We've been dealing with some difficult issues between LO and his older cousin (LO is almost 1, the cousin is 3), and I'm just wondering how other parents have handled either side of this issue.

For the most part, what we're dealing with is pretty typical toddler stuff from the 3 year old - he thinks that all of the toys at grandmas house are his, even the baby toys that he hasn't played with in ages, and he flips out whenever he has to share. There can be a room full of toys, but of course the toy he always wants is the one LO has, so he takes it. You give LO a different toy, and he screams and tries to grab that one too. Eventually he'll give up, but often his mom is not there because my MIL babysits him a lot, and it's exhausting toeing the line between not parenting him but not letting him be mean to LO.

And when his mom is there, sometimes it's even worse - she'll tell him he has to give the toy back to LO and he screams and throws it at my son! Thankfully he has terrible aim, but I do worry he's really going to hurt L someday. She puts him in time out and makes him apologize, but the behavior never changes - when my nephew is in the daycare center with other kids, he's forever targeting the younger/smallest ones and smacking/hitting/punching/pushing if they have a toy he wants, or they touch a toy he's playing, or frankly if they just get in his way or look at him wrong. He's hit kids for playing with my son because "that's HIS cousin and only he gets to play with him." Seriously.

I know my SIL is really frustrated - she's pregnant and obviously concerned about how he'll be with the baby. She says that she pretty much just has to follow him around and remove him from a situation when he's getting mad, but he gets mad easily and often and she doesn't know what, if anything she can do about that. Her husband figures that at some point a bigger kid will hit him back and maybe that will help, but I seriously doubt it - he's 3, he doesn't connect the whole "I wouldn't like it if someone did that to me, so I shouldn't do it to them." That gets a majorly blank stare.

Is there anything you would suggest my doing here? In the situations where my nephew hurts other kids for playing with L, I tell him that he can't play with L either if he's being mean to the other kids, and I follow through and we leave if it happens, although that doesn't feel fair since L isn't the one hitting! But I don't know what more, if anything, I can do when these problems arrive. Yesterday he screamed bloody murder for over 10 minutes and hit my MIL because she wouldn't let him have all the toys and said L needed something to play with too. I know lots of toddlers hate sharing, but this is driving me crazy - and it only seems to be getting worse as L gets older. Sorry that was a novel. They see each other at least weekly and I just don't know how to promote sharing between the two of them without over-stepping.