Things in my home have gotten a little out of control lately. I think it’s a combination of hormones and the typical teenage angst that has my preteen and two teens going at it. At one time it used to be that at least two of my children would be on good terms but lately all three have been on the outs.
It has been very frustrating to hear one yelling at another, one telling the other to “shut up,” slamming doors in each other’s faces and protesting to me how unfair life is because of their sibling. At times I have just stood there frozen not sure what to do and quite frankly, feeling a bit overwhelmed.
I had already tried talking and lecturing my teens. That wasn’t getting me anywhere. There were punishments as well, however that wasn’t working either.
I recalled their earlier years when they weren’t getting along; I would make them sit in a chair facing each other. They couldn’t get up until they had said sorry to each other and given a hug. I knew that wasn’t going to work so I had to try something new.
Now I will be honest, for a period of time we had given up eating dinner together. It became “easier” to just go our separate ways because dinner time was nothing but arguing. There would always be one child who would just have to get a dig in and then before you knew it, there was an explosion.
So this past Monday I called the kids into the kitchen and told them to set the table. One of my teens started grumbling about the fact that we were eating together because they didn’t want to look at a particular sibling. I just ignored the remarks and determined that things were going to be different this time.
When we finally sat down to eat, I announced that no one would get up from the table until each person had said something nice about everyone else. I had rules that it couldn’t be something general like “He has nice hair.” It had to be specific and it had to be truthful.
Believe it or not, it took a good 45 minutes to get through this. I had some protesting in the beginning and comments such as, “It’s not fair because I can’t think of one single nice thing about him/her.”
At first I thought to myself, “This isn’t going to work” but as we slowly progressed it began to change the entire mood. Suddenly there was a smile here and there, then a laugh and by the time we were done, the kids didn’t rush off like I thought they would. One of them brought up something funny from the past that had happened and soon we were recalling old memories.
Now the next night we had dinner together again but this time I did a little something different. The point is I have us engaging in conversation and I can tell you that as of today, the atmosphere in our home has completely changed.
Do I still hear one razz another or an unkind comment be spoken? Yes, I do. But it has drastically diminished and I anticipate that if I keep up our dinner conversations, it will continue to decline.
How do you deal with teen siblings who don’t get along?
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