Why Is My Teen Jealous Of My New Baby?


I just had a baby and my 17-year old daughter is very jealous of the baby. What can I do?

DR. RUTHERFORD: It’s an interesting situation when a 17-year old suddenly exhibits this kind of jealousy, but it sounds like a classic case of sibling rivalry.

MOLLY: This question was submitted by a mother in Des Moines, Iowa. What do you think is going on?

DR. RUTHERFORD: Well, there could be a number of things. Unfortunately we don’t have much information to work with. For instance, is this baby a product of a new marriage? If that’s the case, the older child might worry about her place in the family. Had she been an only child previously, used to getting all of the attention?

MOLLY: What other things should be considered?

DR. RUTHERFORD: I wonder if the older girl is expecting to leave home soon for college or for work. Is she afraid of being replaced? Also, infants require lots of attention; does the older girl feel left out? There may be a number of reasons playing into this difficult situation that we don’t know about.

MOLLY: Since we don’t know a lot of what’s going on, can we still offer some suggestions?

DR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, sure. First on the list would be a calm conversation with the seventeen-year old about how she’s feeling about the baby and the time the Mom spends with her. This should be done when the baby is not present. Hopefully, the teen can put into words what she’s experiencing.

Bottom line, I expect it relates to a deep sense of loss with her mother. If they can talk about that, they will be ahead of the game. If the girl has not been playing an active role in the care of the baby, why not include her in the bathing, etc. She will need reassurance that her Mom is still there for her, no matter what.

MOLLY: What if she feels she’s being asked to do too much to help out with the new baby?

DR. RUTHERFORD: In that case, some of these responsibilities should be reduced for a while until the older child can develop a better bond with the baby and also feel reassured that her mother is “there” for her, too.

I would recommend that this mom plan some special “mother-daughter” time alone with the older daughter to maintain the bond between the two of them during all the changes that a new baby brings into the household. Maybe an outing or a lunch, or something that recognizes that the older daughter might still need some mom-time to herself. This is an action I always recommend when it comes to alleviating sibling rivalry.

MOLLY: Are there any long term effects that you see for the seventeen-year old?

DR. RUTHERFORD: She may grow to be even more resentful of the baby and never develop a relationship with her. She may also become estranged from her mother for a long period of time. She may even decide to never have her own children, depending on what’s at the core of this issue.

On the positive side, she may learn to “share” her mother in more positive ways and mature from a more dyadic relationship (between two people) to one that is inclusive of more people. This will be very important later in her life if she marries and has children of her own.

Sibling Jealousy: My Older Child Hogs All the Attention

My older son is six years old and always wants to be first and grab all the attention away from his little brother. What should I do?

Dr. Susan Rutherford (MOM): Whenever there are questions or concerns when it comes to raising kids, you always want to look first for some of the core issues that might be going on. You can, of course, deal with the superficial issues and that might work for that moment, but it probably won’t hold.

One of the concepts you’ll want to talk about with the older child is that there is plenty for everybody.  There’s plenty of love and attention for him and there’s still plenty of love and attention for his brother. The concept is: there’s room for all of my children on my lap.

You could say to the 6-year old, “How do you think we could make this situation go better?” He might have some ideas to share, but the parent should have some ideas, too. Maybe the idea is about substituting one toy for another: if he wants a toy the younger child has, he could offer him a different toy in exchange. The idea is to make sure not to leave the younger child empty-handed, and to not allow the older child to bully or hit the younger child or threaten him in any way, because once the kid starts that kind of behavior it becomes a pattern, leaving the younger child to feel unprotected.

A lot of parents rationalize this whole thing by saying, “Well that younger child needs to be able to defend himself,” but it’s really an unfair attitude.

It’s not uncommon for the older kid to think the younger child took the toy on purpose and just wants to hurt them. You have to be calm about it and try to gauge the reality with the older child.

The problem if you don’t deal with this when the kids are young is that the younger child grows up feeling picked upon and victimized. And often what you see in these people as adults in their relationships is that they have a really hard time owning their own behavior. It’s because there has been such a pattern for them when they were growing up where they were victimized by the older child.

MOLLY: So that when they’re in a relationship or marriage and they do something wrong, they won’t admit it?

MOM: That’s right, they can’t own their own behavior. They’re stuck in the pattern of someone else is doing it to me.

MOLLY: What else can you do beside substitute a toy? How do you get the older child to stop hogging the toys and the attention?

MOM: Well, you want to start young, before the older child develops a pattern and gets a lot of satisfaction from hurting the younger child in some way. For instance, you don’t want to allow the older child to hit him over the head because he is so angry that the younger child takes their mommy away.

It’s very important that the mom doesn’t completely direct all her attention to the younger child who is more needy just by definition because the younger age. There are a couple of things you can do as a parent. If you can afford it you might want to get a babysitter for the younger child and spend a regular time period once a week – every Tuesday afternoon let’s say  – and you can do something special with the older child.

MOLLY: Or you could even do it on the weekend and have the other parent stay with the younger child if getting the help is difficult?

MOM: Yes, you can do that too. But you need to show that older child that he is important, too, because all of this is about the attention coming from the parent (whichever parent is the primary caretaker of the children). Sibling rivalry really comes from the feeling of not getting enough from the primary parent. And it’s really hard when a new baby is born because a baby is, of course, so demanding. But it’s something that, as a parent, you have to be conscious of or else you set a stage for something bad for both children. The older one becomes something of a bully and the younger one develops the feeling that whatever happens to them isn’t their fault and somebody is doing it to them so they don’t own or take responsibility for their own behavior.  They end up having problems in their intimate relationships with people. It’s a mess. A lot of these things have long term consequences. Not if they happen once or twice, but if they happen over and over again.

MOLLY: So: make a special time with the older child, tell them it’s not okay to do that to the younger child and that you won’t accept that behavior, but make a time for just them to have with mom or dad.

MOM: And if the kid keeps doing it, which they most likely will to test you out, you really have to stick to the consequences. Don’t just surprise the child with the consequences; you make sure they know ahead of time. For example,  “If you hit your brother, or if you take toys away from your brother, this is what’s going to happen. “

You have to think of the consequences in terms of the age of the kid. You don’t say “You can’t watch your favorite television show for a month.” That’s way too long for most children to conceptualize and there’s a feeling that there’s no possibility of redemption, that they can never make this better. One of the other things that’s very important to do is to have the older child apologize to the younger child, even if the younger child is too young to understand. It’s more for the older child.

MOLLY: Make the consequence appropriate… like you can’t watch your favorite show tonight?

MOM: Right something that’s time limited and there’s a recovery from. If you say you can’t do this for a month, the kid is going to feel like, why bother. The child has to feel like there’s a way to work it out and be redeemed in his parents’ eyes when the punishment is over, or he might stop feeling empathy for the younger child.


