24 Apr What can you do when you kids are constantly fighting?
It’s so stressful hearing my children constantly fighting with each other. How do I cope and get them to stop? Nigel Latta has some suggestion
Take a firm and non-negotiable line. I don’t favour the UN approach of endless negotiations and hollow pleas; I think tactical drone strikes are far more effective.
These are my rules:
- If you fight and it gets to the level where I become annoyed (bearing in mind that said level may change without warning), you will both be punished.
- If anyone hurts anyone else, no matter the level of provocation, you will be punished.
- If it’s obvious who started it, that person alone will be punished.
- If it isn’t obvious and there is doubt, everybody gets punished.
- Punishments will include either:
a) being sent to your room until I no longer feel annoyed, and/or
b) losing the thing that you were both fighting over.
Your golden rule should be: don’t make your problem my problem.
If the only outcome for them is that you get stressed, they will fight ceaselessly. If you make their problem their problem, they’ll stop – or at least they won’t do it as much.
Fighting is normal – all kids do it, as do all kittens, monkeys, and probably baby snails too. The trick is not letting that stuff do your head in.
Your call to action needs to be when their fighting makes you feel annoyed:
~you first ask politely,
~then you warn,
~then you enact some meaningful consequence (the ‘modern’ word for punishment).
The truth is they won’t stop fighting until the costs of fighting (banishment to rooms, losing the object that was the centre of conflict, turning off the TV, removing the computer, etc.) outweigh the benefits (fun, mayhem, etc.).
When you do that, you’ll find peace will return.
Nigel Latta, Clinical psychologist, author of The Modern Family Survival Guide
