It's natural. I know this now. But, somehow I don't remember it so much with my own three siblings until we were older & the one time I slapped my brother on the face & my dad threatened to kick us out of the house, we never fought like that again. So, what secrets did my parents have that Mark & I don't? Some say it's the age difference. My siblings & I were all spaced at least 3 years apart. Our kids.....well, Mavaney & Noah are 22 months apart, Noah & Isabelle are 15 months apart & the babies came along a nice cozy 4 3/4 years after Isabelle. It's a good & bad thing, to have them so close together, but I won't get into that. What I do want to get into is what a pickle we were in last week. The levels of rivalry had hit an all time high. The kids were squabbling like they would love to send each other to different galaxies to live. It got so bad at one point, Noah was leaving scratch marks on Mavaney's arms. We had to do something & yet we were BAFFLED, completely MIFFED as to what to do! We had been dealing with this for several years & still had not found the right way to handle it, the right way to teach our kids to love each other, to stop hitting most importantly at all. I can remember times I would be talking to them, almost on the verge of yelling & just bawling, telling them how it broke my heart to see them physically hurt each other, that we were a family & we needed to act like one! But, even my tearful pleas didn't quelch their temptation to take their aggressions out on each other in real physical form. So...I hit google. I put in punishments for hitting siblings & I came across an article from BYU Magazine that led me to a scripture that answered all my prayers.
MOSIAH 4: 14-15 "And ye will not suffer your children that they go hungry, or naked; neither will ye suffer that they transgress the laws of God, and fight and quarrel one with another, and serve the devil, who is the master of sin, or who is the evil spirit which hath been spoken of by our fathers, he being an enemy to all righteouseness." "But ye will teach them to walk in the ways of trugh and soberness; ye will teach them to love one another, and to serve one another."
This was pure revelation to me. I copied & pasted, printed as quickly as I could & ran to find Mark, okay, hobbled because I am still nursing a broken toe. But, my excitement was ridiculous! I showed him what I had found & we formulated a plan & had a family meeting.
Lesson #1: Mom & Dad have the hungry & naked part covered. You're always fed. You're always clothed. We teach you the ways of the Lord & take you to church regularly.
Lesson #2: You want to hit your siblings. You are choosing to SERVE THE DEVIL! Who is the DEVIL? A really, mean, mean spirit that can convince you to make the wrong decision & when you do he gets really excited & says, 'YEA! Another one for our side. The side of evil." It's like Darth Vader & Luke Skywalker - something Noah can relate to since he loves that Lego Star Wars video game. DON'T CHOOSE THE DARK SIDE!
Lesson #3: Consequences for training with the Devil's Army.....you will do your sibling's chores. You hit your sibling, you will make their bed, do their laundry & clean their room for 2 days.
Lesson #4: Love one another Dinner table discussion. We will take a few moments each night at the dinner table to say something nice about everyone else at the table.
And guess what, it's already showing potential. Apparently, the Lord knows all about Google too.
4 comments:
We struggle with fighting too. I really know where you're coming from. We have blood nearly every day. We sometimes hold "kind words FHE". Everyone goes around and around saying a nice thing to someone else. It seems to help a little.
When we were kids and we hit each other my mom made us sit next to each other on the couch with our arms around each other. If we wanted to say something mean we could, but we had to sing it. We ended up laughing instead.
It sounds like you've come up with some great ideas. It's funny, I use the Star Wars dark side analogy too.
While at the pool today, a little boy in Shelby's swim class was getting in the water while his mom was telling him no. So Shelby decided to punish him herself. She pointed her finger and in her best mom voice said no no then swatted his bottom. All the mom's laughed but I made her tell him she was sorry and then sit in time out. But I have to admit I laughed too.
That is very interesting. Not good to hear that it continues as the kids get older. Mine are 19 months and 13 months apart. Yeah! We will have to try the service and hugging thing too.
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