When children fight

Why do siblings fight with each other? I mean, I wouldn't start hitting someone as a form of fun. I'd rather be reading "Heat" with a nice cup of tea. Are kids just supposed to be violent and irrational, or what?

Nope, they just need a whole lot more help than they tend to get from their adult carers. This is why they fight:

1) not enough else more interesting to do,
2) not enough other nice people to do it with,
3) being upset or annoyed about something, not having that problem solved already,
4) thinking that it was Johnny's fault I got hit, instead of that it was Daddy's fault because he's the one who just upset Johnny by doing something bad, or neglecting to do something good, for him.

Where do kids get the idea that anger is all their (or their sibling)'s fault, and solvable by hurting other people?

Parent: "You should not have done that, Johnny! You had no reason to be angry!"

Forget upsetting negative moral condemnations of kids' behaviour. Offering better solutions instead is the right way. And that means providing better solutions, 99 times out of a hundred, before the anger gets violent.

Talk about rights and wrongs, better and worse things to do in different situations, and ways of ensuring that certain kinds of problems don't have to come in the first place, often and in a friendly, helpful way. If your moral judgements are accompanied by disapproval, bad feeling and blame, then your child will not learn about the ideas, he will be too busy feeling hurt and horrible and dealing with that instead.

Coercion and growing ideas are mutually exclusive. Accompany your moral teaching with force, and you wipe the whole thing out. If kids are fighting, get them something else better to do instead. Watching on the sidelines and joining in are equally reprehensible, unless it's a fun goodwill fight, which is very easy to tell from an angry one.

Before we blame our kids, we should ask ourselves why they haven't felt able to make better choices. Fighting is not fun.

  posted by alice @ 9:52 AM

 
Soap gets in your eyes...

Down here I was given some advice by Camille about possible things to do when a small person (who you don't know) is getting distressed in your vicinity.

Here's a practical application:

Today I met someone in the showers at the local pool. Her mother was shampooing her hair, but every time she went under the stream of water it trickled down on her eyes, she squeaked and came out of the shower for her mother to clean her eyes with the towel. When she'd finally had enough of this palaver and tried to get out of the shower, her mother said "have another go because there's still soap in there and we'll have to get it out at home". Level of distress rose quite fast.

So I leaned over and said "do you want me to help get the shampoo out of your hair without it going in your eyes?" and she nodded, and went under the shower and I pushed the water backwards over her forehead with my hand. No problem, soap all out. Smiles and friendliness all round (I think - hard to tell when you haven't got your contact lenses in).

It was an example of not-bad-at-all parenting, with a mother trying to explain what's going on and trying to stop a horrid situation (by being poised with the towel to wipe away the soap), but maybe needing to dream up some other solutions with her child. Here's some other things I thought of for keeping soap out of eyes:

1. tip head right back so all the water trickles away from your face
2. roll up a flannel ( = washcloth) like a sausage and use it as a dam to stop the soapy water getting on your face
3. push water back out of face with hands as it drips down
4. Oh sod it, don't wash your hair, what does it matter?

The other thing that occured to me was that while there was no tension involved in me touching a total stranger after asking permission (she was happy and so was her mother), it might be less socially acceptable for a man to start stroking strange small people's foreheads in showers... we live in a sexist society.

  posted by emma @ 9:26 AM