Child; wailing on top of his voice..”Mum, mama, mummmyyyy!” Mother; with panic in her voice and at the same time fidgeting to run to the direction where the wailing is coming from… “What?”
Child; catching his breath..”This one is pointing at me. He is even giving me an ugly look. He pulled his tongue out on me and he wants to beat me!”
Now, that is tiring. I mean; listening to all the reports from siblings who rival over anything and everything, is TIRING! Being able to accommodate fights from children who sometimes run to you as their court, demands some kind of special patience from you as a parent.
Children fight! That is unavoidable. How we parents handle the situation is the challenge. Children disagree on how to play together. Some want to be the “bosses” at every circumstance and their siblings who may not enjoy being subordinates all the time could be resistant and not in acceptance with the “boss’s” instructions.
There’s this advert I was watching on TV recently and a bully big brother picked on his sibling at every given opportunity. He stepped on his toes while the family was having supper and the young brother hit him with his elbow. The parents see the elbow but they don’t see the toe stepping part because the fight starts under the table.
What do I learn from this? We have to look beyond the fight that’s right in front of us. Some children are bullied behind our backs and we may not see the harassment they get from the smarter or older sibling. We have to pay attention to how each fight starts and before we judge in favour of one, we need to scrutinise the root cause of these quarrels that seem endless. As we make a judgement on who should stop steering these “wars”, we must be careful to know how, when and by whom it all started.
I make the worst judge and when my children fight, I end up telling each one of them to change a certain bad behaviour that may have contributed to the fight. I don’t point fingers but instead I caution them to be aware that they can’t avoid each other and that they must find means of living together. If you are terrible at solving sibling rivalry like me, don’t play deaf! Yes that’s so easy to do, escape the whole fracas by giving a lesson of sorts to the fighting duo.