Teach Your Kids to Fight.

“Kid’s, stop fighting!” This may be a common phrase, but it doesn’t make it an effective phrase.

The problem is many of us never learned healthy conflict resolution skills or how to handle our emotions properly. As children, we stuffed down our feelings to keep the peace. Or maybe instead of people pleaser tendencies, we used our power of manipulation to convince Mom to take our “side” and avoided learning to confront the person we’re in conflict with directly. Many parents don’t stop to consider that some sibling conflict is normal and healthy. Instead of choosing to let the fighting make us mad, we should expect children to have arguments! We can use them as opportunities to teach things like cooperation, problem solving, walking away, standing up for yourself, more than one point of view is valid, owning a mistake, apologizing, and working together for a solution.

Do you know the primary driver of sibling rivalry? You, the parent. “The best way to train your children to fight, is to keep getting in the middle of the fights” (Positive Discipline by Nelsen). Interfering often involves labeling who’s right or wrong, imposing solutions you find fair, and enforcing punishments on those who don’t obey. We must focus on teaching skills without becoming the judge, jury, and executioner.

When children fight, do not take sides. Treat them equally instead. When we take the side of one child, we are training that child to adopt a “victim mentality.” When we blame the other child, we are training that child to adopt a “bully mentality.” So how do we put children in the same boat? One way is to offer them the same options: “Do you want to take a break and work this out later, or find a way to solve the problem now, respectfully and without yelling?” Or, “I’m going hold onto this toy until you can find a solution. Let me know when you have one.”

It does no good to tell our children to find a solution when they’ve never been taught any. We can effectively guide them by teaching conflict resolution techniques during disagreements—without taking sides. When conflict is on the horizon we must: 1: be near (for young children we need to be close enough to block hitting), 2: observe to see what skills they need more practice with, and 3: coach them towards respectful communication and collaborative problem-solving.

• Instead of saying use your words, give them the words. “Stop, hitting hurts. You can say to him, “I don’t like it when you call me baby.”” The child will usually repeat this to the offender, but if not, you can say it in his place to model it. Then, to the child who did the name calling say, “It sounds like Johnny does not like being called baby. I know you didn’t mean to hurt his feelings. Could you let him know that, could you tell Johnny, “I’m sorry I hurt your feelings”?”
• Provide prompts: “It sounds like you both want the truck. I wonder if you could take turns?” Or, “Do you have any ideas on what we could do when two people want the same thing?” Initially, you may need to suggest solutions; however, make sure to allow them opportunities think of respectful options first.

It can be hard to sit and listen to our children disagree so practice deep breathing and pausing before you talk. In your head remind yourself, this is developmentally normal, this is not an emergency, I have faith my children can work this out.

Another problem with choosing sides is it invites competition. Why should we minimize competition between siblings? You can’t have competition without comparison and comparing children in different developmental stages is unhelpful at best, while at worst, it can foster unnecessary resentment. Each child possesses unique strengths and weaknesses, and it is far more beneficial for them to learn how to compare their progress to their own previous benchmarks.

Lastly, we must teach basic safety rules like “stop means stop,” knowing when to walk away, and when to ask an adult for help. For example: “I heard Sarah say stop. We listen to stop.” Then help the child stop if they are showing you they need help (aka, not stopping). Sometimes it might just be a fun game, and Sarah may not actually mean stop. It’s important children recognize when to clarify intentions by asking, “Sarah, when you say stop, do you mean stop, or is it part of the game? If that’s the case, please only say stop when you mean stop. What other phrases could you use for fun? Something like, “Oh no, you’ve got me!”?”

It’s a great idea to help kids practice saying “stop” in a firm—I really mean it kind of voice.

If you found this helpful but want a bit more info, check out Siblings Without Rivalry by Adele Faber. Are you enjoying these short parenting articles? If so, drop a comment or give it a like!