I am not good at conflict. I avoid it whenever I can. And playing referee when the kids fight is not really a strength of mine.
I seem to have two main strategies:
1 - yell until both kids are crying.
2 - ignore it and hope it goes away. Neither of these seems to work very well.
Option 1 usually leads to all three of us in tears and grumpy with nobody talking to anybody.
Option 2 usually leads to escalating fighting until I resort to option 1.
In this morning's Wii related conflict, magically Option 1 lead to Option 2, which lead to a peaceful and happy resolution. They are playing together and being nice to each other....and this after I made them both madder when I tried to help and eventually gave up and left them to fight it out.
What does all of this mean? It means that after nearly 11 years as a dad, I still don't really know what I'm doing.....and I'm wondering if I ever will. But somehow, it all seems to work out.
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