The grandkids are fighting!
Every so often the grandkids get into tiffs when they are in my charge. Their fighting pushes my buttons in a bunch of ways—it’s generally irritating, unpeaceful, illogical, and unnecessary. It also makes me want to defend the younger ones or less-dominant ones. Sometimes it’s also a little scary, because one of them gets physical. So, while the kids have so far survived their own squabbles and my interventions—and we all still enjoy each other 98% of the time—I figured I could use a refresh or updating of my peacemaking skills. Turns out the advice in the book I turned to boils down to “butt out” (with important exceptions). And, much to my surprise, it works!
Many readers will remember the 1980 book How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk, by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. A lot of millennials were raised on it. Faber and Mazlish’s 1987 follow-up, Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too, presents the same focus on empathy and respect for children—seeing them as capable individuals with their own, usually reasonable, needs and wants, and their own capacity for resolving problems.
“Butt out” isn’t really an accurate summary, except at the lowest level of fighting, which Faber and Mazlish refer to as “normal bickering.” Their approach to bickering is to simply ignore it, and to “tell yourself the children are having an important experience in conflict resolution.” So when the kids are in their car seats arguing over who is going to get unbuckled first, or they squabble over who gets the microscopically bigger cookie, just breathe.
Tensions are rising
For next-level fights, when tensions are starting to rise, “adult intervention might be helpful.” But not the way I tend to intervene! My way is often to propose and reinforce a solution that I perceive to be fair to each. For example, we have a marble ramp toy that has straight tube parts and more exciting ramp, spinner, and jump parts. When the grandkids argue, get teary, and claim “not fair!” over who has what pieces, my response is to take all the pieces and divide them into piles for each grandchild, distributing basic tubes and exciting bits as evenly as possible. Not terrible, and it does generally calm things down. But what this solution doesn’t do is really listen to either child, or give them practice in solving their own problems. Faber and Mazlish propose the following steps instead:
Acknowledge [the children’s] anger. This acknowledgment takes in all the kids involved. “Wow, you guys are mad!”
Reflect each child’s point of view. In this step, each child gets a chance to tell you their point of view. Then you paraphrase both sides without judgment. “Ellie, you one have two spinning pieces and Sarah has four; Sarah, you need four spinning pieces to build the tower you have in mind.”
Describe the problem with respect. Something like, “Hmm…I see the problem!” (NOT, “Oh, for heaven’s sake!”)
Express confidence in the children’s ability to find their own solution. Here’s the biggest change from my MO. At this step you tell the children, “I’m sure you can figure out how to share the pieces in way that’s fair for both of you.” Then…
Leave the room.
With this approach, each child gets heard and respected, and they get the opportunity to practice their problem-solving skills. The book is filled with examples in which this approach actually worked.
What about the little kid?
I was skeptical, given my family history. In my birth family, there were four children. I was the eldest, my sister two years younger, and then 4 years later one brother and another 4 years and a second brother. My sister very unfondly remembers my terrorizing her (forcing her to play chess with me is one prime example)—but mostly we got along pretty well. But the two of us terrorized brother #1, and our parents did not do enough to put an end to it. So, when I feel moved to protect the underdog, it comes from a place of knowing how much protecting the underdog can need. Faber and Mazlish recognize this concern, and allow for some additional intervention as necessary. But they still recommend that adults let the children be the ultimate deciders about disputes. Their reasoning? Each child has feelings about and reasons for the conflict that need to be respected, and adult solutions almost inevitably side with one child or the other, setting up a toxic “he won/she lost” situation. That and the younger child will eventually learn the tactics of the older siblings, and these will help him or her later in life.
Still, Faber and Mazlish acknowledge, there are times when one child is overdominant, or when a house rule is being broken. For these situations, they offer a single amendment to the basic approach, so that the adult can “…Give Support to the Child Who Asks for it Without Taking Sides.” The change is that at the stage “Describe the problem with respect.” At this stage, the adult also State[s a] value or rule that applies to the situation. For example, after, “Hmm, I see the problem,” you might add, “In this family, we share,” or “In my house, we are careful with toys.” And then go on, as before, to express confidence in the children’s ability to work things out, and leave the room.
If I had had it in my pocket, I could have used this approach to amend the attentive ignoring I described in an earlier post. The problem was that one grandchild got to use an iPad for gaming, while the other was relegated to a less-desirable laptop. My solution at the time was to require the laptop user (who was older and more experienced with gaming) to forfeit use of the iPad with the promise that he would get it next time. Not unreasonable, and it worked out OK, but it was definitely a situation in which the younger one won (round 1 at least) and the older lost. Perhaps together the two grandchildren would have come up with a better solution, and it would have been their solution.
It works!
“Perhaps,” I just said—and I was skeptical about the Faber and Mazlish approaches working. But just hours after sketching a draft of this post, I had a chance to try it with the grandkids, ages 8, 5, and 5. They were playing with our small set of Keva planks—we only have 95 planks, which Keva lovers will know is not very many. After a bit, bellows came from the two 5-year-olds, “Barton [not his real name] wrecked our tower and took our blocks!” Shouted response from Barton, “But I needed more for my structure!” I came in and tried the “…Give Support to the Child Who Asks for it Without Taking Sides” variation. I quickly heard again the two sides and acknowledged the frustration of each. Then I told them that whatever they decided to do needed to be fair to everyone. Then I left. And waited. And what I heard from the other room was negotiation—the two 5 year olds at first disagreed with each other about what was acceptable, but shortly everyone was happily playing. Without my dictating anything or taking sides. No wonder Faber and Mazlish’s work has been so popular!
A couple caveats before you try this yourself.
Caveat #1—these techniques are not intended for more escalated arguing. Faber and Mazlish identify two more levels of fighting. The third is termed, “Situation Possibly Dangerous.” At this level you determine, by asking the kids, whether the fight is real or play, and if play, whether all are consenting to it. You also have the right to get them to stop such play fighting if the chaos level is too much for you (your consent counts, too!). The fourth level is “Situation Definitely Dangerous! Adult Intervention Necessary!” Here, you quickly describe, but equally quickly separate the children and send them to cool off in separate corners, such as their own rooms.
Caveat #2—Sometimes kids can’t find a solution to whatever is causing their disagreement. Faber and Mazlish use an example of two teens in a recently blended family who are resenting each other—a complex problem, and understandably knotty for two teenagers. For parents, the kids’ need for help calls for a family meeting. For grandparents who aren’t full-time caregivers, less formal brainstorming with the kids could be a good substitute.
Also, I recommend consulting Faber and Mazlish’s books for more detail, especially in the case that your grandkids aren’t immediately responsive to these (relatively) hands-off approaches to their disputes. Hopefully, you’ll quickly find it both freeing and heartening to let the grandkids figure it out!