novakane
04-15-2011, 01:21 PM
Hello good people of Parenting. I'm a father of 2 boys, one is almost 3 and the other is 7 mos. We're enjoying every minute of raising these little guys, but are having one issue which we're not really sure how to handle. Our 3-year old yells at the top of his lungs whenever our baby cries. He doesn't scream or cry or have a tantrum, he just flat-out yells...angrily. If I'm in the other room, I'd swear my wife was watching a Sam Kinison DVD! He yells "STOP IT!!", but other times he makes up these wild scenarios like "No, you're not going to get my cookie" or "No, you can't have my jacket". Most of the time our poor baby is just trying to poo! I mean, geez, give him a break!
All in all, our 3-year old is a sweet, very polite, bright, well-adjusted, secure, confident kid and gets loads of attention. I work from home and my wife is a stay-at-home mom, so we spend tons of time with both of them, both individually and together as a family. So, with that said, here's what we have tried (with varying degrees of success), but we're not really sure which is the "right" thing to do...
a) Give a time-out
b) Threaten a time-out (the old "If you don't stop yelling, then...")
c) Explain that he's just a baby and crying is how babies communicate
d) Try to encourage him to soothe the baby to stop crying
If anybody has any other suggestions on preventing this behavior or if you've gone through something similar, we're all ears (although we're going a bit deaf from all this yelling).
All in all, our 3-year old is a sweet, very polite, bright, well-adjusted, secure, confident kid and gets loads of attention. I work from home and my wife is a stay-at-home mom, so we spend tons of time with both of them, both individually and together as a family. So, with that said, here's what we have tried (with varying degrees of success), but we're not really sure which is the "right" thing to do...
a) Give a time-out
b) Threaten a time-out (the old "If you don't stop yelling, then...")
c) Explain that he's just a baby and crying is how babies communicate
d) Try to encourage him to soothe the baby to stop crying
If anybody has any other suggestions on preventing this behavior or if you've gone through something similar, we're all ears (although we're going a bit deaf from all this yelling).