Soothing Sibling Conflict - Part II

Now we're going to talk about stepping in when our children are fighting. I want to emphasize, however, how important it is to support our children in coming up with solutions to their own problems. If we do, they'll have a sense of "I can handle things myself" as well as tools to handle future conflicts, not only with siblings, but also with peers and others -- even through adulthood. And if our children can approach adolescence and adulthood feeling confident in their ability to handle conflict, they're more likely to thrive. I don't know any adult who doesn't wish they could handle conflict better. By lovingly supporting our children and encouraging them to work things out themselves, we give them a great gift.

With this thought in mind, there are still times when you will need to step in:

* You're in the room and observe the conflict, so you know what happened, but your children are too young (not verbal) to handle it themselves or the situation was dangerous or potentially dangerous and warrants intervention from you.

* You're not in the room, so you didn't see what happened, but you can make a guess which doesn't involve ANY assumptions on your part. Only intervene if one child is being hurt or if one child did something potentially harmful to the other, either physically or emotionally.

First, don't ask questions you already know the answer to.

One of my favorite cartoons shows a little girl playing with scotch tape. As the cartoon progresses, the child gets more and more covered with it. Her mother walks in and says, looking at her, "Have you been playing with my scotch tape again?" The little girl looks up at her mother and thinks "Gee, if she doesn't know, I'm sure not going to tell her!"

When we ask our children questions that we know the answer to, we tempt them to lie. Say instead: "Gee, I see you've been playing with my scotch tape again." Then, you can deal with the misbehavior instead of having the side issue of lying as well.

When we're called upon to intervene, we're more likely to diminish sibling rivalry if we follow these steps:

1) Remove the child(ren) from the danger, either by separating them or removing a dangerous object.

2) Give an abbreviated "I" message.

3) Address the feelings and act empathically.

4) Give the child an alternative behavior and a choice.

5) Act upon the choice if necessary.

Let's take the scene described last month and see how this might sound. The mother said: "I walked into my infant son's room where he was lying in his playpen. My 3 year old son had taken all the clothing out of the dresser drawers and piled it on top of my four month old. I was horrified!"

The first thing this mother should do is remove the clothing from on top of her four month old! Once she's sure the baby is safe, she can address the aggressive child by giving an abbreviated "I" message: "When