Kid’s Fun or Fights…Ugh! 

Is that how you feel when your children are home for summer?  Those little preschool and kindergarteners are home too.  Do the words, summertime and kid’s fights, mean a home filled with constant sounds of arguing or is it a time you use to teach valuable lessons like, how to live with other human beings?

 There Can Be a Range of Lessons Learned

Will they learn cooperation?   Or will it be ‘Mine, only mine’?

How about negotiations?  Or will it be loudest cutting words and the meanest bully who wins?

The kid’s fights present a good opportunity to get the children to learn to fight fair, curb personal attacks, figure out how to resolve differences.

Can you imagine growing up in a home where it’s completely void of any sibling fights?  Some of you would love that, but you’d leave your child defenseless as they grow up.  How so?

Would Your Child Know How To Negotiate, Difuse, or Be Gracious

• Diffuse a personal attack,
• How to lead into a discussion of negotiations,
• How to be gracious if they were in the wrong and wanted to apologize? 

There are a lot of reasons for turning over kid’s fights to them without fear of your children maiming each other.

True that all kid’s fights are not created equal and tempers can run high. That’s where you get to step in when the possible maiming is apparent. 

Read this advice from Adele Faber, co-author of “Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too” (W.W. Norton & Company).

Faber tells a story of a friend whose children were chasing each other through the house — one wielding a kitchen knife and the other toting a hot iron. Break up that fight.

Adele says, “There’s so much to be gained from fighting,”. “They’re learning to assert themselves, defend themselves, compromise, and differentiate between rough and too rough.  Sometimes, having fun pushing and wrestling each other is what they need. How much wrestling do you personally want to do with them?”

Under less heated circumstances, the trick is to determine whether your assistance will help or hinder.

Start With a Question

“I hear screaming,” Faber suggests. “Do you two need help or can you work it out yourselves?”

If they request help, or if fighting escalates, take care to offer help objectively.

“You don’t want to push them into a bully/victim pattern,” she says.

Imagine that!  Who would’ve thought we could have bullying in our homes?  I mean, how could they have learned to do that in our home?

 Ideas to Help Solve Issues

• You can listen to each side of ‘what happened’ 
• Acknowledge what was said and how they felt 
• Tell them you have confidence in their ability to come up with a fair solution
• Invite them to let you know what it is
• Just don’t let them start fighting for you to take one side or the other
• Don’t let them try to prove to you how injured they are

Let me know with your comments and what’s been working for you!