Siblings Without Rivalry by Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish

Author:Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish [Faber, Adele & Mazlish, Elaine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2012-03-14T04:00:00+00:00

SIX

When the Kids Fight

How to Intervene Helpfully

Finally. Fighting.

“Is this really it?” a woman asked. “No more postponements? Because I’ve been waiting for this moment since our first meeting.”

“Don’t tell me your children are still fighting with each other!” I said in mock horror.

She was in no mood for joking. “Not nearly as much,” she said earnestly. “I’m doing a lot of things differently and they’re definitely getting along better. But whenever they do fight, I still have trouble handling it.”

“What are we usually told to do when the kids fight?” I asked the group.

“Stay out of it,” several people answered almost in unison.

“What else?”

“Let them work it out themselves.”

“Why?”

“Because once you start interfering, the kids will always want to involve you.”

“And, if you always settle their arguments for them, they’ll never learn to settle things themselves.”

“So,” I said, “you all seem to agree that it’s a good idea, whenever possible, to ignore the bickering and tell yourselves that the children are having an experience in handling their disagreements.”

The woman who had opened our session was not satisfied with my summary. “I’m not talking about a little bickering,” she said. “I’m talking about screaming and cursing and throwing things. I can’t ignore that.”

“That’s exactly what we’ll be discussing tonight,” I said, “how to intervene helpfully in the children’s fights when we feel we must. But first I think it’s important to take a moment to ask ourselves whether there might be any reasons for the fighting that we haven’t mentioned until now.”

I had posed the question to a group of experts. Their answers came in rapid succession:

“My daughter fights over property—whatever she has is hers, and whatever her brother has should be hers.”

“Mine fights over territory—‘Daddeeeee, he put his foot in my room!’”

“I know I used to fight with my sister to get my father to take my side, to prove that he loved me better.”

“This may sound far out, but I think sometimes siblings of the opposite sex will start a fight as a way of dealing with sexual feelings they might have for each other. It’s one way to maintain a safe distance.”

Several people raised their eyebrows, but no one disagreed. The list continued to grow:

“Sometimes kids pick a fight because they’re mad at themselves and have no one else to let it out on.”

“Or because they’re mad at a friend and can’t punch him so they punch a brother.”

“Or because a teacher yelled at them at school.”

“Or because they have nothing better to do. It’s that way with my son and his little sister. He devils her out of boredom. He says, ‘Do you know your legs are going to fall off? . . . Do you know when you were born you were a puppy?’”

“My son starts up with his little brother so he can feel like a big shot. Once while he was teasing him, I said, sort of sarcastically, ‘Boy, it’s fun to bug your brother, isn’t it?’ And he answered, ‘Yeah. It gives me power.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.