| Jump to bottom |
Ground them to each other
I have two children (adults now). A son and a daughter. They were born 6 years apart, my son came first. Once my daughter was old enough to bicker and fight with my son and vice versa, I didn't ground them (it was more of a punishment for me than them). What I would do is make them sit on the couch together, apologize to each other and make them hold hands for a pre-determined amount of time. It almost always worked as they would eventually start laughing cause the felt silly. I didn't do this every time cause I was afraid it would lose its effectiveness, but when I did use it, it worked.
Ground them to each other
I was talking to my big sis about how I was sick of my kids bickering, and had resorted to grounding them from each other. (Or as the author of the article says, they lost the right to be together) and she suggested that I try grounding them TO each other when they're fighting. It works for us. Sure, they'll argue harder for a few minutes ("look what you did!" "no, you did it!") but then they'll start laughing at the absurd situation and/or they'll team up and co-miserate about the lunatic mother they share. Before you know it, they're playing together like the happy siblings I always dreamed of.
Granted, I only have two -- this probably wouldn't work with 3 or more, because instead of all ganging up on mom, they'd surely gang up on each other.
Thanks for sharing your idea. Over the years, I get some of my best parenting ideas not from textbooks or journals but from other parents. Sounds like this has worked well for you!
Sibling Fighting
As the oldest of five children, raised in a home where screaming, fighting and kicking the crap out of each other was tolerated, I could not tolerate it as an adult.
So, I had an only child. Then fate brought me to a relationship with a man with two children. Three kids are bad news as lines are always drawn 2 vs. 1. And three spoiled 8-10 year olds is much worse.
After 3 or 4 months of tears, fights, yelling, and the like, it finally occured to me; the one standing in front of me crying and tattling, probably started it.
From that moment on, I decided that if there was ANY trouble, they all were in trouble. "Not fair" was the most often repeated line in the house.
It culminated with a fight between the brother and sister, where I went and got the third from his friends house to come home and participate in "ALL in trouble".
From that day on the kids self-regulated and self-controlled. The most common phrase became, "Come on! Please don't get us all in trouble!"
As my dad used to tell me, "You are who you hang out with. If you hang out with criminals, you become a criminal."
My kids learned that lesson the easy way AND the fighting all but stopped.
| Jump to top |
