Dealing with fighting siblings.

[bear]

Or supposed fighting.

How do you deal with it?
And if there are any lurkers that don't have kids about, how did your parents deal with it?

I know most often it is just for show. I do, at times, have the capacity to ignore it and let them carry on without my involvement and certainly it goes better.

Other days, when I'm edgy, I could sell them. Pronto! They drive me nuts.

Opinions, stories, advice, offers to buy are all appreciated. ;)

[NightRose]

Hmm I only have the one child so I don't know much about sibling rivalry but my brother and I had some rip roaring fights and battles you could say which resulted in many scars and bitter feelings while growing up.

Some of the things we put our mother through.

I tried to give him cheese when he was like 2-3 months old (I was 4) Mom told me she found me behind a chair with him and said my reason for given him cheese was because he was looking at it like he wanted it so I gave it to him. She thinks I was trying to kill him :f

He hit me with a plate over my head and broke it so I hit him with an encyclopedia and we were both bleeding. A few years later he hit me with the same plate only on the other side of it so it is glued together in two places.

He would throw food at me such as pizza and I would duck and it would hit the wall and leave a nice grease trail as it slid down the wall. Yeah she was pretty pissed about that.

Constant screaming and fighting with each other. Comparing how many christmas gifts we got and who's was better. That was all before I turned 13.

As teenagers we were the same but got more mouthy with each other. Drove my mother nuts. When I was 18 and he was 14 he stabbed me with a ballpoint pen that went through my hand and I still have the scar. He and I were arguing as usually at the kitchen table where I was looking at library books I had take out. He went to stab my books and I went to get them out of the way so they weren't damaged and it went through between my baby finger and the finger next to it. Doctor said I was lucky he missed my nerves. [YIKES]

I moved out when I was 19 and we get along great now. Still have fights but nothing close to what it was like when we were growing up and I do have to say my mother probably wants to kill us both for putting her through hell all those years and now we are buddy buddy. I can't really remember my mother really dealing with us except for yelling a lot at us and threatening us with punishments. I think I got more of the punishment because he was sick when he was younger so I should have known better than to pick on him. But it was mostly him picking on me. The two of us had grey hair on her but the time she was my age and I will be 28 in Dec. :f

Can't really offer any advice about it but I am sure you are not alone. I am also pretty sure my mother would have loved to sell us to gypsies or something when we were growing up. I can see now she is pissed we get along. Asking why we couldn't have been like that growing up and she wouldn't have been so stressed [post83] There is always going to be rivalry between children. I say learn what is their weakness and punish them accordingly. My son's is the PS2 so he loses that when he does something wrong[post83]

[hellopeople]

It also depends what age they are. But one way to avoid fighting is to split everything equally between them. I always got the same allowance as my brother even though he is 3 years older than I, always the same amount of chores (or so my parents say, but I do 5X more work than he does:) ) and all that stuff.

My brother and I never really actually fought before. I think the closest we would come to a fight was last year and the year before when I was going through me "I need to be different than everyone else, and anti-social" phase and he would tell me I was immature, and I would cry.

There's many things that pisses the shit out of me about my brother, but I never really bring them up, and we never fight.

[Wen]

That reminds me of when Mother's day was approaching, and on asking my mum what she wanted on that day, she'd tell us "just don't fight on that day, ok?" [post83]

I think my parents tried to ignore us when we were fighting, apart if it went to major hitting or bitting, then something had to be done. When my sister bit me, she was shut in the bathroom till she calmed down, and it's usually how my parents would deal with us. Separate us and try to calm us down. Luckily, we grew up when we hit teenage years. That was mainly with my younger sister, and when my younger brother arrived, I was too old to pick a fight with someone 10 years younger than me by then.

[St. Theresa]

Mine are 2 years apart and they fight quite regularly, as expected. Usually I just get them to separate, if I can't first get them to STFU. I don't get involved in who started what or what it's even about unless it gets physical (which isn't often and is a BIG no-no to me) or I've seen it erupt and know who's the instigator and who's whining in defense.

When mine start mouthing off to one another, it drives me nuts instantly. They never get to fight for long if my ears have to suffer. ;)

[bear]

It is so irritating isn't it. My 5 yo has started defending himself by kicking my 9 yo. As much as I would love to cheer him on as it has been a long time coming, I don't condone the violence.

I do separate them and if they are fighting over an object I take it.

Some days it just seems incessant and no matter how many times I tell them I refuse to get involved they try.

Damn willful children. ;)

[samara]

Can you implement some sort of punishment system for fighting so that when they do it, there's a consequence? Or try to make activities so that they have to work together or else are sent to separate rooms?

*shrug*
I don't know a thing about parenting as I haven't got kids, but I did my share of fighting as a child. I remember when my younger brother and I got to be about the same size, my parents once just opened the door and sent us outside to run around the house chasing each other, occasionally knocking one another down and fighting, until we were exhausted.

Eventually it all stopped, but there was always parental involvement and threatened groundings, etc. Not that that ever really stopped us much....

Be thankful you've only got 2. :p

[Fray]

My sister and I never fought or argued until we got older. When we hit 14 and 17 there were squabbles. Now we're 23 and 27 we are very argumentative and it has been know to result in physical violence.

I'm bad, I know. I am no help to this whatsoever.

[~vjay~]

Some kids are just the arguing type unfortunately, I tend to tune out to a lot of it unless they are hurting each other.

I find two's company, three's a crowd when it comes to my children(I have 3).

The oldest one likes to get a reaction from the younger 2 so he is the type to do something that generally gets my daughter screeching(middle child), I don't know what's worse, him doing this or her voice when she is whining.

If I only have 1 or 2 here out of the 3 it is reasonably peaceful.

I ask them if they want me to sell them on ebay sometimes :)

[courey]

Well I haven't commented in here yet because I just have no helpful advice. :p My youngest two, when they fight [read: all day long, every day], they instantly start screaming at the top of their lungs at each other. It's like a spike right through my head. Most of the time, I'm right there and able to see who's started it and put the appropriate child in a time out, and then they come out and apologize [and do it all over again, more often than not]. The times when I can't make out who started it, I usually give them both a warning and try to explain the finer points of sharing. They fight over everything, even who gets to sit in which parents lap. They also blame each other for everything when something bad has been done. I'll hear my daughter scream at the top of her lungs and tell her to knock it off and she answers back, "no, it's garion!" :r Salem gets in on the fun still, as well.. he pesters the hell out of them anytime they're all three sitting down to eat at the table. He insists on trying to use Kaiya's pink shovel everytime they're all playing in the sandbox. He's almost 12 for christ's sake. He argues with them in the typical "yes," "no," "yes," fashion, as if that actually wouldn't carry on all day and night if I didn't stop them. It. drives. me. batshit.

so, yeah. whomever said having more than one kid around the same age was "easier", obviously doesn't have more than one kid. or any. ;l

[bear]

;l! I think we live in the same house! I do feel better knowing I am not alone.

I remember fighting with my brother but I really don't recall it being so annoying. ha!

And yes the 9 year old I think just gets a kick out of it. Stealing his spot on the couch. Tormenting him with a grin on her face. Stealing his french fries. Making him scream.

When we were at the beach I heard yelling and went downstairs. She had him locked in a room and wouldn't let him out. I stood outside the door and listened to my evil child! She opened it to find me standing there and just about jumped out of her skin. While he had been screaming at the top of his lungs, he had a damn smile on his face.

This is why I TRY to stay out of it or tell them to take it outside.

Regardless, it is maddening!

[courey]

It is maddening, especially when they're laughing about it. My youngest two do the laughing about getting in trouble thing at night... I guess they're tired and probably getting goofy like I do at night sometimes. Those times I usually end up closing their door and putting on my headphones. :p

[bear]

And repeat "I'm not getting involved!" 6000 times!

[Paul]

My mother just used to threaten to bang our heads together. I don't think she ever did but the threat was enough to usually get us to stop.

[St. Theresa]

When I was a kid, my best friend's mother actually did it to us.

[jan]

Mine never fought until one fateful trip to Nana's. She favors Tori and finds Ali "annoying" and makes no effort to hide her favoritism. While there Tori began picking fights w/ Ali just to please Nana.

It continued for years...but Ali is now bigger than Tori ;)