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3 Things You Can Do Right Now to Stop Kid Squabbles
Sick of the bickering? Try these 3 simple strategies.
“MOM! She just GRABBED it out of my hand!”
“I did not! You weren’t even holding it! And besides, YOU hit me!”
“No I did NOT! I just tapped you! YOU grabbed it!”
“I ASKED for it and you said, ‘Noooo, go AWAY!’ You’re SO MEAN!”
Does this sound familiar? Ugh, it does to me, and not only does it grate on my last nerve, it’s also exhausting.
Here are my three favorite easy and painless strategies to deploy when my kids try to turn our house into a war zone.
The Repenting Bench
This idea comes from blogger Shawni Pothier at 71 Toes, and I swear by it. When kids start fighting, send them to a designated spot– at Shawni’s house it’s a bench, but at our house it’s the fireplace hearth– and tell them they have to stay there until they can tell you what their part in the dispute was. Once they’ve figured it out, they apologize to each other.
The reason I love this method is because it requires kids to take responsibility for their actions, because as the saying goes, it takes two to tango. Even if the only thing one kid did was react and yell, they still have to acknowledge the fact that they let…
