ESSAY

when a fight breaks out between your kids, you should try to stay out of it as much as possible. Your kids won’t learn how to negotiate their own conflicts if you’re always interfering and playing peacemaker.
At the same time, your kids will only learn how to appropriately handle conflict if they see good conflict resolution in action (i.e., they learn it from you), and some kids are too little to navigate it anyway. Here’s how to model conflict resolution in the examples given in the previous section.
Keep things simple. Perhaps say, “Your brother is a part of our family, and we need to take care of the people in our family.” Remove your older child (or your baby) from the room until your 3-year-old is calm. Later, you may want to soothe your older son’s insecurities by giving him some one-on-one attention or encouraging him to talk about all the fun things he hopes to do with his baby brother as he gets older.
For some reason, the blue train has been deemed “better,” but it can’t be in two places at once. Your daughters have a choice: They can share the blue train or lose it. Calmly present this choice, and let them decide. If the fighting persists, simply take the blue train away. If they come to a reluctant truce, remind them that any continued fighting will result in all the trains taking a “time out.”
At this age, your kids can take part in the solution-generating part of conflict resolution. Perhaps say, “It seems like you can’t agree on what to watch. Should I pick something?” When they protest, give them one chance to work it out themselves (i.e., splitting up the TV time between picks or assigning each person a designated “TV choice night”). No peaceful agreement in 5 minutes means no TV, period.
The common thread in these scenarios is that you, as the parent, are taking the role of sideline adviser, not on-the-field referee. When encouraging conflict resolution between your kids, it’s important to: avoid taking sides — unless you witnessed one child hurting another without provocation, everyone involved in the fight takes some share of the blame encourage a solution that’s beneficial to everyone, even if it involves some compromise
set limits, like no name-calling or physical contact (“You can say you’re mad, but you can’t hit your sister.”)
teach empathy, encouraging your kids to put themselves in their siblings’ shoes (“Remember when Patrick wouldn’t share his coloring book with you yesterday? How did that make you feel?”)
avoid playing favorites, as kids will notice if you always baby your youngest or believe your oldest child’s version of the story
Remember, you probably didn’t cause sibling rivalry between your kids — but you may be inadvertently making it worse. Thankfully, there are a few easy ways to promote more camaraderie in your house.You can’t stop it completely, but implementing these parenting strategies may reduce how often your kids fight.