a sharing problem where she's just like, ugh, I don't really like that he's touching my stuff. That's okay, but we just need to teach her how to communicate it and how to work with people in a way that is leadership focused because we will not let the aggression change the outcome. I love that. And you, every time she experiences the disappointment, you don't really rescue her from it, which I also love. So you're doing a lot of amazing things. And I think that the idea here is that we need to just build her communication skills. Because it's, if it's not about the toy today, it's gonna be about not making it onto the soccer team when she's older. And it's gonna be about not getting invited to a friend's party or not getting the job or not winning something. And that's the big goal in mind is like, well, we need to teach her those things now then, because right now we're lucky that this is happening in front of our eyes and with our own kids where we can actually teach. And be patient and not be afraid of who she's becoming because we'll actually have the time to put in now before she gets older and these problems are bigger or outside of the house.

Thank you for doing this. Thank you so much.

If today's episode hit close to home, the screaming, the throwing, the you're mean, you're a jerk, I want you to know you're not doing anything wrong and your child isn't either. Behind those big, aggressive moments is a skill your child simply hasn't built yet. And that's exactly why I created my guide, Managing Your Child's Anger. It walks you through what's really driving the outbursts and gives you the words to say so you can stay calm, hold your boundary, and actually teach your child a better way. Head to transformingparenthood.com and navigate to the dropdown for my guides and classes. You'll find it there. If this episode helped you, make sure you're following the podcast so you don't miss next week's episode. And if you have just 30 seconds, leaving a quick review is one of the biggest ways you can help me reach more parents who need this message. Thank you so much for listening. I'll see you back here next week.