Adjusting to Being a Big Brother

Hudson absolutely adored being a big brother for the first couple of weeks. Around the 2 week mark, he started saying things like "Mom, I'm all done with Anna Kate" or "Mom, time for Anna Kate's nap, Anna Kate go to bed" (within 30 seconds of me getting her up from a nap). After a couple days, this progressed to Hudson hitting Anna Kate. He has hit her with his hand, kicked her, thrown trucks at her, stepped on her, scratched her, pushed her and pulled her. I guess you could say he's having a hard time.

I realized I made the matters worse by the way I was responding. I would get very protective of Anna Kate. A typical interaction would go like this:

Hudson & I playing while Anna Kate plays on her activity mat

Hudson hits Anna Kate (for no apparent reason); Anna Kate cries

I say angrily "Hudson why did you hurt your sister? She's just a baby and you're a big boy. You're her big brother. You can't hurt her" while I pick up Anna Kate and console her. I tell Hudson to go to his room and I'll come talk to him in a minute.

I calm Anna Kate down & go talk to Hudson about not hitting.

The problem I think I've had is that my actions would communicate that I would protect Anna Kate from her mean big brother. Somehow I need to discipline Hudson (because he can't hurt her) but also build him up (since he's having a hard time adjusting to having a baby in our family).

Trent was out of town last week at our denomination's annual meeting in Nashville. Hudson actually ended up getting a very high fever (over 105 degrees!!) for the whole week. While it was very scary for him to have a fever that high (he's all better now :)), it seems to have caused him to not be as violent towards his sister. While he was sick, he was very low key, just laying in bed, on the couch or on me. Since he's been better this week, he hasn't tried to hurt Anna Kate as much. Although I imagine it'll take awhile to adjust to being a family of four, I'm hoping some of the initial aggression he's displayed is on the decline.