Will trade little brother for dog

[davidsp]

So my middle brother, he's 11, and I have been really getting on each others nerves lately. We always seem to be arguing and fighting about something. I try not to let him piss me off but he's got mad skills at that it seems. We both got in trouble this weekend for fighting and dad busted us both. :( It sucked big time but I'm hoping that maybe it will help make things better at least for a while. Anybody have any suggestions about how to handle an annoying little brother? :mad:

[Magenta]

Oh man, don't I know the feeling. My little brother is the best kid in the world but christ, was he ever annoying at that age. He's 16 now -- or will be in a few days -- so it does change and calm down.

I'd suggest just walking away. That was always my solution. If he's stubborn and refuses to stop doing something, just walk away and come back later. You can't fight if you don't give someone the satisfaction of a reaction. Otherwise, try talking to your parents about how you feel. You're all their kids and they do want to help you guys to get along. Maybe you guys need to start setting new boundaries and rules. You guys are both at an age where you're going to start butting heads a bit, especially with two boys.

Don't worry about it, dude. Little brothers are meant to be annoying, I think. Any sibling is. Everyone has their good and bad moments with them.

[davidsp]

Oh man, don't I know the feeling. My little brother is the best kid in the world but christ, was he ever annoying at that age. He's 16 now -- or will be in a few days -- so it does change and calm down.

I'd suggest just walking away. That was always my solution. If he's stubborn and refuses to stop doing something, just walk away and come back later. You can't fight if you don't give someone the satisfaction of a reaction. Otherwise, try talking to your parents about how you feel. You're all their kids and they do want to help you guys to get along. Maybe you guys need to start setting new boundaries and rules. You guys are both at an age where you're going to start butting heads a bit, especially with two boys.

Don't worry about it, dude. Little brothers are meant to be annoying, I think. Any sibling is. Everyone has their good and bad moments with them.

Haha. Thanks, Carmilla. That made me feel better. I'll try talking to my parents some more about it. Not sure if I want more rules. They might come back to bite me in the butt. Maybe it would help though.

[Magenta]

Haha. Thanks, Carmilla. That made me feel better. I'll try talking to my parents some more about it. Not sure if I want more rules. They might come back to bite me in the butt. Maybe it would help though.

Thing is, rules come and go. Right now, it might be beneficial for both you and your brother. Just to enforce the fact that all of this is hard on you and undoubtedly hard on everyone else and clearly there needs to be a better way of handling it. I don't mean rules like "if you two fight, you're both grounded" because honestly, what does that do? But rules like if you fight, recognize or have someone else tell you both to take a ten minute "time out" so to speak where you two go off and do your own thing until you think you can handle being around each other again. It's not so much a punishment as much as something put in place so that you can cool off first and then maybe come back to what you were fighting about and discuss it when you guys aren't pissed off. A temporary white flag, so to speak. Think of it like a sports rule. Make an illegal move or some kind of foul (forgive me, I hate sports so my terminology sucks) and recognize it's time to get off the field for a bit so you can get your head back into the game and move on from whatever it was that was pissing you off.