My Sister Needs Urgent Doper Help (toddler-related)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

My sister has a two and a half year-old boy. Great little kid he is too. Mostly. He seems intelligent (he’s advanced in language) and has an average to above average attention span. There are no mental issues that we know of.

A few days before Christmas, my sister gave birth to a baby girl. A cute little tacker she is too, and as newborn go, she’s more liable to just burp and fart than to cry. She sleeps a lot, cries little, and gives the occasional happy gurgle.

All good so far. Now then…

My sister was prepared for a negative reaction from the toddler on bringing the baby home. A bit of jealousy maybe. That is normal. She expected a dodgy few days, then he’d accept the new status quo, and all would be well.

But no…

THe first time the toddler laid eyes on the baby, he was only slightly interested. That was okay. We thought everything would be fine. But now, the boy is absolutely terrified of the baby. It seems to be beyond jealousy. If she makes any souind at all (a happy gurgle, let alone a cry), he goes ballistic. He screams his lungs out until he is hoarse, and will even go to the back door of the house, pounding it and screaming, “BYE BYE OUT OUT BYE BYE NO NO NO”.
Of course, when she cries, it’s because she’s hungry and needs to be breastfed. But there is no way in hell that my sister can breastfeed the baby and comfort the toddler at the same time. He can’t be in the same room as his sister. So one child has to wait - and will cry more.

I spent the weekend at the house, and that helped because I could comfort the baby in the middle of the night - until she realised that I’m a bloke and can’t feed her, but at least it bought us some time so that my sister could soothe the toddler to sleep.

He is booked in to a child psychologist, but there is a three-month wait. I can help sometimes, but I live on the other side of the city and I work full time. I can only be there on occasion.

My sister is at the end of her rope. She is sleep-deprived and utterly drained.

Any advice appreciated. I know you guys will come through for us.

2

My daughter was 2 and a half when her brother was born. Some things which helped her were: paying special attention to her when the baby was asleep; pointing out to her things which she could do which the baby could not; inviting her to take part in things like filling the baby’s bottle or readying his nappies when changing. She even got to where she would read him books. In looking back, the most important things were reminding her that she was special and the baby, in no way, took away from that. Hope that helps . :slight_smile:

3

Whoah. This does not sound at all like normal sib reaction for when a baby comes into the house. Has your nephew had any experience with other babies before the advent of his new little sister? Like hearing them cry and gurgle and stuff?

As you say, it’s not just normal jealousy. There is something more amiss here. Is it possible that he has hyper-acute hearing, that the cries of the baby are somehow more distressing to him than would be otherwise?

Of course, he will get used to it. It’s really important for your sis to be super-calm when the baby cries or makes any other noise. That will be hard because she will now be expecting toddler to react as well as the squeals of the baby, and that will stress her out no-end. Even perhaps letting the little one cry for a bit longer, just so that the noise becomes commonplace?

Shit, I dunno. :confused:

4

kam (and others), I should have amended my “no known mental issues” statement to include the fact that he was freaked out by crying babies (an d even older children) before the sister was born. His mother has had a hell of a time tasking him to places like shopping centres or doctors’ surgeries because if a baby cries, he will totally flip out.

5

TLD it doesn’t sound like an ordinary reaction to me either. However, IANAD, and I only have one child, so what do I know?

Well, I know about the Karitane service - 24/7 run by NSW Health and intended to help in EXACTLY this sort of situation. Karitane has an excellent record and reputation.

For speed, the phone number is 1300227464, or (02) 9794 1848. Good luck to your sister - hope it works out well.

She could also try talking to the local baby clinic. The nurses there WILL have seen it before. And she will be able to get in much sooner than to a psychologist - maybe tomorrow, almost certainly this week.

(Although Karitane does have an excellent record and reputation, they were of no help to me. My daughter was premmie, and a very bad sleeper. To the point where I was referred by the local baby clinic nurse to the Karitane baby sleep clinic. Their professional opinion after observing baby and me for 24 hours - “Well, the distribution for baby sleeping hours is a bell curve. Someone’s baby has to be up the pointy end of the curve. It’s yours.”)

6

Okay…that is better. It’s not his little baby sister that freaks him, it’s the noise she makes!! :stuck_out_tongue:

Apart from getting his hearing checked (a slight hearing disability can make ‘normal’ noises horribly distorted and painful, even crying) I can only suggest giving it time. He will come to understand that crying is part of what babies are. Perhaps your sister could give him the task of alerting her when the baby is crying…thus giving him a job that takes his mind off the scary stuff and diverting it to a ‘useful’ thing??

7

I’m really confused about that aspect of it, actually. I really don’t know. Hannah can literally just go “uh” almost inaudibly, and the young bloke will fly into a twenty-minute screaming match. On the other hand, an adult could do something like use a chainsaw and all would be well. There’s something about his sister’s “baby-ness” that is freaking him out.

8

It’s a warning sign.

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0071675/

9

It sounds like he’s reacting to the noise. This is very common in toddlers, but the focus is usally a vacuum cleaner, dog, mixer, etc. My sister actually used this fear - she would place the vacuum cleaner in the doorway of a room she wanted blocked off, and her son would go way around and not enter the room. It is not just the noise that toddlers are reacting to, but the unpredictability. They like the world to be ordered and adhere to rules, but along come these things that make horrible noises for seemingly no reason. We as adults don’t much like sudden noises, but can accept them. But imagine how awful it would feel if you lived in a house full of invisible balloons. There may be days when only one or two popped, but at other times twenty could go off in an hour. While some people may be able to live like that, personally I would want to say “Bye bye out out” too!

For your nephew, his new sister is the embodiment of those invisible balloons. He is absolutely terrified of loud crying, then suddenly his mother brings home one of those things that cries. He is no longer safe in his own home as he never knows when that horrible noise will come. He can’t approach his sister or take any enjoyment from her because it’s too risky to get so close to the source of noise.

It is relatively easy to enable a child to get over their fear of vacuum cleaners because the parent has complete and total control over it. With a baby it is obviously much more complicated. The immediate thing I would have your sister do is separate the baby from the noise in conversations with your nephew. Something like “I know you’re scared of your sister, but she’s not crying now” may seem empathetic but is actually associating his fear with his sister and not just the sound she’s making. Neutral statements such as “I can see the crying has frightened you, but the noise has stopped now” will allow the focus to remain on the sound. A practical tactic is to give the child a totem - a magical shield that will protect him from the Big Bad Noise. Something like earmuffs or a hat would be appropriate as it would physically cover his ears. Generally the parent makes a really big deal of the new object “Look what I got today - it’s the special hat that makes you feel better when there’s a loud noise.” Then the instant the baby makes a peep your sister rushes to her son “it’s lucky we found this magic hat - hurry and put it on. Look - it’s working!” It would be optimal if you were there so that you could (somewhat) control the crying until the hat gains its power. The goal is not so much to stop the baby crying as to help her brother learn strategies to cope with the noise. Any local psychologist should be able to help your sister devise these strategies - it doesn’t have to be a specialist if the wait is so long.

10

I don’t normally quote posts in their entirety, but yours was so thoughtful and so smart that I had to this time.

Brilliant Blue Mood. Just bloody brilliant.

11

I wonder if tape recording the crying would help. Then you could show the tape recorder to the kid, play the noise at a low volume at a time when he knows what’s coming, give him the power to stop it and start it, do silly things like rewind a tiny bit and play it over and over again, (so it goes “waaaaaaa-wa-wa-waaa-w-wa”) and so on.

12

Can your sister’s husband help soothe his son while Mom is busy with the baby?

13

Sister’s husband (soon to be ex, I think) is a dropkick. He is a liability to the point that the kids are not safe around him. He backs the car without noticing that the toddler has run out to “stop daddy leaving” by getting behind the car to push it back, he leaves saucepans full of hot oil on the stove with the handles outwards, he feeds the two year-old peanuts. I could go on. This is a major part of my sister’s stress levels being stratospheric.

Sheer culpability aside, the other night I was woken at 3am by the toddler and spent time soothing the baby while my sister stayed with her son. I was probably awake about an hour in total. I gave the kids’ father the benefit of the doubt that maybe he’d slept through the whole thing, but the following morning he casually noted that he’d had trouble sleeping because of the crying kids.

Correct dad response would be jumping out of bed, doing whatever is necessary, apologising and thanking me (the mere uncle), etc. But nooooo.

Actually, I felt like administering a bunch of fives (but probably not the most diplomatic course of action there). Grr.

14

Nearly forgot. Thanks everyone for your responses. there are some great ideas there, and I’ll run them by my sister. You guys rock muchly.

15

Ah, so your sister picked a winner of a male to father her children.

I suggest she move out and move in with you or your parents or someone that can help her until Dear Hubby grows up.

16

That’s on the cards. I’m 36, recently separated, and not particularly as hormone-driven as I might have been ten or so years ago, so I’m not looking for romance, and I’m willing to put in several years helping out my sister. Will see how it goes. At the moment, sister, niece, nephew come first. I come second. Knuckle-dragging hubby comes a distant last.

17

Loaded, I’m just reminded of my own kid’s weird early childhood (No: 2, now aged 22 and ‘normal’, sorta :stuck_out_tongue: )

From the age of about 8 months up until he was about 2, he was just damned strange. At home in boring domesticity he was fine and dandy. But when anyone visited or we were out I had to plead with people not to look at him, because anytime anyone who was not immediate family (me, his dad, his sis and little bro) made eye contact with him he went completely apeshit and had severe crying fits. Woe and betide anybody saying a simple “Hello”. :rolleyes:

We couldn’t go into mall shopping centres for many months, because the *minute *we entered the self-opening doors of say, Southland or Chaddie, he’d have a massive meltdown again. (Strip shopping areas were fine though, as were the markets and stuff). :rolleyes:

There was also an ad on the telly back in the mid-eighties that freaked him out, and to this day, I have no idea why. When the ad would come on, Jezza could be heard screaming down the hallway and you’d eventually find him under his bed in a blithering, sobbing heap. It was a freakin’ *‘Community Service’*ad about people helping each other fer’ chrissakes. Nothing vaguely sinister at all. (FTR, we still like to remind him of the ad on occassion when the rest of the family are feeling *playful * :smiley: )

Even though he was verbal from a very early age (9 months words, 11 months complex sentences etc) he was totally unable to articulate what the bloody hell was disturbing him so much. He’d just have a juvenile psycho attack, and 1/2 hour or whatever later, he’d be back to his normal sunny self again. During one of his schizz-outs, I actually managed to get him to a doctor 'round the corner. The poor doc was sure he was suffering from some indescribable physical pain, such was the nature and volume of his hysteria. Anyway, nothing physical was found, and eventually the ‘episodes’ just stopped.

Thank fucking christ for that…I was ready to drown him at one (ok, maybe *more *than one) point. :smiley:

In other words, maybe your neph’s behaviour is just some weird quirk that might not be able to be fixed as such, but might just go away of their own accord one day.

Just remember to save the memories to give him shit when he’s older. :smiley:

18

I just want to reiterate that this weirdness was not just reserved for strangers (which can be normal for little kids). His grandma and grandpa, favourite auntie and very close family friends also got many earfuls of his hysterical screaming every time they came to visit too.