What to do when your kids hurt each other

"My 6- and 4-year-olds get aggressive with each other and I have a hard time managing those situations. I often feel frustrated and powerless and just don’t know what to do. How can I support them when they get this way?" 

In this video, 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.

From our parenting toolkit:

This week’s burning question and answer are all about discovering ways to get our kids to be on each other’s team, right? 

One way to do that is by providing toys and games that encourage cooperative play and team building.

In our home, our favorite way to do this is by building forts!

Building together offers our kids the opportunity to learn teamwork, communication, problem-solving, and conflict resolution skills.

These experiences not only strengthen their bond, but they also help them develop valuable life skills that extend far beyond our home!

We think you'll love this kit... 

Grab it on Amazon here!

After building a fort, we'll top it off with a blanket and spend quality time playing board games or just watching movies (and you can make it extra magical by adding string lighting). 🙂 

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