Be Nice to Your Brother

This seems to be constantly streaming out of my mouth! Now that Maximo is mobile, Athen has become a bit aggressive and sometimes mean. At first, I tried taking toys away when he wasn't sharing. This strategy backfired because Athen was all too excited that Maximo couldn't play with his toys too. So... I had to reevaluate my plan of attack... My next attempt was to reason with him. I know reasoning with an almost 3 year old, sounds ridiculous but I tried... And I failed. He could care less that he didn't like it when someone hit him. He also didn't care too much when I said, "Nobody likes a bully!" At this point, I was constantly putting Athen in time out and trying to figure out if this was really how my life was going to be until one of them moves out. And I realized YES this really is how it's going to be, but it still didn't stop me from attempting to reign Athen in. So I talked to some friends and one of them gave me the idea of using a reward jar... So we started with 10 jellybeans at the beginning of the day and if he is mean to Maximo we take a jellybean out and if he does something (without prompting) nice we put a jellybean in. So Day 1, I explain the rules and Athen tells me he understands... Not even 2 minutes later, I am watching them play cars on the table and I see Athen do a little bump to Maximo for messing up his "carshow." I decide not to make a big deal out of it. I realize that sometimes he can give a warning to his brother. I do realize it would be frustrating if someone came in and messed up what I was doing. Then Maximo grabs and knocks down about 5 cars and they are on the floor. I see Athen not only push him down, but make sure he is completely on the ground, with his head pushed to the floor. Excessive, right! So needless to say this was his first jellybean gone for the day... And Day 1 ended with zero jellybeans! Day 2, I had high hopes. By 1030am, he had 2 jellybeans left and Maximo had even slept for an hour! He ended the day with no jellybeans! Day 3! It was sinking in...he realized that jellybeans were on the line... And he ended the day with 5 jellybeans! Hopefully this is a trend, but we shall see... Until then more jellybeans for me :)