Green & Plenty: how to stop sibling fighting

Don't get me wrong, I feel really lucky to have 3 boys all close in age. I look forward to them being best friends for life, but all the fighting drives me crazy...and the baby isn't even there yet! Below are my favorite solutions from the experts to stop sibling fighting between my 2.5 and 5 year old. Hopefully I can remember and calmly implement these when in the trenches...

1. Do give lots of individual attention. Kids who feel loved and accepted for who they are will be less likely to fight. I have seen sibling rivalry dramatically diminish in most households where parents commit to "special time" with each child.

2. Keep tired and hungry kids away from each other and avoid situations that create fights. For instance, separate kids in the car as much as possible. See if you can help them work together(“It can be hard to sit in a car for so long, and when you get grumpy, it would be easy to take it out on the other people in the car. Can you two be a team? You can work together to come up with ways to make everyone in the car feel happy!")

3. Teach your kids basic negotiation and problem-solving skills guided by the concept of win/win: Taking turns, Dividing a treat (one person does the dividing, the other picks the first piece), Trading, Sweetening the deal (“We play your game first and then my game for longer”).

4. Enforce standards of respect in your home: "We don't call people names or tolerate meanness in this house. We treat each other with respect." Set up an expectation that if anyone forgets themselves and calls a name or is disrespectful (this includes adults!), they need to “Repair” the damage they've done to that relationship. (Do a favor, help rebuild the tower you knocked down, make a card.) This doesn't mean your kids can't disagree. It means that there is always a way to stay respectful, even if we're angry.

5. Help them be a team. I'm not a fan of rewards in general, but I do look for every opportunity to reward teamwork between siblings. You might try to make your kids partners in avoiding fights with each other by setting up a Cooperation jar and putting a coin in it every time you observe the kids being nice to each other, including playing without fighting. Take one or more coins out whenever the kids fight. (If they express feelings in an appropriate, respectful way, they gain coins, especially since that is so hard for kids.) The kids get to decide (together) how to spend the money.

This system worked for getting my kids to stay in bed all night. They got a quarter each time they slept in their own rooms through the night. It took about 10 days and now we're good 9 out of 10 nights!

6. Teach both kids healthy self-management techniques, which can be a challenge. Most of us never learned to regulate our own emotions as kids, so these are skills we don't necessarily model so well. Sometime when they're calm, make a game out of working with your kids on a list of healthy ways to handle anger. "Play the drums." "Write in your journal about how angry you are." “Dig a hole in the back yard and bury your angries.” “Breathe and count backwards from 10.” “Get a grownup.” "Put on headphones and dance to loud music." "Kick the soccerball." Be clear in that discussion that hitting, scratching, and pinching are never appropriate things to do to other people. Post the list on the fridge, and refer to it when you're mad, in front of them, to model using it.