What to do when kids/ siblings fight?
“Siblings are the people we practice on, the people who teach us about fairness and cooperation and kindness and caring — quite often the hard way.”- Pamela Dugdale
If you have several children or if your kid is playing with friends, the kids will often fight during play. My sister and I were only 14 months apart and while we played a lot together growing up, there was rarely a single day without us using our weapons on each other (pulling hair, biting, kicking, etc.) It probably helped my self-defense skills, but didn’t do a lot to create peace in our family! So when I found out I was pregnant with my second son when Felix was only 9 months old, I was grateful because we didn’t have to go through the emotional journey of infertility again. But I was also afraid I would not know how to handle these inevitable conflict situations.
As a mum, I have learned a lot from reading the book “Siblings without Rivalry”. I will summarize below some of the key tips I have found useful and have tried to put in practice. As a new family of 5, we are still learning what works for us, but I do think these tips have helped a lot of our kids’ fights to remain small and brief.
According to Faber and Mazlish, the role of parents is to help reduce competition between siblings and use their relationship as a learning ground. There are always two forces at play between siblings: one pushing them apart as they use the differences between them to define their unique separate selves, the other pulling siblings together so they can build their unique brotherhood.
When kids are annoyed by their sibling
Accept the right for siblings to express bad feeling towards each other. “Not till the bad feelings come out can good feelings come in” (Adele Faber). I’m very tempted when my child says something bad about his brother to try to negate that thought (such as “Oh! I’m sure your brother didn’t do it on purpose”). But I learned that we need to allow each child to vent their rage against another to ensure that it doesn’t reappear in other forms.
· In particular, brothers and sisters need to have their feelings about each other acknowledged with words that identify the feelings. For instance: “it seems to me that you have two feelings about your brother. Sometimes you like him a lot and sometimes he makes you mad. Would you like to tell me more about it?”
· You can give children in fantasy what they don’t have in reality. For instance, you can say: “you wish your brother would ask before using your toys”.
· You can use a mood box for children having issues expressing their feelings. They need to pick a little face showing the emotion they are feeling towards their sibling at this moment (for instance anger, scared, disappointed).
· Help children channel their hostile feelings into creative outlets instead of physical hurt. For instance you can say “Show me your feelings with your doll” or “Draw me a picture of how you feel”. For older siblings, you can say: “I think your sister needs to know how enraged you are in writing”.
When kids fight
- If your kids like to play fight (my boys sometimes like to pretend they are boxing), ask them if it’s a play fight or a real fight. Make sure to establish the limits — if either says “stop”, the other must stop immediately.
- When the fighting is headed towards hurting, follow these steps: 1) Describe “I see a boy hitting another with a chair and another about to kick back” ; 2) Establish limits “ This is a very dangerous situation. We must have a cooling-off period” 3) Separate them. “Each child in their room” and “let’s talk it over in a couch meeting before dinner”. None of these statements establishes blame to a specific sibling, which makes it easier to then agree on a conflict resolution.
- At this stage, my sons always try to convince me to be on their side: “Felix started” or “Mataio bit me”, but I try not to engage as a “judge” and avoid naming either of them as the culprit. My default mode of engagement at this stage is as the “doctor” to redirect the conversation: “Show me where are you hurting?”.
- Kids do cruel things to each other, but it doesn’t mean they’re crazy. Do not see them as monsters. Instead I try to encourage them to do better by saying things like: “Felix and Mataio, you have a superior capacity to be nice, use it”.
How to encourage good feelings and help reduce fighting between siblings
Playing together cooperatively is a great way to ensure the ratio of positive to negative interaction remains above 3 to 1. This will ensure the bond is strong enough to take the damage caused by any competition or resentment.
Most importantly, avoid any comparisons between children. Whenever you catch yourself about to compare one child to another, say to yourself “Don’t!”
- Do not say “your brother always does this”. This is obviously very tempting as a parent, and I can’t say I always remember this one. But what you want to tell this child can be said directly without any reference to his brother. For instance, you can say “Let’s each make our bed this morning” instead of saying “Your brother always makes his bed”.
- Even positive comparisons can be harmful (“You swim better than your older brother”) as they can give a child a vested interest in keeping the other sibling down.
- Overall, it is important to not cast kids in roles (for instance, John is the great football player, Annie is the creative one). This is very tempting for parents as we can’t help but notice differences in temperament and abilities between siblings. But this can create bad feelings that lead to fighting or resentment. All children should be able to enjoy any activities, regardless of whether their brother/sister is more gifted. Also, if you start seeing your children as stereotypes (e.g. one is aggressive and the other is the victim), you will continue to see all situations through these patterns. It is best to break those stereotypes early and not to reinforce them.
Encourage sharing without forcing it. For property, do not force kids to share. Recognize the kids’ right to property (for instance, a car that was given for Mataio’s birthday is Mataio’s). But then acknowledge it would be nice if he/she. does share: “If you can work something out with your sister, it would be nice, but that’s up to you”. Perhaps because he doesn’t like being alone, Mataio always wants to sleep with Felix in his bed. We’ve told Felix its his decision whether to accept — and I am always surprised Felix usually does, eventually.
- Encourage cooperation to help develop their problem-solving skills. By putting kids in charge of charge of cooperation efforts, they can start seeing the benefits. For instance, you can say: “Kids, I bought one bottle of bubble soap for everyone. What’s the best way to share it?”
Provide enough separate time with each child for each sibling to enjoy being together. Make sure, as much as possible, that each child gets some time alone with you several times a week — even just a few minutes counts. When spending time alone with one child DO NOT mention the other. This will make this time feel extra special to them. With three kids, we often struggle to find time alone with one, but even going to the supermarket as a “date” with one child can help ensure the kids are happy again to see each other.
