I had several “aha” moments while discussing (virtually) my post earlier this week about the Easter Egg Disaster. I really appreciated all the comments and thoughts I received on Facebook, via email, and here on the blog itself.
The main issue that came to the surface for me as I was concentrating on this issue is that I have been dealing with the small picture (one fight at a time) instead of the big picture. Because of this, I’d really stopped parenting in the way that has worked best for my family, my children, and myself. I have been dealing with physical fights by way of “reacting,” where as I believe parenting is a full-time and constantly pro-active job in order to gain the kind of results I am hoping for.
One great commenter yesterday on Facebook said
“I know my kids are much younger, but we talk a lot about that you can’t use your body to tell someone you are angry, you have to use words. Yelling, crying and getting upset is part of normal childhood development. When someone hits, punches, pulls hair, etc. I try not to shame them in the moment—they were so overwhelmed, that is all they knew how to do.
When I see them hitting, I immediately breath myself, take one kid away and say matter of factly, that is not okay. You can’t use your body to tell your brother you are angry. Then do the reflective talk ‘you are so upset, he took your toy, you are mad so you hit him.’”
This is, almost verbatim, how I dealt with physical anger with the kids when they were younger. When I felt they were old enough, a separate consequence was added (usually removal from the game and spending time alone until they were calm enough to “fix” the situation). Parenting toddlers is a very intense, every-second involvement sort of job. It’s exhausting. Much of that pace eases as the kids get older. But I found I needed to slip back into my full-court-press intensity level of parenting in order to solve this problem.
My BFF stopped by yesterday. She was discussing the comments on the blog with me and we were comparing the notes of what rang true for each of us and what wouldn’t have worked in our homes. During that discussion, Farmer Boy comes *busting* in the door from the yard. He is all huff and puff, arms folded across his chest, anger radiating. “Shooter is calling me names! I don’t even want to ever play with him! He called me a freak and ran his bike right over my bike! I want to ram my bike right into HIM!”
“Oh, gosh.” I said, “That must have really hurt your feelings. Calling names always feels bad, when you are saying them and especially when someone is saying them to you. Shooter must have been really mad, to do something mean like that.”
“Yeah! He was! Because I broke the stick he was using! I took it from him and smashed it right in half!”
“Oh – gosh. You must have been very angry. Why were you so angry?”
“He poked me right in the eye with that stick! In the eye BALL, not just the lid.”
“Oh no! Are you alright now? If someone is hurt I want to help right away.”
“No. I’m fine. I was mostly just MAD because he wasn’t being careful!”
“So it was an accident? Or did he hurt you with the stick on purpose?”
“It was an accident. But he should have been more careful!”
“Yes, he should have. What did he say when it happened?”
“I don’t know! I was so mad I was screaming and breaking the stick!”
“How do you think that made him feel? (uncomfortable pause) It probably hurt his feelings and made him angry. It sounds like he didn’t have a chance to apologize.”
“Well he shouldn’t have run over my bike!”
“That’s destructive. Why do you think he would do something like that?”
“We were calling each other names. And my bike was blocking the sidewalk and I wouldn’t move it because he was being so MEAN!”
“Sounds like you were both very, very upset and feeling out-of-control. Do you think we should talk this out together?”
“Yes. I’ll go tell Shooter that we all want to talk.”
I felt so much better after that conversation. I was exhausted – I try to block out forget how much energy that level of crushing fury can require. Toddlers are often easier to distract or redirect when their feelings are too intense for them to handle in the moment. Of course, what you are working for is to ‘get to’ deal with what I’m currently focused on – being able to facilitate that level of emotion during conflict.
Eventually they did make their way in…after some more yelling in the yard, followed by one brother knocking the other’s hat off (at my house that is the equivilant of yelling ‘en gaurde!’) followed by more yelling, huffing and puffing, arm crossing and finger pointing.
But I employed the tools I want to use in my family. And I worked toward the goal that is important to me: Learning to resolve conflict. Like another friend commented on the original blog post:
“Kids argue all the time; f’in constantly. They play at arguing to learn how to handle conflicts in adult life. So having a goal of suppressing the conflicts is unreasonable and likely detrimental in the long run. So what’s the benefit? I suppose learning how to resolve conflicts. Certainly dealing with problems non-violently is the most basic.”
As I listened to them duke it out verbally, stepping in to translate or offer sympathy/understanding where it was appropriate in order to facilitate comprehension (DUH, maybe your brother wanted to punch you in the face when you rammed into his bike with yours Gee, how do you think you would feel if someone did that to you? Like punching them? Yes, it would make me very angry too. That’s how your brother felt. I’m glad he didn’t actually punch you.) I felt better about how this is all going to turn out. It is critical to me that they learn to stick up for themselves, but we can do so with words. And equally important to me is the neccesity for reflection – look back at your own actions and think about what you would change if you could go back and do this again.
I did, in fact, pose that exact question to them. AFTER I made them stop for a bit. ”Guys,” I said, “We have to go to Farmer Boy’s session (for dyslexia phonics tutoring) in 30 minutes. Lunch is ready. Why don’t we take time out, eat our lunches, and I promise we will continue to talk about this when we are on the road. It will give everyone a chance to cool off.”
They were still angry while we ate lunch, but once we got in the van everyone truly had cooled down. I hardly had to prompt the conversation after that, and suddenly the admissions were dropping like ripe fruit and the apologies came close behind.
What made me feel good about it was the level of guideance I was giving – it was truly minimal. I was more like being an official in a cage fight debate than a judge. The best part of the entire situation was the moment when, even though they were both furious, I told them I was very proud of them for continuing to discuss their problem instead of trying to hurt one another. It changed the tone and direction of everything. I was keyed back into the critical importance of positive discipline in one of the emails I received, and I’m so thankful I was able to put that into effect during the conflict itself, rather than afterwards. This allowed apologizing and making up to be its own reward when it happened.
And like my BFF said when she left, “You handled that really well (she witnessed the first conversation with Farmer Boy). It was great that you blogged about this, although I think some people got the wrong impression. When you are a very involved parent, you always have a ‘thing’ you zone in on – something you are trying to change or improve with your kids. Right now, this is just your thing. Now you are really getting a handle on the direction you want to go with it.”
If only every day could go so well – but close enough.
Some other very interesting questions came up in various emails – do boys actually fight more than girls? What are we trying to teach when kids fight? When do you, as the parent, step in? Do you, and if so when do you, incorportate punishment? Are your feelings, as the parent, important at all in terms of discussing their actions with the children? And, I found this one intriguing, how does learning to handle conflict as a child effect your adult relationships?
What do you all think? Let’s apply some more group wisdom. (I’m not kidding, I’m expecting AT LEAST as many comments as last time, so pick a question and give me an opinion. Lets talk about this. I’d love to post some of the most interesting comments in another follow-up.)
Disagreements, arguments, fights are okay, hitting is not.
I agree with Jade’s comments, kids fight all the time and it’s to learn how to deal with conflict as adults. I so agree, and adults don’t hit when they argue. I don’t think it is a problem if kids fight, it is only a problem if they hit. I think kids can learn not to hit just like anything else you tell your children is totally unacceptable.
Being mad is not an excuse to hit. It is not being mad that causes hitting, it is a person choosing that action. Are we ever too young to take responsibilty for our actions? What lesson do we teach when there are no consequences for hitting? We all get mad, it is never okay to hit….. spit/floor.
I think the parent’s reaction to hitting is certainly age specific, a 2 year old is obviously at a different level than an 8 year old. If a 2 year old throws food at the table, you will react differently than if an 8 year old throws food at the table. At what age do you draw the line and go to zero tolerance for hitting? No understanding, no excuses, consequences XY?
Should there be more concern and attention given to the “hittee” instead of the hitter? How do you see the rights of a child to defend themselves, or hit back? The child who does not hit back deserves immediate praise and recognition.
I wonder if the assumption that “boys fight more” comes with our expectations. Your children behave how you teach them to behave? Pretty much.
Do boys fight more than girls? I think it depends on what you mean by fight. I do not think that boys have more conflicts than girls. Boys may get into more physical altercations than girls for a couple of reasons (both cultural). Fighting, first of all, is more culturally acceptable for boys. Whether or not we do it consciously, we tolerate it more in boys. Also, people who have fewer verbal skills will tend to act more physically. That boys tend to have delayed/less verbal skills than girls is another cultural phenomenon. So those two things tend to feed into one another, and it is then culturally acceptable for boys to sort things out physically. (Do not take me the wrong way, I do think that there are real differences between men and women, just not in these two areas. Ask me about my sisters sometime.)
I think boys & girls fight differently for reasons both biological & cultural. In general I have found boys to be more physical- they need to move, play, jump more than girls. Girls tend to be more verbal & their conflicts tend to fly under the radar more for that reason. Both these tendencies are reinforced by culture. But I also think boys move on from the physical conflict quicker because there is a release in a way that doesn’t happen in verbal conflict & it isn’t so emotionally damaging as girl verbal ugliness. While sticks & stones do break bones, words do hurt too. I think we have to walk a hard line when teaching kids that not only is physically hitting someone not OK, verbally assaulting them is just as bad.
I think it the end it’s about teaching them to use the “I” statements…. “I feel bad when you…” to communicate their feelings to others.
My daughter breaks the gender boundaries. She is highly active and needs a lot of physical play. She is less verbal in conflict as well. Verbal and physical conflicts occurring between boys are often ignored and they are left to their own devices to ‘duke it out’ on the playground. The disputes I see between the girls are never allowed to become physical which I believe encourages the emotional battles we see more often between girls. Regardless, I must say that I am impressed with the way you handled your kids emotions and the conflict. For myself I struggle with identifying emotions and so I also struggle with helping my children to identify their own. It is my greatest work as a parent.
Surprisingly hard questions to answer, all of them. I have had a lot of kids come through this house and I would say that generally and by a fairly small margin I see more physical fighting between boys. Personalities are more important than gender.
Thinking this over has helped me to solidify a bit what I have felt for a long time. That physical or verbal are just too simple of categories to put fights in. When kids in my care disagree I am much more focused on the root of it. Why? What is each child’s motive? Their intent? What do they want to get in the outcome? They hit or they yelled, neither one is ok or effective. A fight is a fight, what is underneath is really the issue. I have a pretty close to no tolerance for either, but neither keep me worried long. I worry when the root was based in manipulation, malice, dishonesty. When it is a simple as “I wanted”, “He wanted”, I can be simple in my response. “Well, how did that work out for you?” Nobody got what they wanted and everyone is either in trouble or upset.
Consequences/punishment certainly have their place. I do not punish disagreements, they are to be expected. Really, expressing differences of opinion should be encouraged. Who wants their kid to grow up unable to do that. Imagine the life they would have if they just always go along. What I will step in for, and deal swiftly with, is hurting. Verbal or physical, it is hurting and not allowed.
I struggle with how much my feelings should play in to all of this. I am often all out there with my kids. It is who/how I am. I do not see my role as there parent as creating separation from them. They are my kids but also my companions, my playmates, my teachers and sometimes my friends. I think closing off your emotions and not letting your kids see them is in a way dishonest. I do not want to be clinical with them, doling out praise and punishment. I want to grow with them not mold them. Sometimes I am too forthcoming with my emotions. There have been times when more restraint was in order. Seeing it all hang out can be confusing to them and I fear harmful of their assurance that grown ups have a different role, that they can rely on and trust me.
The answers are questions themselves.