What if our kids resolved conflicts the way we do?

S arit describes “the big fight” this way:

“Yehuda was taking our two-year-old son to the bathroom. I just offered him a little tip on how to keep everything clean in there and he suddenly lost it — he spent the next five hours following me around the house criticizing me insulting me saying horrible things. It was our worst fight ever.”

Yehuda describes “the big fight” this way:

“Here I am being a really good father taking my kid to the bathroom so my wife can relax for a few minutes over her coffee. What do I get for that? ‘Yehuda don’t do this and don’t do that’ — the usual. She’s constantly telling me what to do when to do it and how to do it. Anything that I don’t do her way is wrong. Personally I think she babies the kids way too much.

“We’ve had so many fights about this that we recently agreed that Sarit should remove herself when I’m doing a parenting task. But she refused to do what she was supposed to. So there she is telling me how to get my son on and off the toilet and I quietly remind her that she’s not supposed to be watching me. She won’t let up so I close the bathroom door with her on the other side.

“She doesn’t take the hint; she opens the door and marches right in still telling me what I’m doing wrong. I tell her that I don’t want to discuss it with the kids around and ask her to stop but she has none of it.

“So yes after a while I lose it. I told her I’ve had enough of her relentless criticism and to show her how it feels I started criticizing her. I wanted to make a point because every other way I’ve tried to get it across has failed. That day I thought I’d give her a taste of her own medicine. Of course she didn’t like it.”

When Siblings Fight

Sarit and Yehuda’s two older children four-year-old Racheli and six-year-old Levi often squabble compete for parental attention and otherwise bother each other.

A few days prior to “the big fight ” Racheli was listening to a talking storybook over and over. Levi wanted a turn too so he asked her to please give him the earphones. Racheli pretending not to hear him just continued listening. He asked nicely a few more times then finally jumped up and grabbed them off her ears.

She screeched loudly and when Sarit and Yehuda showed up in a panic she complained bitterly about the rough treatment she had just received. Levi defended himself by saying that Racheli had been acting so mean refusing to share the talking book.

The parents praised Racheli effusively for repeatedly ignoring Levi’s reasonable requests and acting like his feelings and wishes didn’t matter at all and they advised Levi to follow Racheli around for the next several hours saying really terrible things to her to make her cry.

Conflict Resolution

Oh no wait. That’s what the parents do to make each other miserable! They would never recommend such destructive strategies to their kids! They would want their kids to know how mature healthy people behave when they’re experiencing a conflict of some kind.

What Sarit and Yehuda actually said was “Racheli you need to pay attention to what Levi is saying and respond to him in a reasonable way. For example you could tell him that you’ll give him the book in two minutes. Then because you care about him and want him to be happy you would finish your turn and give him the book.

“Levi sometimes a person’s behavior can make us feel so frustrated that we want to do something really hurtful to them. When we feel that way we have to be very strong and control ourselves. It can help a lot to go away from what’s happening and wait until we calm down. Then we can go back and tell the person how we feel and what we want or we can ask someone else to help us solve the problem.”

To ensure that their children would internalize these relationship skills the parents would need to provide opportunities for practice and feedback. And of course they would have to provide one more essential element for successful learning: the parental model.