I’ve got a niece (5) and nephew (3). The niece is really good about finding ways to entertain herself and the nephew will always try and take it for himself and intrude, usually not in a compromising sort of way. Obviously, this is pretty typical kid behavior overall.
She’s reaching the age where she can learn more complicated games and ideas, which sounds really fun to introduce her to. If he’s around, I feel like it will certainly cause a meltdown, and he’s too young to reasonably participate anyway.
As an older sibling myself. I think it’s also unfair to hold her back until he can participate too. Some would say it’s unfair to do it until he can as well. I would argue that it’s actually unfair to introduce 5 year old games to her when she is 7 and he’s 5 and can join too. She’s being punished imo unnecessarily and being held back. Why does she have to wait till 7 while he gets it at 5?
Is the only solution to try and schedule separate activity times to individualize the activities? Am I being biased as an older sibling myself in feeling that I would be holding back until he’s at the same capability? Just curious for feedback. Thanks
I’ve got two kids, roughly the same age as your niece and nephew. For a while I thought along the same lines as you, and was perpetually trying to find ways to distract one so the other has room to grow. It took some hard lessons, and looking around and seeing other people struggling with similar difficulties; what i eventually figured out is that we tend to underestimate what the younger child is capable of because we tend to see them through the lens of “older vs younger”.
Once i got rid of that lens, I was just about shocked to see how hard my youngest pushes himself to do the things his older sister is doing. He’s doing things now that my daughter at the same age wasn’t able to; and I wonder how much of that is a function of her capabilities vs limitations I imposed on her based on a series of assumptions.
My advice to you, don’t differentiate too much; you’ll be very much surprised by what the little one is capable of. It WILL take more than an attempt or two, but if you’re able to stick through and watch how your nephew behaves you’ll most likely notice some mimicry and very concerted attempts to be able to do what his older sister is doing. Sometimes he’ll be successful and they’ll both play/do the thing together. Other times, he’s won’t, he’ll get frustrated, then he may act out; and on some occasions he’ll just get bored and this is where you’ll need to do some entertaining for a few minutes so he doesn’t go right to his sister to try and get her to stop doing the thing he can’t do (yet).
The side benefit of this is that once established, you’ll be able to dedicate one-on-one time to each as you see fit without feelings of unfairness or one feeling left out. In essence, don’t hold him back; pull him along and he’ll push himself forward to match his sister.
Kids are people too, drunk people, but people none the less.
Many years ago, I taught swimming lessons. In our program we did not have levels in our classes, we taught to the child’s ability, mixing both ages and abilities in the class. What this did was the younger kids wanted to keep up with the older kids in their abilities. And the older kids that were more apprehensive would watch the younger kids putting their faces in the water and trying to swim without hesitation and it would push them to want to do what they were afraid of. I think everyone learns best in community with mixed ages and abilities.
I see this in both my own kids, one is about to turn 5 and the other just turned 1 last month. The younger really wants to keep up with his older brother.