Why is the requirement to behave with loyalty towards his brother deeply offensive to my younger son? He enjoys his firm command over an arsenal of typically subtle tactics, to make big brother feel sad, confused, or embarrassed— Little brother is furious with me for requiring loyalty or at least non-malevolence. He does THIS only to his brother(and me). And he uses semantics to argue his rightness….Like: “Oh well, you didn’t say I couldn’t do it in this game or in this place or with these people, specifically…I thought you just meant dodgeball.” Yeh, ok, be a loyal brother in dodgeball but behaving like a diminishing little shit, anywhere else is fine. So, like a true raging psycho, I created and shared a list of every person place or thing on earth, in which loyalty is expected and then I even offered condescending examples of “how it works”. Super spiritual behavior.
I see the pain he inflicts on his brother, and feel the gravity of the gift of getting to hear directly and promptly from big brother, what IT does to him– affording me the opportunity hold space, empathize, listen, and then impose my overly-emotional attempts to address the behavior without dividing my sons further from each other. This seems more than just classic sibling rivalry and I am deeply concerned for each of them. I want them to belong to each other. Two years ago, they did. 100% What happened? What flipped the switch? Oh, wait. I think I might know. We do learn what we live.
Right now, my greatest concern is how poorly I am handling the situation. It is too familiar, too close to home. Terrifying to imagine them carrying the legacy of their father and me– each having a sibling with whom we do not speak.
