My cousin, has 3 children, a boy aged 19 who is away it school, a girl
aged 16, and another boy aged 14.

The youngest boy has always been kind of shy and had trouble making
friends, he often has a small number of friends he is really close to
as opposed to alot of casual friends.

His problem is his sister. He feels she often tries to steal his
friends away from him. This started a some years ago when he made a
good friend who would come over to the house alot. His sister would
often come along and strike up a conversation with his friend and
eventually, he'd end up spending more time with her than with him! It
wasn't a bf/gf thing, it was just like two friends. She found some
commonalities between his friend and eventually excluded my cousin
from the conversation or other activities. She also got his friend to
start belittling my cousin's son's taste in music, and got him to go
to her room to listen to some of her's. One time he tried to compete
with her by offering some of the same things his sister does, but that
failed. In fact, with the music thing, he tried putting on an album
by a certain band and his friend listened and his sister than invited
his friend to listen to her album. When my cousin's son asked what
the difference was, his friend said "Not your kind, her kind."

My cousin's son also once told me of another incident in which his
sister came in and struck up a chat with a different friend of his
about a couple of books he hadn't read. The result is his friend
started chatting with his sister and ignored him. In fact, this same
friend would come over to the house to talk to her instead of him,
which he really felt hurt about.

My cousin has tried talking to her daughter about this, but without
success. The only solution that really worked was arranging for her
to be out of the house when the boy has his friends over. In fact,
all three of them sat down together and he brought up how when she has
her friends over, he doesn't in any way disturb them, other than
introducing himself if it's someone he hasn't met, and then going
about his business and leaving them alone to do their thing. His
sister responds to this saying she isn't disturbing them!

My cousin wants to do something about it, but her husband thinks they
should take a hands off approach to this and let the two siblings work
it out amongst themselves and find their own solutions. He takes the
point of view if parents solve every one of their kids' problems they
won't have the skills to solve problems themselves when they are out
on their own.

What also worries my cousin is one of the boy's solutions, simply not
bringing his friends around and painting a picture of them as people
who don't allow him to have friends over. My cousin doesn't like this
because she wants to know who his friends are and doesn't want to look
like a bad mother.

He has one close friend of a few years named Steve. My cousin wanted
to have Steve come over and have dinner with the family, but her son
resisted. The only way to get him to go along with it was to do it
when his sister was out of town for a week, and even then he wouldn't
go along with it until he not only saw his sister's plane tickets, but
accompanied her to the airport and saw her plane take off!

Although I do think kids need to learn how to solve some problems on
their own, I think they need help now and then and intervention from
the parents. The boy has confided to me he thinks there is something
wrong with him because she is able to turn his friends away from him,
thinking he is inferior to her or something like that. Sometimes he
doesn't want to have any friends and be left alone. He also wonders
if he ever tries to have a girlfriend, will his sister try to take her
away from him too?

This has gone on for around 5 years that I know of and something needs
to be done. Any suggestions?

Tammy L.

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