The Lazy Genius Podcast - #216 - Navigating Siblings Who Fight

Episode Date: June 28, 2021

Today, I’m sharing ten things to help you navigate siblings who fight. To give you some context, I am not an expert. I’m only a mom. I am not a child psychologist or a parenting expert. I am in the thick of parenting with two boys who are 11 and 9 and a five year old daughter. It’s not like I’m seasoned in this. What I’m sharing today is simply what has helped in my own experience that is also informed by what I’ve learned from parenting experts but mostly my own therapy.   Helpful Companion Links Check out The Lazy Genius Way (affiliate link) if you’d like to read more about how I use Lazy Genius principles every day. Episode 182: Loving People You Disagree With  Episode 40: The Lazy Genius Navigates Family Tension Loving Your Kids on Purpose by Danny Silk The Soul of Discipline by Kim John Payne My podcast I co-host with my sister Hannah on Patreon Download a transcript of this episode.   This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Amazon presents Laura versus Fruitflies. Swarming your fruit and terrorizing your kitchen, these little freaks multiply at a rate that would make a rabbit say, yo. Chill. But Laura shopped on Amazon and saved on cleaning spray, countertop wipes, and fly traps. Hey, fruit flies, your baby boom ends here. Save the Everyday with Amazon. Hello there. You're listening to The Lazy Genius Podcast. I'm Kendra Adachi and I'm here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Today is episode 216, Navigating Siblings Who Fight. Okay, so if your podcast app is automatically playing the next episode and you do not have kids and you're like, oh wait, this is not for me, you could very well be right. However, I do think that some of these principles are helpful.

and all kinds of relationships, they just are the most important ones for parenting kids who are at each other's throats. So if you don't have kids, though, and you're like, no, I'm good. I would listen to either episode 182, loving people you disagree with, or episode number 40, The Lazy Genius Navigates Family Tension. Both of those are really great adjacent listens to today's episode. For today's episode, I'm going to share 10 things to help you navigate. navigate siblings who fight. Now, to give you some context, I am not an expert. I'm only a mom. Okay. I am not a child psychologist or have any sort of parenting expertise beyond my own experience. And even in my own experience, I'm like in the thick of parenting right now. I have two boys who are 11 and 9 and a 5-year-old

daughter. So it's not like I'm seasoned. It's not like my children are out of the house or anything. We're still in it. That feels like important information to share. What I am sharing to today is simply what has helped me in my own experience that is also informed by what I have learned from parenting experts and also my own therapy. A lot of what I share here is what one would call trauma informed, right? Therapy informed, meaning I have experienced trauma in my own life and I have done a lot of work in not being overwhelmed by that trauma anymore. This episode isn't about, is not about my trauma. It's not even that heavy of an episode actually. But I'm often asked about my background, my education, my experience, kind of like what gives me the right to say

what I say. And my right, honestly, is that you allow me to, is that you listen. You've given me permission to say these words, but you can apply them in part or in full or not at all, right? that is totally up to you based on what matters to you. And a lot of my perspective and teaching is based on what I've learned, though, about how to be a person from people who are very qualified to talk about being a person. So that's where I'm coming from today. I am not an expert, but this is what I have learned from experts and also my own experience. So I have 10 thoughts to share with you today.

10 things that can help you navigate your fighting kids. And it's likely that the fighting could be a bit higher right now because it's summer and most kids are around each other more. But whatever you're listening, I hope at least one of these perspectives helps. Now, to set up the 10 things, it is important for you to know what matters to me, right? If you have different priorities in your relationships with your kids and you have a different perspective on parenting than I do, then these things might not all land the same for you. And that's okay. That's why I want you to know my priorities, right? It's important. So for me and my husband, cause, we want our kids to feel emotionally safe, to learn how to say what they need, to care about the needs of other people, and to be kind. We also want our family to be connected.

That's very important. I read a book years ago called Loving Your Kids on Purpose by Danny Silk. And while I am not saying I endorse every single word of that book, because honestly, I'm a different parent than I was when I read it 10 years ago, and I don't remember every detail. But the main message of that book is that our goal is not to raise compliant children. Let me say that again. Our goal is not to raise compliant children. Maybe the way that we were parented would make that perspective of being a compliant child, kind of the default, right? We want to be a compliant child. We want to raise polite, well-behaved kids who do what we say. But really, the point is to stay connected to them, to have a, as Danny Silk calls it, a heart connection with them, no matter what

they do. So I will put a link to that book and the show notes along with another parenting book that I will most likely reference later called The Soul of Discipline by Kim John Payne. FYI, loving your kids on purpose is from a Christian perspective and then the soul. of discipline is not. Okay, so all that to say, that is what matters to us as a family. We want to stay connected to our kids and we want them to feel emotionally safe, to say what they need, to listen to the needs of others, and to be kind. And all of that is more important than compliance. If that sounds good to you, then these 10 perspectives will likely be helpful. Okay. Number one, you are not a referee. That's where a lot of the frustration,

lies, doesn't it? You feel like you're constantly refereeing your children, breaking it up, blowing whistles, calling fouls, enforcing rules. There's just no heart in it, right? And it's really exhausting to do that. I actually remember watching a documentary about NFL referees, particularly one of my favorites. I do have a favorite referee. That's fine. Gene Sterratory. And he said that when he referees a game or did, he's retired now, it doesn't matter. He often asks at the end who won the game. He does not know who wins the game until it is over and he is not refereeing anymore. He is not engaged in the actual game at all. He's totally removed from the emotion or the story of the game that's being played because he is focused on upholding the rules. I think that can be true of us as parents sometimes.

refereeing by nature is detached, right? It is a detached thing. It is unemotional. It is disconnected. But we're parents. These are our kids. We love them and we want to be connected to them. But the very posture of a referee, it does not allow for that. So maybe shifting your thinking from being a referee will help. Sometimes it's helpful to think about it, like being a coach instead, if you want to stay with that sports analogy, you are there to teach and empower and remind and encourage and celebrate. You are a kind, inspiring, connected coach. That's been a helpful reframe for me over the years. I'm not a referee. Number two, your involvement in your kids fighting will change as your kids change. The way that you handle kids' fighting when they're four is probably pretty different than when they're 14. I think that is really

helpful to remember as a parent, especially if you have like me, I have a kid who's almost in middle school, another who's getting older, but he's still young. And then an actual young kid who, like, she can't write the letter E with less than seven lines, right? They're all different. It's all different. Kids' brains are developing at different rates. They're at different stages. Their personalities will impact that, the different kids' abilities to handle stress and cope and name their needs, like all of that plays into how they handle fighting and how you might interact with them. I mentioned the book, The Soul of Discipline earlier, and it's broken that book into three parts based on developmental stages of kids. It's so helpful to see what approaches work better

or worse, depending on how your kid is seeing the world based on how old they are. So take the pressure off like this all or nothing thing. Take that off the table. Nothing is going to work forever and even work for the same kid. Number three, try the phrase, do you need my help? So this plays into the referee idea a little bit, but if you are refereeing, you are not there to help. You're there to break it up, right? If you hear your kids playing and then that playing starts to escalate and you know that things are about to go down,

Like, we all know that moment, right? Your tendency might be, like mine is often to scream from the other room, hey, y'all watch it in there or something, you know. Now, whenever I say something like that, one of the kids immediately starts defending his own position. Or they might both feel like they're doing something wrong. And so they're, you know, defending what they're doing or they might feel like they can't navigate this on their own because I'm yelling like fix it. get it together. Whereas if I hear the escalation and instead I like pique my head in the room and I like very kindly say, hey, do you need my help in here? It gives them the chance to name if they do or to name if they don't. And it doesn't frame their escalation in a negative way, right, in a like an accusatory shaming way. It is not a rule to keep necessarily. That's not what we're talking about. Instead, what you're doing is the parent and saying, hey, do you need my help? Is you're normalizing that sometimes communication breaks down? Sometimes we have a hard time articulating what we want or need to someone else. Sometimes we're tired and we don't have

enough understanding to see that and then we take our tiredness out on other people. So asking, do you need my help? It normalizes accepting help and needing help without framing it in a you did something bad kind of way. Speaking of bad, number four, no emotion is bad. No emotion is bad. Our feelings might come out in ways that are hurtful or harder to navigate, but the emotion itself isn't bad. I think a lot of us were probably taught to keep things in, to, you know, suck it up, to not cry about it, to not get upset. But when you're a kid and you're learning how to say what you need and you're finding an emotional vocabulary and you're trying to manage all this newness to being a person. Being told to not feel things is super hard. I think this can be a particular challenge for parents

who themselves are not terribly emotive or who have maybe lived a lot of years keeping their feelings to themselves. That's a safe thing to do for a lot of us because our emotions were not held safely when they came out. But for our kids, I think we can forge a new path where they can be emotionally vulnerable and open. And we can help them navigate that. And the first step is naming that emotions are not bad. Number five, when you lose your cool or you shame your kid for having big feelings model apology. It's really easy to want to punish a kid for yelling or getting angry. It is easy to dismiss a kid who's crying giant tears over something that does not feel big at all to you. And sometimes if our kids are feeling big feelings and so are we, but ours might be more

repressed and then they like explode. We might yell back. We might tell them to suck it up or stop crying or get over it. I mean, I do that. I've done that. That happens. But that isn't what does the damage if we apologize. Even if we lose our cool or dismiss one of our kids, there have been like psychological studies that show how the relationship actually grows stronger when apologies and taking responsibility and moving toward the kid when that is modeled by the parents. So if you lose your cool, or you dismiss your kid's big feelings. Apologize. Ask forgiveness.

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You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. Number six, have conversation house rules. So we will, we will have, we will often have a lot of conversations around fights with our kids. We sometimes say, would you like to have a conversation or a consequence? We kind of offer that up, which depending on my tone can sometimes actually come out as kind of passive aggressive. So like if I'm feeling snarky, I just immediately move into a conversation because then it's like do you want a conversation with consequence like it's like setting them up for failure so it kind of depends on uh kind of depends on my mood but the point is to show them that conversations are helpful tools in figuring out what everybody is feeling and what each other

needs but in those conversations we have house rules you might remember that from uh my book the lazy genius way one of the principles is to set house rules and our house rules around conversations like this are tell the truth, both about what happened and how you feel about it. Believe the best in the other person's intentions. Take deep breaths and be kind. So if somebody, including myself, is not ready to follow those rules in a conversation, then we wait to have the conversation. Talking when someone is feeling defensive or hasn't let the anger kind of make its way out, it doesn't really work. So sometimes I give the kids some space to breathe on their own before we all have a conversation. Or I might just like sit there with them in whatever emotion they're feeling until they're done.

I do that a lot with our oldest because he can get really angry and kind of spin out if he's alone. It escalates. And so staying with him in that anger, just being with him in the room kind of helps him de-escalate and regulate quicker. The point is let them feel what they need to feel in a safe way. and set parameters on how to have the conversation so that they can learn how to work through conflict with people. Number seven, ask more than tell. So this is a hard one for me, but it's always better when I try and ask my kids questions about the fight rather than giving them directives about how to behave or what I observed happening or anything like that.

This is a really simple one, but it's really effective just to think, ask more than tell. Like, what happened instead of, well, this is what I saw. Ask more than tell. Number eight, do not position one kid as the victim. Okay, so back to that referee analogy. I often think about like, okay, basketball. Two opposing players are like tangled up during a play, right? One player pokes the other player in the eye seemingly on purpose.

And the other player retaliates by like pushing or getting up in the guy's face. Okay. Well, the ref only sees the push and the pusher gets teed up. And then the pusher gets more angry because he feels like that was an injustice because he was poked in the eye by this guy. Now, should he have pushed his opponent? No, but we're human. Sometimes we react to things. It is not an excuse, but it is an explanation. It's hard to feel like someone did something to hurt us on purpose, whether with words or punches or if it's your kid like disrespecting their space or their toys or whatever it is really hard to experience that and then be punished because we reacted to that injustice.

So responding to a fight between our kids where one is in the right and one is in the wrong like approaching it that way will almost always turn out poorly because we didn't see the whole thing. And we also can't see inside their heads. It's not connective either to pit the kids against each other, even in the conversation. It might not feel like that's what we're doing as parents. But when we talk about one versus the other, like that's how it comes across of like, you know, you did this to your brother and that could, you know, like kind of making them

enemies in a way, even with our language. So I like to try to use language about being on the same team with my kids, caring about our own needs and each other's cushioning it and like we all have bad days or bad moments that we take it out on each other like it's never just one person's fault so instead of trying to assign blame let's figure out what we all need like what's really going on right almost always the disagreement was something super simple that just grew quickly because of injustice or a perceived injustice or they just didn't have the margin to process something that was small that they might have been able to process easier if they weren't hungry or tired or whatever. But then when I come in at the end and I

see only that last bit, I perpetuate that one kid versus the other and the injustice that they both might be feeling, right? So don't position one kid as the victim. Number nine, this is a big one. Release the expectation that your kids will never be friends if they keep fighting, especially as adults. Okay, so my sister Hannah and I We are seven years apart. And we are super dupe close now. We have not always been that way. We actually have a podcast together called the Lacey Sisters podcast. It's for the Patreon supporters that we have.

I'll put a link in the show notes if you want to check that out. But we have gotten asked a couple of times on that show, like how we are so close. What happened when we were kids that made us so close? And kind of our joke is, which is not a great joke, but our answer is like shared trauma. but plenty of siblings have shared trauma. They have difficult childhoods and are not close now. So that is not the answer. And the thing is, we weren't close as kids.

Like sometimes siblings are close as kids and then grow apart as adults or vice versa. So I think trying to control that outcome or manufacture that outcome will make you a very frustrated parent. Let your kids exist together now as they need to without like the threat of, you know, of that they're each other's best friend, you know, being like, you're each other's best friend. They might not be. Or that they're all the other one has, which might be kind of a bummer if like one of your kids is an outgoing 10 year old and the other is like a quiet kindergartner. Like that's kind of, that's kind of a bummer realization. Just let them be and let go of the

expectation that what you're doing now will dictate their relationship in the future. You cannot control that. You cannot put that kind of pressure on yourself or on your kids. And then number 10, validate as much as you can. Okay, so if a kid is upset about something that to you seems very small, that does not mean that it is small. To him or her, it feels huge, feels huge. So validate that. Like repeat back what you're seeing and hearing. I try and say as often as I can, things like you sound upset or that sounds really hard or it's okay to be sad about that, you know, like just validate, validate. I think even things like it'll be okay. It might not be what the kid needs right then. Like sometimes we need to just feel our feelings. We need to know

that that's okay. Not everyone does. Not everyone needs that for like a long time. But some people do. Some people need to feel their feelings like longer and harder than others do. So, okay, one thing that's been really helpful with our middle son Ben, especially, he has very deep feelings kind of across the spectrum is to ask him if he wants to feel better. Ask him if he is crying or like in despair about something, which often happens. I will ask him, would you like to feel better right now or do you need to stay sad for a little longer? Now the answer varies, which is actually very helpful because it kind of affirms that there's no single way to respond to a kid with big emotions. Sometimes they need to feel their feelings. Sometimes they need help moving out of them.

Sometimes they don't know. Sometimes they don't know what they need. Okay. So I asked Ben, I wanted to share this with you guys. And I asked Ben if it was okay for me to. And he said it was because it's kind of a personal thing to him, but he said it was okay. So we have Ben's permission for this story. So, okay, Ben is the most emotionally literate member of our family, like by a lot. He's 10 years old, he's going to be in the fourth grade. He has taught all of us the importance of emotion and that all of them are valuable, big and small. So a couple of years ago, he was crying on my bed about something I did not understand. And I lovingly, but poorly, tried to make him feel better by not validate how he was feeling, by trying to like, I wanted him to feel better. But pushing

him toward that was making him feel worse. Like not seeing that he felt bad. was not helping. Okay, so what he did as he was crying, he described his heart to me. He said it was like a rainbow. His heart was like a rainbow. And I will explain that, but it changed everything for us. Okay. So he said that when his heart is really happy, it's red. When he's really sad, it's purple. And then obviously the spectrum of the rainbow is everything in between, right? also he said that brown is curious and gray is tired for what it's worth but we'll just stick with a rainbow right now roygie vivid is but that language has been amazingly helpful in learning to talk to ben about what he's feeling i can ask him when he's upset i can say what color is your heart

buddy because he might not have the language really like he's expressing himself fine he doesn't need to find the actual word to describe the type of sadness you know he doesn't need need that at that point. But I do. I don't know what he's feeling. So I can ask him, what colors your heart? And he will cry and he'll say, you know, it's green, kind of dark green, or it's very, very purple or something. And then I can ask him, do you want it to stay purple for a little while? Do you want it to stay here? And if he says yes, then we do. If he says no, often what he he's very overwhelmed by his emotions in that and he'll say no but he'll also be like but red is too far I will never get to red I'm too upset to get to red and then that just like sends

him even deeper that is very true especially when he's in like that deep purple zone so I am able to say to him let's not worry about red just yet let's just try and get to blue or maybe even green what do you have any ideas about how to do that a lot of times he's too upset to know. So I will always start with a hug. I'll offer a hug. Can we try a hug? And I will hold him while he cries for like a few minutes. His breathing almost always slows down because that's true of all of us because it's a stress response being held. Our body's being held actually physically helps us know that we are safe. So I will hold him. And then once I feel him kind of settling just a little bit, I'll say, okay, what color is your heart now? Is it still purple? Because listen, just because he's

maybe stopped crying doesn't mean his heart's not like that's red all. a sudden. It could still very well be purple. So I will say, you know, is it still purple? And he'll say, not really. It's getting more blue or something. And so sometimes I'll keep hugging him. Sometimes we try something else like a joke or going outside or giving him some alone time. But the point is not really what we're doing. It's the language of it. It has been the most beautiful, helpful thing of all time to give Ben's heart colors for us to be able. able to communicate the range of emotion and how it is a, it's a process. If you're feeling purple, you're not going to automatically just jump to red. And you might need to stay in purple for a little

while. Or you might get to yellow and be fine. You know, like if he's feeling sort of like okay, and I say, hey, it feels like something's off. And I'll say, hey, it's something, how's your heart? What colors your heart? It's like yellow orange. Do you, do you like it being yellow orange right now? do you want help getting it to a closer to red? And sometimes he's like, no, I'm fine. You know, like, he doesn't have to be red all the time. Like, he's okay. So it's just been, it's just been the most magical thing for being someone who's like

kind of emotionally illiterate. And I wanted to share that here in case any of you have kids who could use that kind of metaphor to borrow, you can borrow Ben's Heart Rainbow. Okay. So again, from a non-professional child psychologist who has, simply tried to learn about kids development and emotional resonance in literacy in general and then also for my own experience as a parent and in therapy, all those things. These are my personal 10 perspectives that have worked for us on navigating siblings who fight.

One, you are not a referee. Two, your approach will change as your kids change. Three, practice asking, do you need my help? Four, no emotion is bad. five when you lose your cool or dismiss a big feeling apologize six have conversation house rules at seven ask more than tell eight don't position one kid as the victim nine release the expectation that your kids will be the best adult friends ever and then ten validate as much as possible and if you want like a bonus number 11 name what matters help your kids name what matters whenever my boys

are playing games together, like soccer in the yard or board game or something, which is often where their fights come when they're, like, competing with each other. I will always ask them before they start playing and then in the middle, hey, what matters most right now when you're playing? And when they're playing, the answer is always, because I told them this, kindness and fun. Kindness and fun. It's not winning. It's not being right. It's not being the fastest. It's not any of that. It's kindness and fun. Sometimes they roll their eyes at me about it when I ask them, but they know the answer. I'm having to teach them what matters most when they're playing with each other, but at least they're saying it. So that's another thing you could do. Name what matters. And that's how you can navigate

siblings who fight. Okay, before we go, let's celebrate the lazy genius of the week. This week, I love this so much. It's Amber from Amber Rose Creek. Amber and her husband are switching roles. She is going to be a student and teaching full time. So he's going to be the full time at home parent. I saw on Instagram, she's putting together a stay at home parent basket for him. And she asked her followers like in a question box or whatever for ideas and what to put in it. But she said she knew two things she was going to include in the basket for him. One was a copy of the Go Clean Co cleaning handbook, which I own and fully endorse that choice. And then she's getting him his own copy of the lazy to this way. And she shared it with like the most beautiful photo of him and their

kids. I just, I loved it so much, so much. Amber, I love that you're like empowering and loving your husband in this new role. Thank you for including me in it. It was just the best thing to come across. So congratulations on being this week's lazy genius of the week. Okay, everyone, that's it for today. Thank you so much for listening. Thanks to our podcast network, ACAST, for being a fantastic partner in getting the show to more people. And thank you to every one of you who downloads the show, who buys or shares the book, who engages with me on Instagram. All of you are just the best. The actual best. I'm so grateful. Until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra. I'll see you next week.

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