RULE 60

Teach them to sort out their own arguments

You had an easy time of it with the last Rule. Nothing to do but sit back and relax. This one is a bit more difficult, but it’s an essential follow-on to Rule 59.

Once you accept that squabbling is a necessary evil – part of learning to compromise and co-operate – you also have to accept that it won’t work unless you leave the kids to get on with it. Otherwise they’ve learnt nothing, except that if they shout loud enough, or hit hard enough, a grown-up will come and sort it out for them. They’re going to be very disappointed when they leave home and no grown-up magically appears to settle all their disputes.

Sadly, a lot of children do grow up like this. I went on a training course many years ago where a group of managers was asked to build a tower out of odd-shaped bricks. It was quite scary how quickly it descended into a shouting match. Ironic, really, given that the idea was to find out how well we could co-operate. It didn’t matter a monkey’s whether the tower stayed up or not.

Nope, there’s nothing for it: if you want your kids to grow up able to succeed in training exercises, not to mention life in general, you’re going to have to bite your tongue and put up with the noise and squabbles. And funnily enough, when you do that, it doesn’t take that long before most of the squabbles get resolved without you.

Of course, we all have days when we just haven’t the patience or the time to wait for the children to sort it out among themselves. In that case you can get creative about intervening without letting them off finding a solution themselves. For example, you can take away the toy they’re fighting over, or turn off the computer or TV, and tell them, ‘You can have it back when you can both (or all) agree to a solution’.

I know one couple who use a great trick with their children. It works particularly well for them as they have all boys (they’re so competitive). They hold what they call an ‘honesty competition’. This one’s good for those fights where you can’t hope to get to the bottom of who started it. You say, ‘We’ll have a competition to see who can be the most honest’. (See, this is where the boys fall for it every time.) Then you ask each in turn, ‘What did you do that you shouldn’t have done?’ The rule is they can’t refer to anything the other one (allegedly) did. I’ve known this couple’s children confess to all sorts of things, and ask for a further 137 offences to be taken into consideration, just for the chance to win the honesty competition. At the end of the confession you ask them each to apologize for the things they’ve admitted to, and then send them on their way. It helps them understand that it takes two to squabble – and it doesn’t half make you feel good too.