Never sleep with your back to the door
The Younger went to bed last night clutching a small car that his brother was trying to get from him. It’s the two-year-old version of sleeping with a shiv: If you can’t trust the guy in your cell block, never let your hands off your valuables.
This week has been a never-ending parade of the toddler saying he likes his little toy, The Elder snatching it for sport, the toddler committing assault and The Elder crying out in shock and plotting his retaliation.
The holidays should be a delight.
I’ve read “Siblings Without Rivalry,” but that doesn’t seem to apply to this situation since that book involves, you know, talking and stuff. This is closer to combat on the front lines. Toys flying, sneak attacks, Trojan horse maneuvers, double crying jags.
These boys are clever, and lately, they only have eyes for each other’s toys.
Luckily, their parents have some military maneuvers of their own. Our favorite is currently divide and conquer: One goes upstairs, one goes downstairs, each with a parent chaperone. Everyone calms down.
And Mommy retreats to read “The Art of War.”—Jillian O’Connor
What do you do when your kids go at it?
“but that doesn’t seem to apply to this situation since that book involves, you know, talking and stuff.”
I burst out laughing when I read that.
This is how it goes in our house. The boys are playing downstairs in the playroom, while my husband and I are upstairs enjoying their absence. We hear younger erupt into tears. We yell down without seeing what happened, “Zaaaaaaaach!!!! Give it back!!!”
A sheepish little voice replies, “Ok. I’m sorry.” The crying stops.
That lasts a good five minutes.
Ah, the luxury of the same one always being the culprit! Unfortunately, the boys keep mixing it up for us.
I love this! You are my Friday Favorite! I pretty much do what you do with the divide and conquer … my husband has a brother so he’s sorta not surprised but I am in shock with all of this … craziness!!
Yay! Thank you for that honor. I love reading about the mayhem your boys cause, too. You are quite prolific as a blogger!
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I like the idea of divide and conquer, although we do something totally different. When my girls get into it with each other, my husband makes them spend the rest of the time together- they must do everything together, even spend the night in the other ones room, and while they start out totally annoyed that they have to do this, they end up laughing and having fun and totally forget what they were bickering about.
I guess we need to divide before we can even get them into a distractible state. They’re 5 and 2. How old are your girls?
We have done both the divide and conquer routine and the hold my hand routine. Both are effective. Hold my hand requires just that for three times as long as the time-out would have been for whatever the shenanigan was. Joined together they must do whatever the required penance is. (In true military fashion) it necessarily requires two hands. Both must participate.
Best of luck…and they morph this into something completely different as they get older 😉
Red.
The morphing is freaky. They keep shifting on us, huh? Aaargh. How would you describe the hold my hand routine?