Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Well, today I'm going to be talking about kids fighting with each other. Specifically I'm gonna be talking about siblings because that's the question that I received.
But everything I'm going to be sharing today also applies to play with peers, play in mixed age groups, any kind of play that children are experiencing together. I recently did an episode that was a little more focused on peer play conflicts. In this episode I'm also going to share from Jonathan Haidt's book the Anxious Generation, which I know a lot of you probably read. It's been a popular book.
I'm actually just finishing it now. I'm a little late to these things sometimes. But he talks about the importance of kids learning through play. Now as a parent though, when your two kids seem to be fighting all the time or maybe you have more kids and they're all fighting more than they're playing contentedly, that can be really, really frustrating.
And that's what this parent's feeling that reached out to me. So I want to try to help her specifically give her some guidance. And then I have this backup from these other sources that I hope will help this parent to trust her instincts more. Not all of her instincts, not the fear based ones, but I'm gonna help her see the difference, I hope, and get some perspective on what's getting in her way and what she can do to help going forward.
All right, here's another she wrote to me in, I believe it was an Instagram message. Hi Janet, thank you for all of your. I've listened to all your podcasts on siblings. There's one dynamic I haven't found an answer to.
We have two kids. My eldest, a four year old daughter, is very able to play happily on her own. I've encouraged independent play, giving her freedom as you would say. She could happily play with her toys and read her books on her own for hours.
My youngest, a three year old boy, is less into playing with his toys and would rather pull things apart, explore things he really shouldn't and get into chaos if unsupervised. Our best answer to that has been to put things away as best we can, lock cupboards that have unsafe items away as much as possible, engage him in what we are doing, but if we give him freedom, he turns to his sister for and she keeps putting amazing quotes. Entertainment. Their constant fighting makes me feel as though I can't leave the room.
I know he also just wants to engage with her. I try my best to not be reactive. I try to sportscast. I try to also emphasize that sharing could be hard, but I can't be in the room with them to do that all day long to be do I separate them?
What do I do? I know I find fighting difficult. I have bad memories of an older sibling not wanting to share, not wanting me to play. So it can be really hard to stay neutral and not let my own reactions play into the dynamic.
I've noticed that when our eldest is at kindergarten and it's just myself and our youngest at home, he's more willing to go off on his own and get into independent play. I try giving each of them one on one quality time with me. I've also listened to the episode where the lady suggests sportscasting. If you are helping one and can hear the other upset or needing you saying once I'm finished with Edith, then I'll come and help you Luca.
But honestly, I can't leave the room and cook dinner without a physical fight happening. I feel exhausted by it really triggered which I try not to act out and parenting them together feels like a choreography. So I wrote back. Thanks for sharing.
I'm sorry you're dealing with this. I'm going to try to respond to you in a podcast if that's okay. Can you tell me a little about how you generally respond to these fights? And she wrote Yay.
If I'm in the middle of something and I hear things getting heated, I walk in calmly, get down to their level, block any hitting, pushing or biting and say I can't let you hurt. It may not help, but if one has already been hurt, I give them a hug and ask where it hurts, then turn to the one that hurt and ask what happened. I give them both a chance to settle and say their version of events. It is usually one will want a toy.
The other might be saying no. Or the oldest might be playing happily and the youngest will walk in and the oldest will be saying no and then act out physically. Or they will happily be playing a game together and I can hear the oldest getting frustrated that the youngest isn't playing the way the oldest would like. So the oldest will push the youngest.
Once I establish with them what happened, I'll usually suggest one takes a turn and they switch. Or I'll ask the youngest if they want to come help with what I'm doing, but then the oldest will ask if they can come too. She put a smiley face. I have to admit I find that so frustrating.
I'm just trying to give the oldest some space to play without the youngest encroaching. I know I'm doing too much suggesting taking turns or orchestrating to being the oldest time without the youngest, but they just don't seem to work it out themselves without violence, which doesn't even get them anywhere on a day. My tolerance is low. I walk in annoyed and get mad that one, usually the oldest but not always, has hurt the other.
I I also seem to have more patience for the younger child as I can get quite triggered myself if the oldest is or the youngest, which isn't fair for them outside of the conflict. I try to let both kids express their feelings, cry, scream when they need to without distraction or shutting anything down. I ask them both if it's hard sharing mommy and daddy with their sibling and reinforce that sharing can be really hard and tell my own stories of how sharing has been and still continues to be hard at times even for a grown up. We try having one on one time with each child on the weekends seems to give them both a good break from each other.
I also work on being really aware of my own triggers and when I'm being triggered, but there are still times being human definitely comes into play and I get frustrated and lose my cool. I'm working on not beating myself up over it. Not easy though. I know you said the youngest doesn't usually mind being pushed around a little by the eldest or having toys taken away from them, etc.
But that isn't the case here. Our youngest yields just as deeply as the oldest and his feelings seem to really get hurt by her actions. So he lashes out. I can't get much done most days without constantly getting pulled into the room they are in by a fight.
It's either constant interruption or too much TV as a distraction, which I don't feel good about. The happiest times are when they play endlessly and happily together in our backyard. That's when I truly feel at peace as a mother watching them enjoy each other and having the space I need to support our home and our family unit. So I have a lot of thoughts about this that I want to share with this parent and any other parent going through some of this.
First of all, I have to say this is one of the most self aware parents I've ever heard from. She's quite intuitive. She really knows what's going on, she's seeing herself and and yet she's gotten caught up doing all this work. I mean, I feel exhausted hearing about all the things she's doing to try to help her Kids get along with each other.
It's like she's got to stop them. She's got to be constantly on them. She's got to comfort whoever might have been hurt. She's got to find out what happened.
Then she's got to give them other things that they can do together. They've got to do all this management of one on one time with the kids, making sure everyone's getting their feelings out in different ways. It's so much managing and it's really not surprising. But this is what I want to help this parent with.
Because it's not fair for her to feel like this, in my opinion, that it's become a chore being with them. I can hear why that's happened to her and that's what I'm going to help her to zoom out and take a look at. First of all, this really, really, really positive thing that she's noticing, which is that she's getting triggered. Knowing that we're triggered is one of the most positive, helpful things that can happen to us as a parent.
Because that's information that will help us to see that there's so much going on here in the way that we're responding that's about us and nothing to do with our children. That's what happens when we're triggered. It's become about our childhood dynamics. And when we bring those into parenting, which we all do to a certain extent, if we can consciously be aware of that and how that's getting in the way of us seeing clearly and that's putting us right into like the fear based projection, really impossible to respond in a helpful way mode, then we can at least work on.
And that's gonna be a different process for every parent. That part is going to be individual. But when we know that that's getting in the way, we can work on how to separate that out from what our children need and from what we're seeing there. Because what's happening here, as this parent, I'm sure knows on some level, is that her children are doing exactly what they're supposed to do, they're wanting to do.
They're eager to do this incredible learning. Especially the younger one. She says he's so focused when his sister's there that he can't help but never play on his own and just want to be with her. So why would he be doing that if he was deeply feeling so much pain around this experience?
This is where we do well to trust our children to trust their instincts. He doesn't want to be abused. He wants to learn how to play with her. He wants to figure it out.
And it's not surprising that this is difficult for them because even though they're very close in age 4 and 3, so I don't know, less than two years at least between them, they're very different in their styles of play. He likes to deconstruct and take things apart. And as his parents said, they kind of get into trouble. And she can read books for a long time, she can play alone with her projects for a long time.
So this is going to be a tough job for them to learn how to get along with each other. Right. It's very challenging. And the amount of learning they can do here that will help them into every social situation in life, it's incredible.
And they're both showing that they want to do it, but it's not going to look smooth because it doesn't. When children are learning, there's conflict. And that's a really important part of this is for children, for their sense of self worth, their social, emotional intelligence, is to learn how to face age appropriate conflicts and work them out. Not in a way that looks neat and tidy to us or the way that we think it should go with them sharing and everything's nice together, but in a way that works for them.
So this is where I want to share this corroboration with you of what I'm saying here from Jonathan Haidt in his book. I'm going to read a passage from it. I hope he doesn't mind. The premise of this book is that this whole generation that came into adolescence around the time when smartphones were available, according to the the research that he's done and he shares a lot of it, it's pretty compelling.
They are having more mental health issues, they're more depressed, they're more anxious. As a generation, I don't really like generalizing, but all of this has risen for children since smartphones were so available to them at a young age. So for girls, a lot of it is social media because they're constantly comparing themselves to these sometimes very unreal images that people sort of manufacture of themselves. And for boys it's more the games, but for boys and girls, it's taking them out of what he calls embodied experiences with other children.
Play. And this is the other major reason for what he calls the anxious generation is that instead of a play based childhood, we've moved to a phone based childhood. And so children are not getting this experience of playing together. And all of the incredible Learning that happens through that, understanding how they fit with their kids, what works, what doesn't work, getting hurt, being in conflict.
So let me just read you this passage. One of the many places in this book he talks about this need children have for unstructured play together. And I know Lenora Shanasi and Peter Gray believe kids need unsupervised play. Totally unsupervised.
So here he says in play, young mammals learn the skills they will need to be successful as adults. And they learn in the way that neurons like best, from repeated activity with feedback from success and failure in a low stakes environment. And then he talks about kittens pounce clumsily on a piece of yarn that triggers specialized circuits in their visual cortex evolve to make them very interested in anything that looks like a mouse's tail. Gradually, after many playful pounces, they become skilled mouse killers.
Human toddlers clumsily run around and climb up, over or into anything they can until they become skilled at moving around a complex natural environment. With those basic skills mastered, they move on to more advanced multiplayer predator prey games such as tag, hide and seek and sharks and minnows. As they get older still, verbal play, as in gossip, teasing and joking around, gives them an advanced course in nuanced non verbal cues and instantaneous relationship repair when something they said fails to produce the desired response. Over time they develop the social skills necessary for life in a democratic society, including self governance, joint decision making and accepting the outcome when you lose a contest.
And he talks about Peter Gray, who defines free play as activity that is freely chosen and directed by the participants and undertaken for its own sake, not consciously pursued to achieve ends that are distinct from the activity itself. So Haight goes on to say free play shapes a developing brain. When parents, teachers and coaches get involved, it becomes less free, less playful and less beneficial. Adults usually can't stop themselves from directing and protecting.
And here's the last little part I want to share. Experience, not information, is the key to emotional development. It is an unsupervised child led play where children learn best to tolerate bruises, handle their emotions, read other children's emotions, take turns, resolve conflicts and play fair. Children are intrinsically motivated to acquire these skills because they want to be included in the playgroup and keep the fun going.
So does this give us a little more respect for what children are doing here and how important it is for us to do our best to stay out of it, to trust them to navigate this? I feel like this parent could look at her situation as the ideal one for Social learning, since their children are so close in age, since they are so different, since they can be safe at home doing this. Now, I believe parents can learn to be there if they can practice just taking interest in what goes on and staying out of the way. And I know, as was reflected in the part I just read here, that's really, really hard for parents, right?
I love that kind of challenge because it's what I do in RAI classes and groups that I've had in my house, actually, when my children were little. It fascinates me to see how children will get into these fights that seem like it's the end of the relationship. They're so intense. And all these ideas come into my head, how to fix this, and, oh, gosh, how difficult this is.
And I see the feelings somebody's having, and it seems so severe, and like, this is trauma. But then you see children come out of this and you realize it's not trauma, it's drama with a D. And it's part of learning. I would never suggest that an older child feels more deeply than a younger child at all.
I don't even like this term that I know is really popular, deeply feeling kids. Because who are we to decide how deep somebody's feelings are? I feel like all kids should be treated as if they're feeling things deeply. But feeling things deeply and being deeply hurt by them are two different things.
And also what we know about young children is they have this really healthy ability to offload the feeling. So that's why it seems like this little disappointment that they have. It looks huge in the way that they're expressing it. It looks like the end of the world.
And it's very hard for us as parents to get perspective on that, right? That this isn't some awful, tragic thing that my child is feeling. Because then what we see is that he goes right back. They want to figure this out, and they have a much better chance of doing that.
And there being far less of these conflicts that, of course, are going to make us riled up as parents. We are human, and we are going to be rattled when our kids seem to be fighting. It happens less when we stop inserting ourselves into it. The help that we're trying to give, that we're spending so much energy on, and it's making everything feel like a chore because we've taken on this overwhelming task.
These parents take on such an overwhelming thing. And it's even more overwhelming because it's not working, because it's not our job. And the more we take on jobs with our children that aren't really ours. The harder it is for them to do theirs and the longer it takes.
But they keep trying. Look at these two. So I don't expect this parent to say, okay, oh well, everything's fine then. That's not what I'm saying.
I know that it's hard, but I think she'll feel so much better when she can start seeing a little more clearly getting out of that triggered fear based perspective. Because she has such good instincts. She sees quite clearly on all these different levels. So I want her to trust some of those that her son really likes to tear it up and get in there.
And I mean, he's into conflict, right? He's into exploring things to the point where they break even. The play that he's having with his sister, how can I break that? And then what happens and how do we get it back?
He's got these incredible instincts and she's got wonderful instincts to stick up for herself. I mean, we're telling Kiss to share. Like I don't even know what that means a lot of the time, what that looks like to us. It just maybe looks like, oh, they're both playing with the same toys together.
But for the four year old who has our play that we're really into. And then here comes Destructo. We can't play with him if he's going to be like that. And this is how he'll learn to play with her a different way.
And they've already tasted this because they do play together well sometimes and outdoors does help a lot of the time because there's just more air to breathe and everything's flowing a little more freely. But they can do this indoors too, and they could do it with you right there if you let them know what you would do by showing them that you're not going to pounce in there and you're not going to get uptight about who's right and who's wrong and who you should stick up for and how to figure this out and all of these jobs that this parent has taken on. So I would love for this parent to be able to kind of rest in that and go, okay, maybe it's all right. And of course we're not going to let children get seriously hurt if we can help it.
But there's going to be a lot of pushing and hitting and all of these emotional hurts and physical bruises and things that go on. The more we can kind of let go of that and trust it. I know it's hard. And I.
There's probably people out there saying, like, she's saying it's okay for kids to do this. I'm glad it's not just me right now because I have all these other people corroborating who have made this the whole focus of their work. It's not the whole focus of my work, but I believe in it because I've seen how it works with my own children and other people's children. I had this funny experience once that I always think of where my oldest daughter was at a friend's, and the parent was there, and I was there.
And this was actually a neighbor of ours, I think. My daughter was 2, and this friend was 3, exactly a year older, and they were fighting with the same toy. And then this other mom, who's a darling woman, and she's kind of this earth mother, and I just, you know, very impressed with her for a lot of reasons. She kept bringing out something else.
Well, here. Oh, how about this? You can have this to one of them. You know, you can have that one.
You can have this. Well, then they both wanted that toy. They both had to have that new toy that was just brought out. And then this happened again.
This brought out. Here's another thing. Oh, here. How about this?
This is cool. And then they both brought that thing. I mean, it was fascinating. And I was watching because I was already starting to practice this approach by then, and I was so interested in what was going to happen, and it looked really gnarly.
Like, these two girls, they hate each other, and they're never going to forgive each other. Well, of course, young children always forgive each other right away. I love that about them. And so after all the screaming and crying and all this stuff, they drop all the toys, no one's interested in any of them, and they run outside and they start playing something else.
I can't remember what. And it was just such a great demonstration of how pointless it is for us to try to fix it with children and how pointless it is for us to try to find a solution that will work when only they can find that. I mean, we might be able to put a band aid on it for a little while with some other idea, but it's not going to ultimately work because they're still going to go back to wanting to figure out that conflict the next time. Especially if these are siblings.
It's even more important for them as people that will be in each other's lives for life, to be able to learn to get along their Way, not our way. Before I go into what I recommend this parent does specifically, I just want to comment on her being triggered into her own childhood where her sibling wouldn't play with her, wouldn't share with her. So what happens is when we as parents do the normal thing of intervening, we're making it harder for both children, especially that one who's usually considered the one at fault, that usually is the older child. That child has even less of a generous spirit towards her brother.
He keeps putting her in this situation where her mom is disappointed in her or mad at her or whatever. That makes it really, really hard to play with someone or to really care for them and enjoy their company because they're just this reminder of how you're the bad guy. And that's why so many parents that come into this and are triggered because their own experience, like in their childhood, parents didn't look into things that much then. They didn't really educate themselves about being parents.
And there were positives in that. But also they would naturally, most parents get really uptight with that older child that they had to play. They had to be nice and, you know, maybe punish them or turn against them. And so they really, really common for an older child to not want to play with their younger sibling for that reason.
Nothing to do with if this is a good person or not, or if they like each other or could like each other. But the parent has made this so hard for them. They feel the rejection of the parent. And no one wants to play with the person that seems to have caused that, the younger sibling.
So we can do something different as parents. We can avoid that by being neutral and not taking sides, even though the little child in us wants to take sides and stick up for that one. When we look at that and take a step back, we can see how for all these reasons, they're learning, they're building confidence, social, emotional health, and just on a practical level that they're going to like each other more if we are neutral. We can try that.
And the way I suggest this parent makes this adjustment is now her kids are used to her coming in, and that's become sort of a focus of the drama between them, is that then mom comes in and we still never got to figure out our conflicts. And now we've got to do it again, again. So they will still want to be calling you in and wanting your attention around this, because that's what they're used to. So this is what I would do.
I would be either in another room or just nearby but not getting involved with them and let them know, you know, if anybody needs me, I'm going to be in there. I'm not going to be watching you guys. I trust you guys. Because here's another thing about trusting kids.
Much better chance they're going to be at their best. When they feel trusted to manage things, they manage things better. Just like all of us, when somebody gives us a job and says, I believe in you. You can do this job, I do it so much better than somebody that's watching me.
That's, like, taking notes, that's correcting me. I mean, even if somebody's standing behind me at the computer, suddenly I can't type. I can't do anything. It's very interesting.
But if somebody trusts me, and if we trust our kids, they have a much better chance of rising to the occasion. So anyway, saying to them, I trust you guys. I know you get in these gnarly fights sometimes and please be good to each other. But if you need me, I'm gonna be over there.
Let them come to you. And then just reflect with each of them. And I would do this with pure play as well. Just reflect.
When they say, she did this, that hurt me, and I'm so sad. Like, oh, gosh, that hurt your feelings. Just acknowledging, just reflecting, not responding. Like, it's the end of the world.
And that's breaking someone's heart. Because what have these two shown you? They're ready to go back at it. They're invested in the drama.
And if you hear something like they're throwing furniture at each other, something that's seriously dangerous, absolutely go in there and say, like, oh, I can't leave the furniture at either. But I wouldn't get into what happened. You did this, you did that. I would try not to go there.
Also, this parent says there's still times being human definitely comes into play, and I get frustrated and lose my cool. Yep, that's still gonna happen. I'm working on not beating myself up for it. Great idea.
Don't beat yourself up for it. But she said it's not easy. So, yeah, we're human. And she's triggered by this, and it is gonna be hard.
And if we're beating up on ourselves, that's not going to help our kids either. I know it's easy for me to say, maybe hard to not do. I would expect that's going to happen. But I would also work on letting go of this and trusting them a little bit more, Just being the lifeguard that comes in there when Something is really dangerous, not the person that helps with the pushes and the bruises and who's playing with what.
And if they're yelling at each other and who's crying, let them come to you for that. And then just reflect. Stay where you are. Don't try to figure out what happened.
Just hear whatever somebody's feeling. And if they want to follow you around and hang out with you, let them do that. But I wouldn't invite that as a way to try to break things up. It's too much management and it's going to wear us out.
And then we're going to be more likely to lose our cool. Right, because we're working so hard. So do less, trust more. Give them this gift of unsupervised play or minimally supervised play.
And I hope this parent reports back to me because I have a feeling if she could even do this a little bit, she's going to experience some surprising things. I hope some of this helps and you can learn more about minimal interventions in my no Bad Kids Master course. There are a couple videos in there. They aren't kids arguing.
Unfortunately, I couldn't get that. But I have interviewed many of those cases and there are some other things where you can get the flavor of doing the smallest thing. We love our kids so much. We just want it all to go well for them.
Right? But what that does is hinders them. It hinders our development, hinders our growth, hinders our learning. And I know none of us won't do that.
Thanks so much for listening. We can do this.