The Need For Attention

I was reminded recently how much our kids need attention from us. I have a client who has two children; one can be described as “high maintenance” and the other “very low maintenance.” Of course the low maintenance child gets a lot of positive attention because he co-operates and seldom needs reminding. This of course makes his brother jealous so he devises his own way of getting noticed. He often behaves badly. It works well to get exactly what he wants.

When parents describe situations to me around sibling rivalry they will also report that one on one those same children are a joy to be around. My suggestion to my client was to create opportunities where she and her older child can be together without his sibling and out of the house. We both knew she would have to do the same for her younger child but that was fine. She said it was something she knew she could easily do because childcare was not an issue. What we want to do is give her high maintenance child the attention he is seeking but in a positive way. We also want to build up the “emotional bank account” because right now the majority of the interaction with him is negative and she wants badly to change that.