Hello and welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries. This week I've been thinking a little bit more, as I move around the farm up here on the mountaintop where we live, of how often we're pulled into disputes with our kids and how we can avoid being drawn in to one side or another and how we can avoid therefore taking sides. I look at this as a simple matter of recruitment.
Kids when they're arguing are trying to recruit us, they're trying to recruit the power in the room and that is us, even though we don't feel very powerful when they're fighting like this, more frustrated, more likely, but to be able to understand that we are the power source in the room, in the house at the time and that the kids will try very, very hard to recruit us over to their side and it can become increasingly escalated and it can cause their stories to become exaggerated, so one kid will say something and the other will say that is such a lie, that is not, and the other one will say it is not, and the first one will say, well yeah, if you think that was bad, you should have seen what happened before that mum, you should have, and oh man, and you're standing there thinking, this is not how this is meant to go, because the more we are recruitable, the more they'll try and up the ante of their story and then the more frustrated they'll become with each other and so the situation escalates and escalates because they both know, or all two or three or however many kids know that that really wasn't the way it happened at all and they're exaggerating and they get really frustrated with each other and in the end it can end with us just losing our cool and just shouting at them to stop, you know, stop shouting at each other, you say as you shout. So what to do? How does one get around this? For years and years I've been working with my own kids and with others to untangle this kind of a mess and the main way I found through this, after sort of trying this and that and this and that, is to understand that there is a quality to taking perspectives that can ease the situation and to coach kids up to be able to listen to each other's perspectives. You know, doing this is not just about arguing, building up perspectives is a human quality and imagine how different the world would be if we saw something as a different perspective rather than an opposing opinion.
You know, the world would be such a different place and we can begin to make the world a different place in our own tiny way with the way we handle sibling arguments in our home. Now more specifically what I mean by this is that we coach the kids up to become inquisitive rather than accusative and what I mean by this is when kids are arguing, one of the first things, and I've tried various ways around this, but one of the first things that often occurs to us is get the kids together and get this sorted out and actually studies show, social science studies show, that that actually is one of the lesser effective ways of dealing with kids who are fighting and arguing. It's not ineffective and it can work sometimes, but the most effective, this is in a study done by Ken Rigby, R-I-G-B-Y, Ken Rigby from the University of South Australia, he found that the most effective way to work out conflicts between kids is actually to talk to the kids individually.
So step one, talk to them separately, but no, now I'm actually morphing this into another study also that I read. Know that whoever you talk to first you have a 70% greater chance of believing and that's big. So whoever you talk to first, make sure you keep some space within you for the second story and assure the kids that whoever you listen to first, it doesn't make any difference whatsoever to you.
And change it round, who you listen to first, because they'll be keen initially, if you do start doing this, to be the one speaking first. Speak to one, speak to the other, and just assure them that you're interested in their perspective, that their perspective is their perspective. And just say to them things like, just tell me the way you see it.
Tell me what happened the way you see it. And right from the get-go, say to them, and you know what, your brother or your sister is going very likely to see parts of the story differently to you, and that's okay. It's perfectly okay in our family.
In fact, that's good because we just don't want one way of seeing everything. You know, we see things differently. We are different people.
We have different feelings. We're going to see it differently. So tell me the way you see it, not tell me what happened.
That's a deadly question to ask because that then leads back to recruitment, right? But tell me the way you see it. I know that sounds like a subtle shift, but it's a trajectory change that in time leads to a much more socially and emotionally switched on kid. Any kind of child, any kind of teenager that can understand that there are differing perspectives and accept them.
That's really high on the emotional intelligent quadrant on the EQ. Daniel Goleman writes about this in his book, Emotional Intelligence, is this ability to accept other people's perspectives. In Stephen Covey's book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, I believe it's called.
He also lists that very high in being an effective person as being able to accept other people's perspectives. So every which way round we look at this, we're basically using our kids' arguments as an opportunity to actually grow a human quality, which I know arguments aren't enjoyable, but if we can switch our way of seeing it for ourselves as parents to see this as, okay, this is tricky, I wish this wasn't happening, but got to deal with it, so why not deal with it in a way that grows our kids' capacities rather than just sort of shuts them down and makes them sullen and walk away and end up actually hating you because you won't be recruited, right? Or you're believing her and not believing me, is what I mean by that. Now, after you listen to the two kids' stories, the crucial piece in this is another key word of truce, is to say to them, look, guys, I'm going to hear both your stories now.
I want to hear them separately. I want to hear your perspectives. I want to hear how you're seeing it, but we must have truce.
Now, I've spoken to you about truce before because this is a key thing to set this up. Truce is what athletes in the ancient Olympics would do. In order to get to the Olympiad, they would have to declare all around the Hellenic culture, around Greece and further afield.
They would all call truce to their wars and conflicts in the time of the Olympiad. It was felt that this was of great honor and great strength. You had to be very, very strong to call truce, and that truce was seldom ever broken.
I think it's good to talk to kids about truce. Talk to them about it when they're in good shape, not in the heat of an argument. Talk to them about how you're going to be, from here on in, when there's trouble, you're going to be listening to the way they see it, separately, but there has to be truce while you're doing it.
There has to be truce. They can't be sniping at each other from the other room. To say to kids, do you have the strength to call a truce, because it's a really strong thing to do.
It's not a weak thing at all. It's got nothing to do with losing. It's got to do with we're having truce while we work this out.
The first thing, again, separate the two kids. Assure them that their perspective is valued but will be different to their brother or sister. Listen to both stories, but prior to that, call a truce and have the kids agree to it.
The only way they'll lose your support is if they continually break the truce. That's very compelling. They'll lose your support because that's what they're trying to get, right, remember? Okay, now bring the kids back together again and do a perspective summary.
In other words, just say, okay, I've heard some things that are different and some things that are the same. Here's the things that are the same, and just say them. Here are the things that are different.
What I'm going to do now is ask you each to say one thing that's different that you take responsibility for, and you get to make one request from your brother or sister. Okay, now we're going to start this because I listened to you first, Jacob. You get to go first in this.
It evens the field, actually, because now he's got to go first in saying this because you heard him first. Just to say, Jacob, one thing you take responsibility for in the argument, and one request you get to make of your sister. And he does it, and it's remarkable how they can do this.
It's very sweet, actually, and they'll often not go for the real big thing. They'll say stuff like, well, I know I shouldn't have like thrown the ball away, but I just... Okay, so that's what you take responsibility for. Yeah, okay.
So what's your request of Miguel? Well, my request is that the rules don't always change because maybe, and if they do, then we just stop and figure it out because Jacob is a kid who likes to deal with things methodically, and Miguel is a kid who moves too quick for Jacob. There's the problem. It often blows up.
So then to turn to Miguel and say, okay, Miguel, one thing you take responsibility for, and one request that you make of your brother or sister. And then say, okay, good. Now, do you guys need to, and here's the fourth and last step, do you guys need to continue truce, or are you okay to be together again? And that's a very real question because sometimes it is important to continue on the truce and just play separately for the next wee while, or sometimes they're good to go, and that's as it is.
And then after an argument like this, it's sometimes really wise to not just let the kids loose, but to say, guys, I think we're good now, but where you're going to hang out or where you're going to play, if they're little, maybe just play around here for a while. I want to be just around in case anything blows up again. Because one of the, and again research, I'm leaning into Ken Rigby's research, one of the problems is when kids actually problem solve themselves is that if you loose them out of your proximal sight and out of eye shot and ear shot too quickly, if the problem reoccurs, it can escalate very quickly, and then you're back to, it's like a game of behavioral snakes and ladders.
You know, then you're right back to the start again. Whereas, let's say Jacob starts up and he needles Miguel again, you can say, hey, Jacob, I think we've got to go back to truce. You kind of, it was great, you handled things pretty well before, but maybe we're not ready.
You know, and then step in. But to step in, you've got to hear it, right? You've got to be around. So I know this process, it sounds weird to say that our kids' disputes and the way we handle them can lead them to have better human qualities and to almost welcome the dispute.
But I've seen over and over kids who are raised in a house from the youngest of age where they're taught that perspectives are valued. And even if the perspective they share is really close to not being true, if the child is believed and feels safe, then they'll very quickly kind of unwind and get closer to the truth. And then you believe them again and you just listen to their perspective.
It's not that you're buying into it, it's just you're listening to their perspective. And I've found countless numbers of times, I want to say thousands, I don't know how many it is, times when I listen to a kid who's being really edgy with the truth, when I'm listening to their perspective, and I say, wow, that sounds really hard. That sounds like that was a hard thing.
And he says, well, yeah, but, well, I mean, I might have just thrown the ball away and then kind of kicked out at someone, but I didn't mean to because I was mad. Now, if you had affronted him and said, now, I think there was something very serious that happened, young man, he's going to defend his position. He's going to totally defend it and swear that he didn't kick out at anyone.
But through the gentle process of just being able to say, share your perspective as you see it right now as best you can with the emotional state you're in, as kids feel safe, they actually come closer to you and closer to the truth and closer to each other. I sure hope this has been helpful. Okay, that's it for now.
Thanks. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.
