Sibling Fights and Ditching the Detective
arun on Jun 27 2008 at 5:00 am | Filed under: conflict & communication, parenting, unconditional | Click here to go HOME | or find out about SUBSCRIBING TO THE PIT |
Sibling fights… There are those who intervene at the first sign of trouble. Then those who just “let them work it out” and don’t intervene at all.
My current approach is to intervene when I think I can be of some assistance by facilitatating rather than solving. It involves a clear intention if not a difficult balance – to help empower my kids rather than create a dependency on my involvement.
So rather than jump in and “rescue” them as is my gut reaction, it takes immense self control to help them work things out for themselves. Part of this of course involves knowing when to stay out of it altogether, which I still often miss. But it might also involve “holding a space” by being calm, accepting and compassionate… its a little known fact that such qualities are actually contagious, so by bringing them to the situation I am almost inviting my children to be a part of it.
It does not always end nicely though and some times they get physical. Z tends to view the best defence as being the best offence, so will hit if he feels threatened of uncomfortable. M will sometimes get frustrated or annoyed at a ruined project or plan and will strike out also.
At such momens I will definitely intervene but again I try to be aware of my intention and how I enter the situation.
The other day when I came into the play room and saw Z crying and M looking angry I could have guessed that there had been hitting, but I managed to avoid saying “what happened?”
Instead I held and cuddled Z, asking where he was hurt (information I needed to ensure that he was ok physically). Then I said to both of them, “you guys must be having a really hard time… can I help you?”
My offer was one of connection and concrete support and it was sincerely made to both of them.
It has been so empowering for me to let go of blame. I do not really need to know what happened or who hit who first. I have no intention of being a detective, a cop… let alone a judge or punisher in my family.
They were both hurting in different ways and they both needed love. Sometimes I would help facilitate some issue that was behind the conflict, other times they would choose to take space and resolve it themselves later on. In this case it involved M angrilly going to her room… then ten minutes later sheepishly inviting Z to join her in there and play a game.
Im sure my approach will develop and change as my young children develop and change… but right now it feels right.
I have 4 older children than you and I tend to do the “let them work it out” approach. It works well generally although occasionally the younger ones need some help.
I like your idea of a no blame approach though.
I love watching my kids relationship blossom without corruption from me. A huge part of it is knowing when to just leave them alone to sort it out. If they need my help they ask… “MUM Jimi is going crazy now I need you now” or “we are working it out ourselves with our bodies mum”.
I know what you are saying is so true, and it really works. I found it incredibly useful as a teacher, but find it hard to stick to with my own children. It doesn’t seem to be culturally natural for me and when I’m stretched out, it is particularly difficult to be compassionate rather than irritated. However, my irritation usually relates to my sense of responsibility regarding having to ’sort out’ something I have little control over (after all, I’m in someone else’s business). If I could get, once and for all, beyond feeling responsible for sorting their relationship and fights … then maybe I could avoid blame and unhelpful interventions!
Another part of it for me is an irrationally aggressive gut reaction to seeing spiteful aggression! I am so down on ’spite’ and resentment. I’m outlawing feelings … and that makes no sense at all! I wonder why it is that spite/resentment/grudge holding press so many emotive buttons for me? Ironically, my reaction to spite, resentment and grudge holding subtly (or blatantly!) takes the form of … yes, you guessed it … spite, resentment and grudge holding! Maybe I need to learn to accept these feelings, and be more compassionate to myself and my children when they appear. After all, it doesn’t feel nice to feel those things … so compassion is surely due. Let the bad feeling out and the good floods in. Deny the bad feelings and they just seem to grow in the dark.
Thanks for his post Arun.
[…] have reproduced, here, a comment to Arun’s post on dealing with sibling fighting, as a reminder to myself to work on what I worked out whilst reading his post about careful […]
This is so true! I was truly puzzled whysometimes when I “helped” my kids work things out I made things worse, and sometimes when I didn’t things got worse and I felt neglectful. I’m just starting to see that it is subtle and requires me to be in tune with the situation and their relationship. Much of the time I still get it wrong, but I’m learning:)