The sibling fighting in our house has become ridiculous.\u00a0 My girls fight over EVERYTHING.\u00a0 They obviously argue mostly over toys but they also manage to fight over who is going to sit closest to me, who is going to stand on the black stool (versus the white one), who is going to unlock the door for me, who is going to use the toilet first\u2026the list is never ending.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve heard of many parents during these kinds of arguments locking their children in a room together until they work it out.\u00a0 Sounds like a great plan (mommy free time?), unfortunately my children are too small to actually be able to compromise and come up with a plan on their own.\u00a0 Even if they were able to \u201cdiscuss\u201d the problem, I\u2019m sure the solution would be Honeybun\u00a0dominated (and would probably still result in Sugarplum screaming).<\/p>\n
My usual rule for when they fight over a toy is taking the toy away.\u00a0 If they can\u2019t work it out, then no one gets to have it.\u00a0 This is great for things, but the times when they are fighting over space or doing a job, there is no easy way to take it away completely so I\u2019ve been trying to come up with new ways to settle the arguments quickly.<\/p>\n
Whenever possible, I make them take turns.\u00a0 If Honeybun\u00a0got to choose or do a job last time, then this time Sugarplum gets to.\u00a0 But it\u2019s not always so easy to remember who picked last time and is useless in a new situation.\u00a0 So I\u2019ve started using different games\u00a0 to keep me from having to choose who is right or wrong and to make them feel like they have a bit of control over the outcome.<\/p>\n
I started with the \u201cI\u2019m thinking of a number\u201d game.\u00a0 I explained to the girls that I was going to pick a number in my head between 1 and 10 and tapped my head to indicate I was thinking about it.\u00a0 I asked Sugarplum to pick a number between 1 and 10.\u00a0 She tapped my forehead and said \u201cthat\u2019s my number\u201d.\u00a0 I finally got her to pick a number and then Honeybun.\u00a0 Before I told them my number I explained that whoever is closest would get the black stool and made sure they both understood whoever was farthest would have to move to the white stool. \u00a0Honeybun\u00a0was closest and amazingly, Sugarplum moved without a fuss.<\/p>\n
I tried the same game the next day and again Sugarplum tapped my head instead of picking a number.\u00a0 I realized the game was more than she could handle so luckily we had a deck of cards close by so we drew cards.\u00a0 Sugarplum, Honeybun\u00a0and I each took a card and whoever got closest to mommy\u2019s card got to sit next to mommy.\u00a0 It worked pretty well.\u00a0 I used it as math practice and made Honeybun\u00a0figure out which was closest.\u00a0 While not as smooth as the pick a number game the day before, we did eventually come to an understanding of who had won and why.<\/p>\n
I also did the \u201cbehind the back\u201d choice today.\u00a0 The girls were fighting over a puzzle. \u00a0Of course, there was another nearly identical puzzle in the other room.\u00a0 I had Honeybun\u00a0bring me both and I put one in each hand.\u00a0 I had the girls turn their backs to me and I put my hands behind my back.\u00a0 I had Sugarplum choose a hand and gave her the puzzle in that hand and Honeybun\u00a0the other.\u00a0 Amazingly, no arguing!\u00a0 They both took their puzzle and went off to work on it.\u00a0 Sugarplum did stop at one point and say \u201cbut Mommy, I wanted that one\u201d and I told her when she was done with hers she could maybe trade with Honeybun\u00a0and that was the end of it.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m sure the fighting will continue and I\u2019ll need many more mommy tricks in the future but for now, these few \u201cgames\u201d are working really well to help stop arguments without me having to be the \u201cbad guy\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The sibling fighting in our house has become ridiculous.\u00a0 My girls fight over EVERYTHING.\u00a0 They obviously argue mostly over toys but they also manage to fight over who is going to sit closest to me, who is going to stand on the black stool (versus the white one), who is going to unlock the door […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[284],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-home-school-zone"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10055,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496\/revisions\/10055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}