My children are generally very good friends. They tease each other, play together, and stick up for one another. But they do have their tense moments. Reilly and Kadie share a room. Their room is often messy and occasionally a train wreck. On my good days I gently encourage them to be clean, but I must admit I resort to subtle threats at times...(Something along the lines of "If you don't pick it up, then I will!" I never tell them exactly what I would do with it, but I can tell they're scared.)
The problem with the girls is it takes them hours to clean their room, no matter what state it is in, because they bicker throughout the entire process. So, out of necessity, I generally have to sit in the room, give direction, and mediate altercations. Monday, since the kiddos were out of school for MLK day, I decided we should deep clean the rooms and decide which toys we no longer play with so that we might send them to charity and other children could enjoy them. We finished Aidan's room,... finally (that kid doesn't want to part with anything.) And ate an energy packed lunch, so that we were prepared to tackle the girls' train wreck (yes it had reached that stage.) Things were going well when I accidentally sent both of the girls with arm loads of books to put away in the library. Kadie came back in tears and loudly squalling that Reilly had pinched her. Reilly was close behind yelling "It was an accident! It was an accident!" I asked her to show me how, exactly, you can accidentally pinch someone. She said, "Well, she made me mad...and then I pinched her....OKAY, I DID IT ON PURPOSE!" So the truth comes out. We had a short talk on appropriate ways to express anger (we have this talk a lot in our household) and we eventually finished the cleaning. The nice thing is, a few minutes later they were best buddies again. Aren't families great!
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