When our children are in conflict is what we do, always really the best way to handle the situation ?

Question

When conflicts occur take a step back & watch how you react. Our first impluse is to use authority, to exert control, to nip the fights in the bud. But honestly this doesn't teach children to work out their own differences, instead it teaches them to be totally dependant upon us to resolve their problems, and this dependance is taken into adulthood. Another reaction is to yell at them, "Stop Fighting!!" Rather than listening to see what their real needs are.
To sit back, in laziness is a pitfall in modern day family life. This laziness is the bored irritation that causes someone to yell without listening to attain the required information to help them solve their problems together. Rather than getting dragged into fights with our children,
stop, and mindfully listen, yes listen attentively!
It may be that some bickering gives them the chance to negotiate, and to work things out on thier own. It is o.k. to feel a little irritated.
Our children can teach us Patience & Love !!

Answer 1

I totally agree with you. I am the youngest of 4 and my mom let us work it out ourselves unless one of us got hurt...then the Sh** hit the fan. 3/4 of us kids are married (One divorced) and it taught us how to communicate and negotiate so it helps in our marriages.

Answer 2

i'm not a mom yet i do have 2 little brothers and a million little sister. many of the time i take care of them and that they do combat. I do end the battling immidietly and lead them to calm themselves and ask for each version of their memories, different cases ask them seperatly and on occasion they're the two incorrect or ideal. They comprehend extra helpful to talk first. i will inform you I even have little or no staying power and on occasion do yell at them yet i attempt to regulate myself as a results of fact i've got faith that it somewhat is extra helpful to have one crazyhead than 2 perhaps then there will be dicipline and recognize in direction of one yet another. enable them to talk all they want for words can not harm us basically help us.

Answer 3

You sir are right. Winning a war doesn't solve anything, it just silences an argument.

Answer 4

Unless they really don't like each other and want to inflict Pain, then you had better stop it

Answer 5

I feel like I should be laid back on a couch right now. Is our session over now? How much do I owe you?

Answer 6

u kind of answered ur own question...or state your question clearly what r u trying to find out?

Answer 7

No way Jose.

Answer 8

Ahhh, the happy medium; such a hard goal to reach.

Yes, you made some very good points. However, what do you do when little Sally and little Jimmy are screaming, yelling, and beating the heck out of each other?

It is nice to say that you will listen to the children and try to get them to solve their problems. More parents should do that. But, it is the HARD WAY to do it. And sometimes the ornery little munchkins just want to fight.

Children need to learn how to get along at some point, and they need to learn that Mommy and Daddy aren’t always going to be there. They also need to learn acceptance and empathy (feeling what the other person feels). This would help control one of the biggest problem in our schools; bullies.

I know it sounds trite and minor, but there isn’t a child on earth who hasn’t gone through school age without being abused by their piers (unless they are totally isolated). Children are the cruelest creatures on Earth. We think that cats are cruel when they hone their hunting skills by playing with their prey, but the don’t let it go on for more than a few minutes. Children are willing to torture each other daily for years and years. The solution to the question “Why can’t we all just get along?” starts with bullies and how we as a society handle them. The hardest part with bullies is that you can’t be there to defend the child, they have to do it themselves or they will only face more teasing. I don’t know the best solution to this, I mean we don’t want to raise our own bullies, and surely we don’t want our children fighting each other, even if it is to defend them. What we need to do is to make that situation not come up in the first place. The simplest way to do that is the old saying “May I not judge another until I have walked a mile in their shoes.” When you start answering the question “How would I feel if someone did that to me?” then you are on your way to solving the problem.

Then there is the problem of many children doing an excellent job of training their parents. If you have ever taken care of a baby or a young child then you have played the game of fetch. The baby has a toy and they throw it on the floor so you will pick it up for them. When you do then you pay attention to them, just giving them a reward. So they throw down the toy again and wait for your response. The child would be happy to do this all day long, but most parents get tired of it after the third time. Then the child cries and they wonder why. I heard one parent say that sometimes you just have to let children cry. It sounded cruel and against our instincts, but he was right. Look at that classic case of a child in the supermarket, who wants some candy. The parent says no and to no surprise the child starts to cry. The parent tells them to stop crying or that they will get some candy when they get home. They do anything to try and stop the crying (who hasn’t come across this in the supermarket?). Eventually they either drag the child out of the store or they give in. Doctor Wayne Dwyer offered a solution; laugh. He is a successful motivation speaker, a firm believer in god, and a parent. He would tell the child, “My don’t you look funny. Hey everyone look at how funny my child is, isn’t she a great performer.” The idea here is that the child shouldn’t win and they should realize that they can’t control their parents.

When children fight they sometimes do it to just to get attention. You need to give them the proper amount of attention, but you need to make them self-reliant as well.

For your situation you want parents to listen to what the child has to say, to take the time to feel their situation, to have empathy for them. Too many parents assume that their children aren’t making sense and ignore them. When I was a teenager approaching high school graduation, my father still treated me that way, and it made me furious. When we sat at the dinner table, as a family the children were to be seen not heard. Okay, I wasn’t a genius and I didn’t have a lot in common with a working adult, but it would have been nice if just once he asked for my opinion. I always considered that my father was talking AT me not TO me, and definitely not WITH me. If he had then it would have made both of our lives easier. Don’t get me wrong I am not saying my father was a bad parent. He put up with a lot of stuff, he showed his love for us, and he made an effort to be in our lives, but no one is perfect, and he was never a great listener.

So when you children have an argument you need to listen to them to find out the problem. Just telling them to shut up won’t cut it. Sometimes they are just struggling to get attention, but that is a phase they past through, as all babies do. When a child is in school they are on the road to being an adult, and they deserve to be treated like up and coming adults. They deserve some attention and consideration. Too many parents don’t do that.

Part of it is that there is no legal requirement that a person has to go through before they become a parent. Some people are not qualified to be parents; you only need to look at the rate of unwanted pregnancies to see that. Even parents that do want children are usually not prepared for it. Our society is pretty bad about that. We rely on the church and the family to do that. But, when a parent isn’t ready to have children, those children that they raise aren’t going to do better. It has been proven that child abusers raise children to become child abusers.

The next problem we have is the hangover from the “Me” generation. The hippies may have been social radicals and full of problems, but at least they raised their children as best as they could. The two generations after that were more involved with themselves and didn’t do as good a job with their children. We are seeing the result of that neglect now. Our children are less behaved and too independent too early, they had to be so. I saw a show on modern high schools and couldn’t believe what behavior I saw in schools. One teacher was lecturing while a teenager was climbing over the desks. This behavior wouldn’t have been tolerated in my days, nor would it have been tolerated in the days of our colonial ancestors. Things go in and out of style. We let our children get away with some things that in other times we wouldn’t. But, respect for teachers has been pretty much universal, only modern students show such disrespect. For as long as history teachers have had a respected and important position in our society, and they would never be so self indulgent as to engage in sexual activities with their students, but, we are seeing that now. And it is coming from those teachers that were in or raised by people in the “Me generation.” They care more about themselves than they do about the rest of the world and all of modern society is paying for it. Heaven forbid if these people devote as much time to their children as my generation and previous generations did. These people had children because it was the thing to do, or for selfish reasons. Look at the stereotypical rich mother she has a nanny to take care of her child and almost ignores them. The child’s real parent is the nanny, and then when the child gets older and the nanny is gone the parents wonder why their children don’t have any respect for them.

You reached a very good point, but you need to look just a little deeper. You have seen a symptom and are not afraid to nail it on the head, but you don’t know WHY this problem is so great. I assume you are a very good parent or will make one, because you asked this question, but you need to look deeper for the reasons. I am not saying that this isn’t an age-old problem, it is. It is a problem of neglect and I see that neglect increasing in the last two decades. Hopefully new parents will look at the “Me Generation” as a bad example and pay more attention to their children.

Answer 9

omg thanks i hope pep` can read this its exacly what happens when i fight with my lil sis !!!!!!!!!!!!!! they just say stop fighting but do they ever know what the problem is no!!!

Answer 10

Uhh, thanks for the advice!