How Can I Be More Fair?

Oh honey! I have 3 beautiful children, Brandon 13, Kaitlyn 10, and Jacob 7. I also have my boyfriends son Eric 9, part time. The answer to your question about being unfair at times is YES! It happens. Especially when their is more than one child, different ages, not to mention different personalities. Don't beat yourself up. You have done the hardest part by realizing how you are unfair so try and be aware when you are doing it and be more consistent.

PDE

Sounds like you have already received great advice about being fair. I thought I would share one thing I learned from a great book about discilpline. Sometimes I give my kids snap answers, especially when I am tired. "Mom, can I have something to snack on?" "No, we just ate." This is the standard between me and my six year old. What the book says is take a second or two and start training yourself to always take a second before answering their questions or jumping to discipline. This extra time helps you to be more fair in your treatment of your kids and your discipline choices. Usually, right after I say no I realize that I said no because I am tired and I just cleaned up the last meal so I end up saying "Sure, if you can get it yourself." My point is, if you train yourself to take a moment, you will do the same kind of self talk and decide what is fair and be more likely to make a fair decision. Also, don't be afraid to back off of something you have just said. You can change your mind.

Hi D.,
Here's a train of thought you may or may not think applies, but here goes...

Subconsiously, you are training your daughter to be dependent, b/c that's they way our culture has traditionally treated females. You seem to have made sure this doesn't happen with your boy, simply b/c he's a boy. I don't think you're doing it consiously, but it you've fallen into the trap. (Fathers do it all the time, rough play the boys, soft and tender play with the girls.) It's not bad, it's just tradition, and you can change if you want to. Just repeat the mantra, "I'm training her for strength and independence." (Of coarse, every child is different, but you say she has similar traits as your 4 yr old when he was her age, so, go for it! :)

Also, since I may be wrong, just use your best judgement, and maybe keep this idea on the back burner for awhile...

Good luck,
Angie

When I read your story my thought was that you are not showing more love to your daughter, you are showing more love to your son. Love is not giving them what they want, placating them, pampering them. Love is acting in their best interest. Your description says you are acting in your son's best interest and you are creating a dependent, whiny brat in your daughter.
I'm glad you are concerned. And when I saw their ages, I realized you'd just begun. Two year olds aren't always that capable or able to communicate well anyway. And kids develop at different speeds so you can't always use your son for comparison.

Get your vision for your daughter. What do you want her to look like at 20, at 35? Love her future and her potential. And treat her like she can and will get there. Love who she is right now. Train her so that everyone who meets her will give her positive feedback on the "good girl" she is and she will feel positive about people and life, rather than feel like people are judging her and critical of her and the whole world is against her. Every thing that comes up you will have in the back of your mind, "Is this in her best interest?"
N. O

First off, I want to say you know how to be fair and don't use being tired as an excuse. It would probably take just as much effort to be harder on the girl as it would be to be easy on the boy. However, for him being the older of the two I can understand your desire to make him a independent guy. There is nothing wrong with that and i just want to say you did an awesome job with him so far. But, you have to be more firm with her or you will regret it. Rules instill discipline and if you don't, she won't have any. Please do it while she is young or you will have an unruly child on your hands. It's not really being fair because things are different with girls than boys and also their age difference. Just evaluate when to be firm with her and when to take it a little easier on him. They are both very young so you have time. Good luck!

It is doubtful that a 4 year old is going to compare your treatment of him at age 2 to how you treat your daughter at age 2. It is not possible to give the same attention to 2 children that you were able to give to only 1 child. Every older sibling is going to experience that dynamic. Niether is it possible for anyone to tell you, simply based on the message you posted, what is motivating the different expectations and levels of discipline you afford each child. I know your studies are demanding, but you are a mother now and it seems you might want to study a little for that job. The simplest and most helpful book I found as a mother was 'The Family Virtues Guide', by Linda Popov. It taught me to see each child in potential for all virtue, not as just a boy or a girl. It taught me the most perfect way to discipline and how to clearly understand my role as a mother and how to best serve the process of a child's development. Good luck, and good love! They grow up fast.

This is quite natural to be hardest on our first born and then ease up on the next one. We try to make them as "grown up" as we possibly can and that means to be independent and do for themself. Then without any sense to it when the next one comes along then they are the "baby" and we unconsiously work at enjoying that status with them. So this will smooth out later and then they will both do things at a simliar pace especially since they both are above average. Try to remember to not be too hard on Trstn and maybe practice having him help his sister to do things like get their clothes out together or pick up toys together or just about anything to make them work on toys and by the way when she asks for a pb&j ask him if he wants some too. Don't worry before you know it they will be asking for the keys to the car and then you can remember this and smile :)Also have grampop start getting those cars ready :) It will be here so fast and then you will be planning weddings and my gosh who knows what then! It will be fine!

Being equal is not being fair. I was stricter with my oldest because I thought she needed it and that is what I was suppose to do. I am a bit less strict with my son because some of the rules I was a fanatic about turned out to not be such a big deal and he didn't need it. From your message, however, it does sound like you are being unfair. If you're too tired, let your son have a few breaks too. Otherwise, you require similar behavior from your daughter that you expected from your son at the same age. If you think you're tired and don't want to deal with it now, it's nothing compared to what you are going to face in the future. Siblings imagine enough injustice from their parents and "act out" imagine what you'll face if it's TRUE!

I grew up in a house that was like this. I STILL resent it and I'm grown with kids of my own! Haha! My parents still do things for my sister that, oh my gosh, I would NEVER EVER dream of getting! It's crazy...and sad. No matter how old you are, you want to feel you're loved just the same as your sibling.

I guess I don't have a solution for you, but just wanted to share my thoughts because I came from that environment. Your son will catch on soon, though, and he'll use it against you when he's upset.

Good luck! Being a mommy isn't ever easy!

Good Morning, sometimes it doesn't matter what a parent does or doesn't do a child at one time or another will feel over looked or left out.
Remember when you had Trstn? You did everything by the BOOK or Dr. Spock or what Mom did when you were a baby. Tessa comes along and you cut corners a little just to make it easier. Nothing wrong with that. If everyone were honest we all did the same, I know I did with our 2 son's.
Your little guy sounds like our 3 yr old grand son. He is very intelligent for his age, has been speaking in sentences before he was 2.
One thing you might try since your day is full is having your son or hubby be involved in helping out with Tessa. Trstn may like being the bigger brother to teach his little sister big kid things. Hubby may enjoy getting extra time being daddy with her. It won't hurt Tessa to tell her she needs to wait until dinner. Or she needs to try to put on her socks make a game out of it etc. All kids learn and do things at different stages.

Just make sure your discipline which, if it is time out 4 min. for Trstn and 2 min for Tessa, fits for each of them. I have a timer and they have to wait to hear it before they can get up.

Whatever you do don't feel your actually being unfair as that feeling will build over time. You will question everything that comes up. Every child is unique and learns as thier ability grows and they do adjust.

God Bless you with a Home filled with love & respect
K. aka Nana k

I don't think that is has much to do with that you are "unfair" to you kids. Every child is going to be different and sometimes one way of doing things works for one but not the other. In this case it seems you might already know that answer but don't want to admit to it. You are busy with 2 kids, school, a husband, house..LIFE and well it simply comes down to it is just easier and takes less effort on your part to give in to her and be slack about things..it is an easy habit to slip into...but even harder to get out of!
It is easier now to just do it all for her but in the long run it will make things harder for you...when you do have the engery again but she still demands the same things from you when she was 2 but now she will be 8, 15, 20, 30 and so on! LOL
Sounds like you are a very good, loving, devoted mother :)
Keep up the good work.....I think only other moms know the true meaning of being a mom and all the hard work it takes to do it right!

Hi D.,
I just wanted to say a few things about this.

I grew up in a house where I did everything wrong and had to do things and my sister (4 yrs younger could do no wrong and do nothing.

For example, I had to clean my room and keep it clean now this is when we are 14 (me) and 10 (my sister), it was like this with everything. It made me feel like I was always a bad kid and she wa an angel. And it's not like I was just complaining my Dad recongnized it also and my parents would fight over this.

So now I am 32 yrs old and raising my children. Their ages are B- 16 yrs, B- 7 yrs, G-4 yrs, and a G- 15 months.
Now I have an all different ages of children but the rules in my house apply to everyone and if I am gonna let one get away with something then I let them all get away with the samething (like eating a snack before dinner even though it's 10 minutes from getting on the table.

But there are also different ways to discipline your kids. For instance with my 16 yr old he gets grounded, Xbox 360 taken away, no going to friends houses, no computer time. With my 7 yr old, all you do is give him the look and he is getting back on track but sometimes we have to tell him he will not get to go to his friends house or no Xbox. Now with my 4 yr old it is more time out or standing in the corner and telling sorry to the person that she may of hurt or whatever. And then you have my 15 month old who is a work in progress on all accounts.

From my experience here are a few things I have learned with my kids (and still learning)
1) be consistent with your rules across the board.
2) pick you battles
3) You and your husband need to be on the same page about the rules that you want your kids to follow. for you 2 "you can agree to disagree but not infront of your 2 children"
4) If you say this child is going to the corner or has go to his/her room then A) yu have to follow thru and B) dad needs to back you up
5) have confidence in yourself that you can be consistent with both of them.

Hope this helps, W.

D., as long as you are just worried about how much more lenient you are with your daughter than you were with your son at the same age and not that you're STILL harder on him, I think it'll be fine. If your daughter wants at PBJ sandwich before dinner and your son wants one also, but you only give one to her, then I would say you are being unfair.

I only have one child and that poor kid had to put up with me trying to be the "perfect" parent. Now if I had had another child, I can guarantee I would be more relaxed with the second one, and I don't think of that as a bad thing! I was so perfectionistic with my son. When he was 5 and learning to pee standing up (he had always sat down...I was a single mom and there was no male in the house to teach him), I yelled at him for getting pee on the seat or rim or something. I'll never forget the look on his face when he said with tears in his eyes, "Mom, I'm ONLY 5!" Boy, did he put me in my place, or what? I've never felt so small in my whole life.

Anyway, I think people are much better parents to their second child because they've been through everything before and they realize that so many things are insignificant compared to loving your child with everything you have. So you give your daughter a PB&J sandwich before dinner and you didn't give your son one at the same age, so what? He won't remember that! Thank goodness my son won't remember a lot of the things I did wrong as a parent :) But he will remember one thing, I sure loved (and still love) him!

I would think now that you can see that you do favor your daughter more it's just something you have to make an effort to change. I also think if you don't start now she could become pretty spoiled and then you will have a whole new set of problems.
I also felt my sister was always favored growing up and I honestly didn't notice it as much until later on in life and looking back on it.
I am only the mother of one and can imagine it would be hard not to play favorites some of the times. I wish you luck with this.

I'm not sure what to do, but nip it in the bud b/c my mom is 67 and her brother is 60 (they don't speak) and just last week they were seperately telling me how each one got preferential treatment from their parents. My uncle said it was always about my mother and my mother said her brother was the Prince. And they're in their 60's!! Nothing's worse than a spoiled little girl (I have a 3 yr old girl and I'm scared). You are already aware you do it. Just stop. Listen to me...like it's that simple.

I have 2 kid's my son is 4 and daughter is 14 months I let my son feed himself at 1 all the time when he was just starting out to learn that he can use a spoon now, I have noticed with my daughter I almost feed her everything when a spoon is involved and this is bad for me because she is needing to develop those skill's now rather than later.And it is mainly because I don't want her to get messy before we have to leave to go out. (Ok i'm going to stop)There is thing's here in my house where i'm harder on my son than daughter mainly the age difference he know's better and know's the rules she is just learning and that it takes just as much time to disipline both,since a toddler doesn't understand the concept of a time out on the naughty bench I have to talk to her. So my advice is just think twice about responding to that ____@____.com for your daughter I really try not to hurt my kid's feeling's so if it is snack time they both get one in the kitchen all meal's and snack's at the same time so for they are not feeling left out.Also what had helped me is reading to my son a book or 2 at nite or during the day when sissy is occupied it develop's one on one time and less chaos.

D.,
It's hard when you have more than one kid to be sure that you're doing them both evenly, that's how I've found it even with my boys, my youngest I tend to be easier on than my oldest. It might be the differences in sexes, but from my experience it's probably just the age differences. Just try to get into the habit of trying to think about are you about to do something different than your other chid. Also, if you notice that you've done something different for one than another then try to do a mental note and try to remember it to try to stop the next time so you don't accidently do it again. I know bad habits die hard.
good-luck!

-J. M.
www.themomteam.com/mom2
HELPING Moms Stay Home!

I was the oldest of 2 and I always was treated different as well. My younger sister go away with everything!!! I mean I was grounded all the time for little things and didnt get to go out as a teenager very often. My parents wouldnt even let me go to a baseball game!!! I learned very quickly that if I wanted to have any fun I would have to lie to them. Now that I am a parent I do not want the same for my child. As far as my sister goes, she was arrested by age 17 because my parents let her come and go as she pleased. When they finally cracked down on her, she had already learned that she could get away with what she wanted so she was defiant, stayed out all night and didnt come home until the next afternoon, etc, etc. My advice to you is to treat your children as equally as possible so a bigger problem doesnt arise later in life. My parents would tell my sister "well S. never did that" and they werent trying to be mean or comparative, they just couldnt understand why I was the "good sister" and she was the "bad sister." I think my sister really rebelled because of comments like that. I also think she felt like, whats the use, I can never be as good as S.. Dont turn your children against each other over something like that, please! The youngest will end up resenting the oldest!