My boys love each other so why is my house a war zone?
CONGRATULATIONS if your children survived the Easter break intact, which is more than Sky newsreader Samantha Simmonds’ offspring managed. She told on her blog how, four hours into a long car journey, her six-year-old son started screaming.
‘I turned round to see blood and saliva flying towards me and all over his face,’ wrote Samantha, ‘I started yelling in shock and shouted to the four-year-old: “What have you done?”
‘What he had done was knock one of his brother’s teeth out! How is that even possible?’
Oh, it’s possible, I thought. I wasn’t horrified in the slightest. I regard a lost tooth as merely an unlucky consequence of sibling rough and tumble.
I have three boys, and from the moment the second was born — ‘Are you his mummy too?’ said his older brother, sadly regarding the baby — the tension between them is comparable to that in the Middle East.
Despite my best efforts, there are frequent outbursts of violence. In the car, I end up roaring: ‘Everyone, cross your arms! No physical contact or you won’t see a screen for a week!’
Our latest hospital trip, for a fractured finger, took place because my ten-year-old, goaded to boiling point by his older brother, had stormed out of the room, slammed the door — and caught his hand in it.
The doctor quizzed Conrad on how it happened. ‘It was my brother,’ he said, before grudgingly admitting the injury was accidental rather than malicious.
After all, in this murky world of halftruths and side- stepping blame, no one is innocent.
When Conrad was two, and Oscar four, they were quietly watching Fireman Sam when Conrad unwittingly invaded his brother’s portion of the sofa. Oscar shoved Conrad, who fell off and banged his head.
Shortly afterwards, Conrad left the room, returning minutes later with his red beach bucket. Hearing a yell of horror, I ran in from the kitchen to find Oscar gazing at his brother with an expression of disgust and disbelief I’ll never forget. He was dripping in . . . well, let’s just say it wasn’t water.
Their gung-ho fury, their readiness to risk life and limb, bewilders me.
Caspar, my youngest, now eight, specialises in remarkably eloquent verbal provocation, yet seems unable to grasp that the likely consequence of goading your brother to swivel-eyed rage when he is already in a bad mood is that he will lunge at you. Or, at the very least, he’ll tear up your Spitfire drawing.
Parenting expert Elaine Halligan, London director of The Parent Practice, reassures me this is all entirely healthy and necessary: ‘It’s really upsetting and exhausting for parents if children are constantly fighting. But conflict between siblings is absolutely normal, and in some ways it’s beneficial.’
SHE adds: ‘Children learn how to solve disputes. It’s a skill they absolutely need to learn, and there is no better place to do this than in the safety of their own home. It also teaches kids tolerance, and how to stand up for themselves.’
Tellingly, my sons don’t fight other children and are rarely, if ever, disciplined at school. The only argy-bargy this year occurred when Caspar, eight, yanked off another boy’s hat and threw it into a puddle. When I asked why, he said: ‘ He was being mean about Conrad’. Oh, the irony.
Halligan explains: ‘At school the rules are so clear, it’s rare that children will get into real trouble unless they have a genuine problem with anger-management or with being too impulsive. They do it at home because it is a safe environment.’
It’s also notable that when any of my children is alone with me or their father, they are charming, funny, delightful — and civilised. Since toddlerhood, Conrad has been famed for his gentle disposition. ‘He has so much love for everyone,’ sighed the nursery teacher.
Now aged ten, he remains a favourite with other mothers, and their daughters, for his kind nature. And yet, with his little brother at home, as his father drily observes, he can morph into a Kray twin.
The mildest insult from Caspar provokes a roar of, ‘I’m going to kill you!’ — followed by a karate kick.
Caspar then emits a savage shriek of rage and slams into his tormentor with his entire body. They fall to the floor, snarling like pitbulls.
‘Stop it!’ I shout, feebly, and am ignored. Recently, I’ve taken to bellowing, à la Mary Poppins, ‘HAVE YOU QUITE FINISHED?’ To which the answer is, no, they’ve barely started.
It takes surprisingly little for Oscar, 13, to join the fray, showcasing his newly acquired rugby skills. I fear that — as they hit the lounge floor, Caspar’s skull narrowly missing the skirting board — someone will end up with a head injury.
As an outlet for their desire to knock the living daylights out of each other, we allow the boys to engage in bouts of WWE. They adore the American wrestling programme, which is full of extremely flamboyant violence and threats along the lines of: ‘I’m going to break your spine!’
Such is their instinct to get physical, the boys daily re-enact these fights on our bed. I only ask them to cover sharp corners with pillows, to minimise the chance of an eye being poked out.
We tolerate the sinister thumps and shaking ceiling, only intervening in an emergency.
The other day, for instance, my husband asked: ‘ Was that the sound of a head hitting a wooden object?’ as we heard a dull thud followed by a wail. We raced upstairs, to find the ten-year-old, ashen with pain, clutching his arm.
In a frenzy of over-excitement — rather than pre-meditation, allegedly — one of his brothers (we have our suspicions) had hurled Conrad off the bed and he’d hit his arm on a wardrobe handle. A gargantuan bruise was turning an ugly swollen purple, and there were a few cuts.
Oscar was sent to his room. Conrad was given a bag of frozen peas. Caspar was forced to read a book. Ten minutes later, all was forgiven and they were wrestling again.
Any malice between them is short-lived; about 30 minutes after landing a punch, they are invariably contrite.
I just wish the urge for peace and love could sometimes emerge before war breaks out. As it is, I jump in, feeling like a doorman at a particularly rough nightclub.
However, I can’t claim girls are more civilised. When I was 11, and my little sister, four, I felt such resentment (she’d knocked over the wardrobe in my Barbie house), I waited until she was asleep, then sank my teeth into her arm.
In the morning, she told our mother, who I later overheard on the phone to a friend: ‘And Leonie actually dreamed that in the night, Anna got up and bit her!’
The truth is, if our little darlings are prone to a full-on punch-up, we parents can’t be too judgmental: it may be our fault.
Elaine Halligan believes siblings fight most frequently ‘for their share of attention from parents’.
She adds: ‘They’re looking for parental approval, attention and love. They also fight over possessions. And there is sometimes jealousy; they might perceive that one child is more favoured by a parent than another. Or they may squabble just because they’re tired, or hungry.’
Less frequently, it can be low self- esteem, or a problem with a friendship at school.
In all these cases, Halligan advises a change of attitude. Think, ‘What can I do to foster harmony between children?’ rather than ‘What can I do to stop them fighting?’
Her advice is to build self-esteem by praising good behaviour rather than giving attention for bad, and spending time alone with each child — even for ten minutes.
YET we mustn’t be too hard on ourselves. It’s essential for parents to realise primary- school children — like Samantha Simmonds’ — are still at an age where lashing out is developmentally normal, where exerting self-control is sometimes impossible.
Halligan says: ‘ Most children between four and ten struggle with impulse control. They’re still developing it. They don’t yet have the ability to press the pause button, and will just lash out instinctively.
‘ Usually, children are very remorseful immediately afterwards. Most have a moral compass, and when we ask: “Why did you do that to your brother?” they’ll say: “I don’t know” — and that’s because they just couldn’t control themselves in the moment.’
And teenagers must also be forgiven the odd thump directed at a beloved sibling.
Halligan explains: ‘The problem with teens is, they revert to toddlerhood. They’re desperately trying to show themselves as independent, with their own identity, and they’ll sometimes show huge unkindness to siblings — it’s all about getting their needs met.
‘Is that developmentally appropriate? Yes it is.’
Of course, I wish for harmony at home regardless. Incessant fighting is miserable, especially when a child gets hurt.
However, I know in my heart, that my children’s scrapping is normal: I’d worry more if they were always obedient, polite and well-behaved.
Happily, there’s no danger of that. Hostilities start at dawn, over topics ranging from which child is the cat’s favourite, how to spell ‘Pendarren’, whether Caspar is entitled to wear Conrad’s old cricket kit, who has squandered someone’s ‘resources’ to buy a space donkey on the iPad and whether Conrad’s bespoke mix of breakfast cereals is trademarked and can’t be eaten by his brothers. All healthy, normal sibling behaviour.
All the same, for the foreseeable future — and with a dental appointment imminent — I think we’ll be avoiding long car journeys.