The Green Monster Won't Leave!

I think it is time to seek some professional help for Luke’s jealousy. He is insanely jealous quite often about his sister for just about anything ranging from her now being taller than him to her sitting in the front seat. He wants to control her all the time. The other night we came home from baseball and Sage was still up even though it was past her bedtime and he went off. He started shouting directions at her to go to bed! Drew and I were sitting right there!


This morning the rage escalated pretty high despite my trying to calm him down and get him to identify the true feelings he was having. He couldn’t get past being angry. The kids were standing next to each other and I noticed she passed him up in height. We have talked about this over and over and explained to Luke that girls generally grow earlier than boys and more than likely, she would be taller than he was at some point. Luke can dish out the teasing and mean words but gets very angry when his sister or parents kid with him.

All I said to him was “Looks like your sister may be taller. You guys stand back to back and let me see.” He instantly got mad and Sage saw the weak point and said “Yea Luke, back to back!” I tried to cut it off there but he was mad and wasn’t about to let it go.

When I tried to talking to him, he began to cry and told me to let him go and he didn’t want to talk about it because he didn’t want to cry. He said “I’m in 5th grade and 5th grade boys don’t cry. Now leave me alone!” Where do boys get this idea? I explained to him for the hundredth time that it is okay to cry and it is okay to feel feelings. It was our job as parents to help him learn what his feelings are and how to express them. He still wouldn’t let the anger go.

He said he wanted us to punish Sage. He thinks that she never gets punished. What he doesn’t see is that he causes most of the trouble in our family. He lives by the idea that he will do what he wants and pay for it later. He has always been head strong like this but the anger is new. I saw it after his injury but it is so much bigger now that he has a sibling.

Oh, I wish there was a book that went with each kid! Tonight I will crawl into bed with him and hope to talk more about feelings and expressing anger. Press the point that hitting is sister or any other girl is NEVER allowed. Then I will love him and pray that the talk helped him in some way…