My 13 and 9 Year Old Sons Fight All The Time — Is This Just Normal?
I stood at the stove this morning stirring oatmeal, and I could already feel the tension building before the first yell. Jax, 13, had locked himself in the bathroom 18 minutes earlier, scrolling TikTok while he waited for his curly hair to air dry. Milo, 9, was bouncing on the hall rug, crossing his legs so tight his knuckles were white, muttering that he was going to pee his pants if Jax didn’t come out.
I knocked on the door once, got a mumbled “five more minutes” back, and before I could knock again, Milo reared back and kicked the door so hard the frame shook. What followed was the kind of yelling that makes your ears ring: Jax calling Milo a “stupid little gremlin” who can’t wait two seconds, Milo screaming that Jax is a “selfish jerk” who hoards everything, ending with a rubber duck (Milo’s, from when he was tiny) thrown at Jax’s head, and Jax shoving Milo backwards into the laundry basket full of clean towels. The oatmeal burned. I had to throw the whole pan away.
This isn’t the old sibling rivalry I remember reading about when they were little, the toy-grabbing, sandbox-pushing stuff that ends with ice cream and everyone forgetting what they fought about five minutes later. This is different. It’s sharper, quieter in some ways, louder in others. I grew up an only child, so I have no frame of reference. I’ll scroll mom groups late at night sometimes, see people talking about healthy sibling conflict, and I think, is this what we have? Or is this too much?
They fight over the stupidest, most specific stuff that never would have mattered five years ago. Jax loses his mind if Milo so much as opens his bedroom door when he’s not home, says he leaves Cheeto dust on his gaming controllers and stinky soccer socks all over the floor. Milo whines that Jax never wants to play anything with him anymore, that when he does agree to a round of Minecraft, he calls Milo’s castle build “garbage” and quits after five minutes. Last week we had a 45-minute standoff in the parking lot outside the grocery store because Milo called shotgun first, and Jax said he’s taller than me now so he gets shotgun automatically, and if he has to sit in the back he’s not going. We ended up leaving Milo’s favorite ice cream in the hot cart while we sorted it out. I bought a bottle of wine on the way out, I needed it that bad.
The weird thing is the contradictions. They’ll be at each other’s throats one minute, and the next they’re on the same side like nothing happened. Last month at the community pool, a 10 year old kid made fun of Milo for carrying around his beat-up giant inflatable T-Rex, said it was for babies. Jax had been ignoring Milo all afternoon, sitting on the concrete with his friends from school pretending his little brother didn’t exist. But he stood up immediately, walked over, and got right in the other kid’s face, said “That’s my brother’s T-Rex. If you got a problem, say it to me.” Then he turned around and walked right back to his friends like nothing happened, wouldn’t even acknowledge Milo when Milo yelled “thanks” across the pool. That night, they fought over the last slice of pepperoni pizza ten minutes after we got home.
I found something last week when I was putting away Jax’s laundry. He’d left his closet door open, and taped to the back of the door, half hidden behind his hoodies, was that photo we took at Disney two years ago. It’s the two of them, Jax 11, Milo 7, both covered in blue ice cream from the churro stand, grinning like idiots on the Splash Mountain drop. Jax would die if he knew I saw it. He’d probably rip it up before letting Milo tease him about still liking a picture with his little brother.
I keep catching myself overstepping, or understepping, I don’t know which. I used to break up every fight immediately, pull them apart, assign blame. Now I try to wait, see if they work it out. Last week they went at it over who got to pick the movie after dinner, Jax pushed Milo into the couch hard enough that Milo scraped his elbow, and I ended up yelling so loud my throat hurt, sent Jax to his room for the night. An hour later I went up to apologize for yelling, and he was sitting on his bed twisting his soccer bracelet, and he said “I don’t hate him, you know. He just gets in my space all the time, and everything feels so loud lately, I just blow up. I don’t mean it.” And I just sat there, because what do you say to that? It’s not my job to fix the fact that his brain is going nuts at 13, that his little brother just wants any scrap of attention he can get, even the bad kind.
I don’t have a nice clean answer to this whole “what’s normal” question. Tonight, after dinner, Jax locked Milo out of his room because Milo kept tapping on the door while Jax was on FaceTime with his friend. Milo’s sitting outside on the carpet right now, eating a cherry popsicle I got him, yelling every two minutes that Jax is the worst brother in the whole world and he’s going to cut all Jax’s game cords while he’s sleeping. I haven’t gone up to fix it. He’ll get bored in 10 minutes and come watch TV with me.
I still lie awake sometimes wondering if I’m doing this wrong, if they’ll grow up hating each other. My friend who has two boys 10 years apart just laughed when I told her how much they fight, said hers went at it like cats and dogs until the oldest moved out for college, now they text every day and go to football games together. She said you can’t see the good stuff when they’re in the middle of all this yelling. I believe her, but I still can’t see it most days. Right now I just see burnt oatmeal, rubber ducks thrown at heads, Cheeto crumbs in weird places, and two boys who love each other but don’t know how to say it half the time, not when they’re this age. I guess that’s normal enough, for now.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » My 13 and 9 Year Old Sons Fight All The Time — Is This Just Normal