Parenting – How to Be Fair in Handling Siblings or Students Squabbling

It was tedious but one of the “job” description of being a teacher or parent is to be a judge, and also a fair one.

Young children do not know how to resolve their conflict with friends and siblings, and would often come to their parents or teachers for a solution. If we want them to grow up handling conflict well, we would have to spend some time to show them how.

So, what do we do?

1. Put away the things we are busy with and give them our time. Otherwise, tell them we would come to them a while later when we are done with our chores.

2. Interview and listen from both parties even though it is very obvious that one of them is being victimized.

3. It is funny. If it is a very tricky case, we may have to pray silently for heavenly wisdom to handle the situation.

4. Repeat to the children what we have heard and how we draw our conclusion.

5. Help the involved parties to apologize and reconcile amiably. Sometimes, depending on how serious the matter is, we may have to discipline both for the squabbling i.e. to wash dishes together or no TV for 2 days. The duration has to depend on the severity of the matter – longer we may need to, if it is very serious. Just make sure that the assigned tasks are do-able and not a permanent one.

6. If it is an obvious bullying case, we may have to confront the bully in private to find out the underlying issue and deal with it.

Explain to the child what we see and how we feel about it. We should not let him off the hook easily but to discipline him by forfeiting certain privileges or issue extra chores for a period. At this juncture, we must remember to tell the child that we still love him even though we do not like what he has done