He is wanted for transgressions against humanity. His alleged crime spree includes such offenses as touching, being “weird,” “totally annoying” and, on occasion, “looking at me funny.” He is a master of disguise and even in the midst of an offense may appear sweet, sincere and wholly innocent. He is impervious to solitary confinement and his recidivism rate is high.

 He is a ten-year-old big brother.   

He lives, or so I am told, to make his little sister miserable. The victim further claims that I have “always liked him better.”  

When brought to trial his defense is both simple and swift. He makes counterattacks against his alleged victim. Apparently, he feels the same way about her. 

He further contends “I always side with her.” 

And me without my black and white referee’s jersey and whistle.  

Snap. If you felt the faintest quiver of a vibration not unlike a small earthquake recently, it was merely my last nerve snapping. This after two non-stop hours of “stop touching me!” “Mo-om he’s looking at me!” “STOP!!! Stop it! STOP ITTTTTT!”  

I can buy that sibling rivalry is “normal”, but to what extent before it constitutes a felony?  

I have had to point out to my eldest child on more than one occasion that one of the benchmarks for my success as a parent was assisting his survival to adulthood. My success in this endeavor was not looking promising as he had his little sister quite nearly over the edge.  

You can poke, prod, tease, torment and tickle-torture her but there is one thing you simply cannot, must not, do. 

You must not mess with her stuffed dog. His name is Chips and he is her favorite. She loves him madly and wants only the best for him. He sleeps with her at night, and spends his days either accompanying her to school or, on occasion, lounging around on the sofa awaiting her return. He is small, perhaps eight inches in length, and weighs just a tad more than air. He is light, compact, and one would think, easy to avoid. 

To our son, her big brother, he is, of course irresistible. The boy must mess with that stuffed dog every single solitary chance he gets. Chips, as you can imagine, makes a marvelous football.  

He is a good boy. Sweet, sensitive, caring. We get compliments on him all the time I swear. Why then, does he get this gleam – almost a glint really – in his eye and set his sights on tormenting his sister so often?  

Why does she, conversely, continue to rise to the bait? 

Therein lies the eternal question: Which came first? “She started it!” or “He touched my stuff!” 

Theory. One fateful day when all the yelling in the world wasn’t working, I theorized that the boy provokes her purely out of boredom and the enjoyable predictability of getting his sister’s goat. If attention is the goal, I reasoned, then what if his sibling simply refused to take the bait? Wouldn’t that basically disarm the situation? Good to know I hadn’t wasted that semester I spent sleeping through Child Psych 101 after all!  

Thus armed with my newly formed “better parenting through psycho-babble” mindset, I was fairly chomping at the bit for the sibling rivalry games to begin. Forget getting in touch with my inner child. I was going to talk some sense into my outer children. It seemed wise to start with the seven year old. They tend to be more gullible at that age.  

Predictably soon after, our golden girl came raving into the kitchen, temper flaring so hot she nearly had steam coming out of her ears. “He’s making that noise again and he knows I hate it!” “He keeps humming louder just to BUG ME!”  

I was so ready for this.   

“Well honey does that make you FEEL like he doesn’t respect your wishes? Do you FEEL like he needs to listen to what matters to you and take your feelings into consideration? Do you feel like you might want to sit down and discuss it when you’ve had time to calm down and not react in anger?” 

Eyes wide she gazed in amazement (at my obvious wisdom no doubt). She stood, completely disarmed and, quite frankly, distracted from her hatred of her brother just moments before (see how good I am? I should write a book!).  

Then she said the words that made me really feel me merit as a mother:  

“No, Mommy. That makes me FEEL like hurting him!”  

Hey, I tried. 

And, for the record, she started it.  

Bookmark to: