Are your kids fighting… Still? Yeah, I’ve been there too. In fact every parent struggles with this. You’re not failing. You just need a change in perspective and some tools to guide you. So why do children fight? More importantly, why do sibling fight each other?. Today I’m going to be talking Sibling rivalry and how to handle fighting among siblings. What exactly sibling rivalry mean?
According to the dictionary, a rivalry is the state of two people or groups engaging in a lasting competitive relationship. Meaning that in the case of sibling rivalry, there is a high chance that the origin of the fight is the competition for their parents’ love and attention. They want to show their individuality. Children feel they are getting unequal amounts of your attention, discipline, and responsiveness, and may feel their relationship with their parents is threatened the arrival of a new baby. Sibling rivalry is something that we should worry about and do something about. We see some adults sibling that are not in speaking terms as a result of what happened during their childhood. We therefore need to identify sibling rivalry as a situation that needs to be dealt with from the start.
So today, I’m going to give you some practical tips that might help you in this process.
Let’s look at this scenario. When your children are fighting there is usually something that happened just before the fight. One of my favourite questions when the kids i work with come to me to report being hit by another child in the playground is, “what happened just before you were hit?”. So as to understand the cause and effect of the situation. Most times they won’t always give you accurate information about this. But its relevant and important. isn’t it? As you become more observant in your parenting you start to notice what’s happening just before the fight, and would better understand the foundation of the fight in order to better approach the situation. .
A common example is one child is playing with a toy another child comes over, takes the toy from that child and then fight erupts, sound familiar? This happens all the time if you as a parent didn’t see the child come in and take the toy away, you might blame or assume that the child that was retaliating started the fight. There is also a scenario where kids can learn that they can get what they through fighting. So pay attention as a parent so as to determine what just happened before the fight erupted. That will inform you better as to what kind of consequences would be appropriate or what kind of intervention is going to help the matter. Fighting is something that bothers you as a parent, Why? because you have a sense of how you want your family to operate, a sense of what your family culture, rules and expectations are.
Do you have Family rules, values and expectation guide in your family? You need to talk about these rules and make it very clear to your children. It might be better to print these off and put them on the wall so everyone can see them and refer to them as a family
Let’s take a look at some examples of what family rules, values and expectations could be;
1 Respect yourself and others; This has to do with how we treat each other. So fighting obviously is a violation of rule number one but so is negative self talk. And as we talk about this and use these family rules in our discussions as a family, they become more familiar to our children and then that can become part of language we use as we process or intervene with the fights that can sometimes erupt.
2. RESPECT OUR PROPERTIES ; Think back to example, given a child is playing with a toy and another comes and snatched the toys, that’s not respecting our properties and its not respecting the sibling either. Therefore, this rule should help the children understand that it isn’t how properties should be care for. Respecting our properties also goes to taking care of things putting things where they belong and also guide children from vandalism or clutter.
3 CO – OPERATE ; In your family culture there should be an expectation to Co- operation. Although at times we would prefer to do something else other than asked of us, our family value and culture of co-operation would permit us to over look the inconvenience and make us cooperate with our parents and family members
Quick Tips on how to prevent siblings rivalry
*Always pay attention to what your kids are doing, so you can intervene before the situation begins or escalates.
*Celebrate individuality
*Treat your kids fairly.
*Give each child one or one time with you
*Give opportunities for teamwork
*Don’t force your children to play together
*DON’T COMPARE YOUR CHILDREN
My final thoughts;
As a parent we need to always remember that, we can’t always assume that our children know all these things, without being taught first-hand. Therefore, it best to start talking about this and teaching them by example in order to see changes in your children’s behaviour.
Thank you.
Olu
Positive Parenting With Olu 