What to do when your kids hurt each other

The Happy Human Life

In this "burning question" episode, we discuss common triggers that lead to sibling conflicts and offer practical strategies to support your kids (and yourself) during these challenging moments.

It's important that we reframe these conflicts as opportunities for learning rather than viewing our kids as being "mean". Understanding that they're still developing conflict resolution skills can help us approach these situations with a bit more empathy and some much-needed patience.

When we’re in the middle of a conflict, the most important thing that we can do is stay calm, and as we like to say, “stay on their team”. We need to remember that their emotional regulation and problem-solving skills will be lacking in the moment, so we should focus on helping them regulate their emotions instead of assigning blame or dishing out punishments.

Proactively, we can model what collaborative problem-solving looks like by engaging in cooperative activities that promote teamwork and communication. By practicing “getting on each other's team” in low-stakes situations, we'll be helping them build the skills of flexibility and compromise that they’ll need to resolve conflicts throughout their lives.

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Thanks for listening. 🙂

-Jenilee and Greg