BG - My parents have a large house. I and my cousin and her son live with them. My cousin is doing her medical residency. Her son is 8. He is a BRAT. My cousin is divorced and they both do a lot of guilt parenting.
Well, this weekend, my sister decided to seperate from her husband. He refused to leave their home, so she spent the weekend (Fri-Sunday evening) with her son (age 3) at our house. Saturday was fine.
Sunday was awful. The 8 year old was CONSTANTLY taking toys out of the 3 year old's hands, not sharing, complaining about sharing, correcting/bossing the toddler. His mom was face down in iPhone games or talking with her BF on the phone, so no help there. My sister was furious and thoroughly sick of it by Sunday evening. the 8 year old is very stubborn, resists any sort of correction and is sneaky and manipulative.
Usually we've somewhat kept them apart - my sister usually visits when the 8 year old is with his dad. But she'll be visiting a lot more with the impending divorce. A confrontation is inevitable.
Has anybody ever had a successful confrontation with the parent of a bratty child? Or maybe been confronted themselves? His mom sort of sees individual instances of brattiness, but it's like she doesn't see it's a whole pattern of bratty behavior.
Mmmmmmmm not really. We have a bratty niece.
*Disclaimer : I don't really like this girl, she's not the kind of kid I like, her mom allows her to do a lot of things that makes go Ooooooook *
This kid is a gossip, likes to tell her mom things in the ear to avoid everyone else knowing what she's saying, lies and disobeys her parents. But I have 0 patience for that behavior, once DH and I took her and her brother for an afternoon so their parents could do something, I have a very strict rule about EVERYONE wearing their seat belts in the car, so she for some reason unbuckles and tries to stand in the car and put her head out of the son roof of the car, I immediately told her that she must remain sited and with her seat belt on at all times while in the car, she throw a fit and we ended up not doing what we said we were going to do with them (a consequence for bad behavior that we let them know about when we told them that we were going out).
After that day she knows to take me seriously, and doesn't misbehave when I'm around or within earshot. I've also let her know that it's not ok to interrupt her mom when she's talking to adults, and stopped her from trying to take the ILs bed when they were all visiting our house a couple months ago.
What I'm trying to say is that sometimes these kids respond to external discipline better than their parents, so you might want to give it a shot. SIL has been witness of several instances where I put the kid back in her place and she hasn't said anything about it, but I also try to be very polite and matter of fact when I tell the kid things so that's why I don't get in trouble with SIL and she agrees with me a lot of the time so there's that as well.
