| Sibling
Smackdowns
Peacemaking in the midst of squabbling.
by Lorilee Craker
PARENTGUIDE NEWS MARCH 2006
Mom! Ezra keeps grabbing my new Bionicle!” Seven-year-old
Jonah’s frustration was bubbling, and I could tell pretty soon my
4 year old and his big brother were gonna have a tussle. Fists were going
to fly, tears were going to flow, and all manner of mayhem and discord
would bust loose from the moorings of our quasi-peaceful home.
Of course I was on the phone with someone work-related, and I just was
not in the mood to put the old Mama Kibosh on a fire.
“Hold on a sec,” I whisper-hissed to the children, whose dukes
were already coming up for a little punching action.
Well, “hold on a sec” is about the most inane thing I could
have said, but that’s what came to me in the heat of the moment.
There was no chance they would pause their scuffle until Mom was off the
phone. Kids rarely seem to grasp the art of synchronizing their smack-downs
with convenient times for the old referees to get in the ring with them.
“I’m sorry, Brad Pitt, I simply cannot speak with you right
now about your intense interest in my co-writing your biography with you.
My children, it seems, are poised to commit double homicide momentarily,
and I must attend to this matter immediately.”
(Well, you know, it might not have been Brad Pitt exactly on the phone,
but the details are a bit fuzzy.) What I do know is the kids were not
sharing their stuff, and it was making them very tense with each other.
It was also making me tense with them. I’m sure you can relate.
One of the heftiest challenges of parenthood is peacemaking in the midst
of sibling rivalry.
I’ve come to realize, though, that the old bro-bro, sis-sis, bro-sis
fighting is actually good for them in the long run. There are golden lessons
to be learned in the arena of the sibling smackdown, morals only learned,
in fact, as sibs engage in that classic endeavor of trying to stick it
to each other.
Basically, when a scrap ensues between your kids, it’s an excellent
opportunity for them to learn to compromise and how to get along better
with just about everyone they encounter— now and in the future.
Of course, we can’t just let our precious progeny run amok as they
attempt to maim one another on a daily basis, can we? Well, sort of. The
key to maximizing the lessons learned in sibling rivalry lies in this
simple, yet oh-so-hard concept: moms and dads must step out of the ring
with their junior pugilists. Because as it turns out, the kiddies don’t
want to commit fratricide after all; they just want some face time with
you.
Pieces of Mommy Are Not Up for
Grabs
Your kids basically want a piece of you, Mom and Dad, not each other,
and when you jump in every time they are busting each other’s chops,
you are doing them a big disservice. You’re not going to be out
there in the big, bad world with them every time they get into an argument
with someone. When you’re not there to scold or ask who started
it, guess what? The little ankle biters will be forced to forge peace
on their own.
“My mother’s favorite phrase when my brother and I were fighting
was ‘If you’re going to kill each other, go do it in the basement,’”
says Cheryl. It may sound a wee bit harsh, but according to experts, Cheryl’s
Mom was on to something brilliant.
Kevin Leman, author of Making Children Mind Without Losing Yours (Revell),
tells parents to give their kids license to go at it, just not two feet
away from where Mom is on the phone or where Dad is reading a magazine
on the couch. “In most cases,” he says, “when you give
children permission to fight, they won’t. They merely stand and
look at each other. Their fighting, for the most part, was designed to
get the parents needlessly involved in their hassles.”
Aha! That little piece of wisdom was a light-bulb moment for me, to be
sure. No wonder a squabble erupts just about every time I’m on the
phone, when seconds earlier the tableau in the Craker casa was the picture
of domestic bliss.
Anthony E. Wolf, the author of Mom, Jason’s Breathing on Me! (Ballantine)
concurs: “The moment an adult becomes part of the equation, any
rational, interested-in-working-on-resolutions part of the child disappears,
leaving in its stead the mindless, raving version whose only interest
is getting all of Mom or Dad.”
Mindless and raving sounds about right, doesn’t it? So we have to
figure out how to get our parent-selves out of the equation, which is
easier than it sounds. “The technique,” Wolf says, “can
be boiled down to saying seven simple words: ‘I don’t want
to hear about it.’” Practice being neutral, and respond to
tiffs in a Switzerland-like fashion:
“Jonah flicked my arm!”
“I don’t want to hear about it.” (Of course, I don’t
want to hear about it, but it secretly irritates me that the big brother
seems to make it his life mission to aggravate his brother.)
“Ezra ripped my library book!”
“That sounds like a problem.” (Inside I am freaking out, but
I decide to handle the little Ripper later on. Taking a deep breath I
restrain myself from engagement.)
“But Mooooommmm!”
“You two can work it out by yourselves. I am going to do some laundry.”
Sounds cold, doesn’t it? But remember, Mom (and Dad), beneath your
chilly exterior beats the heart of a parent who wants their child to learn
how to cope when someone is bugging him. When you let your sons and daughters
fight their own battles with each other, you give them life-shaping gifts.
They learn how hard to shove and when to retreat. Sibs are each other’s
best teachers in the area of relationships. They knock the rough edges
off, smoothing the way for give and take later on in school, the workplace
and the world at large. I’ll cling to this thought next time Jonah
and Ezra are duking it out, and I want to waffle and cave in, getting
myself in the middle. Or when they ruin my phone conversation with Brad
Pitt, calling about that biography.
Lorilee Craker is the author of The Wide-Eyed Wonder
Years: A Mommy Guide to Preschool Daze (Revell).
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