Sibling Fights: Use a Happy Consequence
Siblings fight and that makes parents mad! If you have fighting siblings think about instituting a “Happy” timeout versus a regular timeout. What’s a “happy” timeout you ask?
A “happy” timeout is when you send your kids to their room or a playroom, if you have one and tell them they have to stay in here until they can spend 5-minutes in the same room being happy and not fighting.
It may take 30 minutes to accomplish 5 minutes of happy play—but when it’s all said & done they will have learned a lot. They will see how much time it costs them BOTH not to make up.
They’ll learn that an apology means they can play together versus sitting in timeout alone. And most importantly you’ll be showing them how you want them to behave versus punishing them for how they didn’t behave. I know many of you will think I’m nuts, and that’s okay. But try it anyway for 2 weeks and see what happens, it couldn’t hurt!