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Duncan and Amelia’s constant fighting has been driving me crazy. I have always hated hearing other people’s children argue, and until recently I counted my blessings that I didn’t have to deal with that. Amelia is almost five years older than Duncan (my dissertation was our phantom middle child). Only children don’t fight, because they don’t have anyone to fight with. Amelia was smitten with Duncan from the moment she met him, so we were 7 or maybe 7 1/2 years into parenthood without having to deal with fighting. Well, then the honeymoon ended. Duncan got old enough to be annoying and Amelia isn’t quite old enough to ignore that. Now we have constant fighting whenever they’re together.
Today I tried something new. I gave them a choice: they could sit together holding hands for one minute or they could go to their rooms for 30. If they wanted to be able to play after only one minute, they both had to agree to holding hands and sitting together. Now, when I have heard others suggest similar solutions for bickering, I didn’t think much of those suggestions. However, I knew that what I had tried so far hadn’t worked at all, so it was time to try something new.
So far, so good. They didn’t love it, they didn’t think it was fair, but it was just goofy enough, and just barely doable enough (I let them have up to three tries on each occasion) that they were able to do it. And after they had successfully sat holding hands for one minute, the fighting mood had broken. I tried having them sit in silence, and I tried having them sing (e.g., Love One Another, There is Beauty All Around).
We’ll see how it goes tomorrow.
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