Speaker 1Hello and welcome to the How Not To Screw Up Your Kids podcast, the bucket emptying episodes. I'm your host, Dr. Mary Han, psychologist and parenting expert. So, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat and enjoy the conversation. Today's episode is, I think, going to be a massive bucket emptying. For those of you who have got siblings that don't just argue, they get physical. Now, I'm going to only address the specifics of what you can do when your children's disagreements get into a physical fight. I'll cover in a whole separate bucket emptying episode how we cover the sort of regular routine niggles that we get. Now, my usual advice. around not stepping in does not apply where children get physical because, of course, what we need to do is step in to make sure that nobody gets hurt. So, this episode is very specific to those of you who've got siblings that get physical when they disagree and whether that starts with the verbal niggles and then becomes physical or whether it just seems to be their go-to. I think you can also use. some of the points in this episode if you've got children who aren't necessarily arguing but typically get physical in their play and then it can become. it can then lead to a whole host of issues because one gets hurt and one doesn't. So, let me just talk you through what I would do and kind of how to go about it. And the first thing I would say is that when it gets physical, we need to stop the fight as quickly as we possibly can. And I think it's really important that we stop the fight as quickly as we possibly can. And that might require you getting. sort of using your own physical force and getting in between in order to do that. Now, what's important when that's happening, particularly for those of you where this is a repeat pattern of behaviour, your children, it becomes their go-to and you're quite frankly sick of it, do that physical stepping in. Do that as calmly as you possibly can using a soft. steady, calm voice. I know it's difficult, particularly if you've got children that are doing this day in, day out, or you're doing it multiple times in the day. But remember that in that moment, for whatever reason, the disagreement, they've not been able to resolve verbally. So, they're emotionally dysregulated. And this whole idea about how do we best help children who are emotionally dysregulated is that we try and contain it. Now, that's not containing it as in confining it, but it's containing it by responding to it in a calm way. So, it's almost like we create this safe sort of vessel for that emotional dysregulation to then work its way through. So, it's so helpful when we are in that calm, dispassionate way. Please don't beat yourself up if you find yourself shouting or getting frustrating. Or repeating the whole, like, why do you two keep doing this? It happens. Be kind to yourself. Give yourself grace. And just set that intention that next time you're going to respond to it in a calmer, more dispassionate way. So, I think that you've got to break it up, first of all. What I would then say is, emotions are still high. They're still massively dysregulated. Is that you want to separate them from each other in terms of, you know, physical space? You don't want them close to each other. So, opposite sides of the room, that would be brilliant. But what you're trying to do is avoid sending one of them away, as you can imagine, because what that's doing is it's creating a disconnect from you when what they really need in this dysregulated moment is connection. So, if you're not, I don't know, the space that you're in isn't large enough for them to be able to connect, then you're not going to be able to connect. them to be physically at opposite ends, or it has become so heated and you've got a third child that you're trying to deal with that's young, or you've got something on a hob, or something else that's going on that you need to leave that room, then I would recommend that you separate everybody so that nobody is with you. In other words, what we don't want to do is be seen to or perceived to be taking sides. It's one of the big issues around judging sibling and refereeing sibling. issues is that there's always a winner and there's a loser. So, what we want to do is in physical spaces, we want to separate them and then give everyone, including you, some time to cool off before you discuss what has happened. So, you've got that cool off period of time. Now, you are going to have to get involved in making some commentary about the fight. Now, I believe quite strongly that what we need to be doing is judging the fight only. So, how did we go from a verbal disagreement into actually getting physical? You don't need to know who started it. You'll probably have a good idea. We know our children really well. But what you're basically trying to do is have a conversation around the fact that any verbal disagreement should not then, we shouldn't then be resorting to physical. That isn't an appropriate response. It's not a value that is within the kind of the moral compass of your home and isn't a way that we resolve conflict generally, whether that's with our siblings or whether that's disagreements with friends in the wider world. Remember, we're equipping and tooling our children up with the end in mind, them being resilient, confident adults. And resilient, confident adults don't manage conflict physically. They manage it with their words. They manage it with a narrative and a conversation and a dialogue. So, we want to judge the fight. But only if we have not seen, you know, how it got to that. Now, obviously, if we have seen it from the onset, if we've heard that disagreement, if we've seen the whole thing through, then fill your boots. You're having a conversation around how that disagreement happened in the first place, the way that they communicated to each other, and then having that judgment around how the fight happened. But generally speaking, we usually get called in or, well, they don't call us in, but we go in when the voices get loud, and then we can hear the sort of the physical aspect of it. So, what we're trying to do where we haven't seen something is getting caught up in this refereeing situation where there will always be a winner and a loser. It doesn't matter what we think. It doesn't matter if we think we're being fair. Our children always perceive that there's a winner and a loser. So, judge the fight because, that is physical. You've had to step in. You've seen them both get physical, but don't referee if you haven't seen the lead up to it. Leave that as a separate piece. And then what you want to do is, because you're having that conversation when things are calmer, is you want to problem solve for future disagreements, how they might communicate better with each other. And you need to judge that. You need to do an, I would encourage you to do a sort of a broad brush how can we communicate better with each other in that moment with both of them there. So, they hear each other say that, but you may then have to go off and do a separate piece with each of them because there may be a separate need, developmental need that is going on. So, what you want to reflect on afterwards may be any wider issues which either child or both may need scaffolding for. So, you may have one child who's not particularly confident, who is maybe seeing their other, their sibling that they're constantly having these physical fights with as supremely confident. Life is so easy for them and there's resentment. And so, it may be that you need to work with one around building their confidence and how they can communicate better. It could be that you've got one child that's particularly bossy and that creates an issue. So, again, it's about helping and supporting the bossy child about how they can turn take and not always be the leader and not always require their siblings to do things the way that they want to. It may well be that one of your children or both really struggles to regulate their emotions generally. So, you're then looking wider beyond just simply the physical aspect of their sibling fighting. But actually, this child has a developmental need to be scaffolding and scaffolded in terms of being able to better regulate their emotions. So, obviously, you've got to deal with the actual scenario and breaking them up and dealing with it in the moment. But there's the piece that I think we often overlook, which is, can I just reflect on where my children are at at the moment and what might be contributing to them using that as their go-to? Are there some skills that we could look at scaffolding that they need separately and that is also feeding into that becoming the go-to conflict resolution method between them so hopefully that's going to help those of you in that particular situation where siblings are getting physical from a managing conflict and also for those of you who've got siblings that seem to just love this rough and tumble and then the rough and tumble gets you know out of hand and then there are tears and all sorts of issues as ever if you enjoy listening to the bucket emptying episodes or the episodes generally then i would be very grateful if you could rate follow and review this podcast so that others can find us and we can spread the love so until next time
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