July 11, 2025 • 55 mins
Why do siblings go from fighting to playing like best friends in a matter of minutes? In this episode, we explore the roots of sibling conflict and how Montessori-inspired strategies—like grace and courtesy lessons, collaborative activities, and setting a foundational expectation of love—can help build lasting bonds between children. Discover practical ways to nurture friendship and harmony at home, even through the chaos.
_______________________________
RESOURCES:✅ Take our free quiz to see what kind of homeschooler you are! → https://www.childoftheredwoods.com/quiz ✅ Love themes? Free trial right here ➡️ www.childoftheredwoods.com/trial ✅ Complete Montessori homeschool curriculum that is affordable and fun for ages 2-9: https://www.childoftheredwoods.com
_______________________________
👋 Get behind the scenes of Child of the Redwoods on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/childoftheredwoods/If you’re ready to stop guessing and start using Montessori materials the right way, check out our complete step-by-step homeschool at Child of the Redwoods. Our programs provide a complete framework for teaching your preschooler through third grader (ages 2-9). Our homeschooling system makes planning a whole lot easier, with lessons that inspire and guide your child gently in all subject areas. 🌟 Subscribe for fun activities for the whole family and Montessori homeschooling tips!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Hey there friends, I'm Aubrey Harkis.
Today's episode is a replay fromthe Child of the Redwoods live
show that I host with my husbandin Montessori homeschooling,
partnering crime, David Harkis. You can watch the full episode
on the Child of the Redwoods YouTube channel.
Here's the clip. They fight, fight, fight, fight,
(00:24):
fight, and then they love you, love you, love you, love you,
love you. And then they play together
peacefully. And then before you know it,
they're fighting again. What gives?
Friends, siblings, squabbles, sibling dynamics is one of the
most popular questions we have been asked in our Montessori
(00:46):
community over and over, and it just seems like nobody has the
perfect answer. Is there a perfect answer?
We're going to tell you that Montessori can help you overcome
a lot of these hurdles. And yet the conflict between two
human beings who are both born into this big, beautiful world
is very normal. Yeah, for sure.
(01:11):
So so let's actually talk about like why siblings fight in the
1st place? Where is the conflict coming
from? Yeah, right.
I mean, I have a sister, a younger sister.
You have a younger brother. I know I fought with my sister
and was pesky and it felt vice versa and all the other things
that go with it. And you were?
The older brother you you know and you describe yourself still
(01:34):
as being pesky. Wish you were, but generally we
think of like the younger sibling is always annoying the
older child, but it's not true. It can also happen in reverse.
Yeah, that's right. So, I mean, I think we sometimes
would say that like we wouldn't describe the older brother being
pesky. We would say he's being mean or
(01:54):
bullying, right. But it's the sort of the same
thing. We just use a different word to
describe it because of the age dynamic and it's normal.
Where does it come from? Well, one of the places that you
might find it is a desire for individual attention.
So I don't know if that was the case for me always, but I know
there was the desire to be seen and given my own space.
(02:18):
Another reason that you see dynamic, this kind of dynamic is
there's a struggle to find your place in the family.
Who are you? We see this a lot when you have
a new baby in the house, right? And the older kid gets a little
more jealous. Who am I now?
Or sometimes you see that with the middle child, right, where
the middle child is not the oldest anymore and he's not the
(02:39):
baby anymore. And it's sort of a wondering who
am I? How do I fit into this family?
And then another is, of course, there's just natural
developmental differences. You know, children, as they go
through the developmental stages, will enter different
periods of readiness for collaboration or isolation, and
sometimes those don't necessarily mesh.
(03:01):
Isolation in a good way though. Yeah, I mean, I tend.
To think of isolation as like a negative unishment.
Yeah, exactly. But like sometimes we just don't
want to talk or see anybody. An I think in our culture we
forget that little children are just human beings with needs for
(03:24):
being alone sometimes and being with other people sometimes.
And then this actually can vary depending on your temperament
and personality, just like it does with us.
I feel like as personally, as anintrovert, I require a lot of
introspective alone time and I'mvery happy, like kind of doing
my own thing. Not that I never want to be with
(03:45):
people, but just like that's kind of my norm is to seek that
alone time and to enjoy the solitude.
Solitude is a better word for itrather than isolation, OK, Don't
you think? No, but I'll go with it.
I think solitude is thought of as being really positive.
Like we go out into the forest in solitude to seek solitude,
(04:09):
but no one, no one seeks isolation.
OK, right. Well, anyway, what can you, I
don't agree, but what can you agree?
What can you do about this natural occurrence, this sort of
natural sibling rivalry? We all experience it to some
(04:29):
degree or another. Even in our our house, we work
really hard to make sure that our two kids are, don't, you
know, feel competitive. But it's only natural.
But we can do things to help alleviate that tension.
And the Montessori method gives us some really good guidance.
So what's the first one that kind of leads us along this
(04:52):
journey? OK, when I think about siblings
fighting, I really do think we start with that acceptance that
it is a normal struggle and thencome at it instead of the
perspective of like, I've got tosquash it, See it as an
opportunity for you as a parent to help your children learn how
(05:14):
to deal with it. Because conflict is super, super
normal. And one of the things that we do
as bonusorians is we integrate it into our curriculum.
That's right. And I think it's a unique part
of Montessori. Not a lot of general teaching
philosophies. I'm not going to say none of
them because some, some obviously like there are other
(05:38):
teaching methods out there that incorporate a lot of social
learning as well. But Montessori is, is unique in
that we build it into our curriculum in ways and places
where you normally wouldn't think of it occurring.
So one example of this would be within our practical life
curriculum, we have an entire curriculum.
(06:00):
We can just kind of pull this whole thing out right here.
Let's see, these are level 4. That's going to be lower L.
Let's take a look at our primary.
Can you just pull out the practical life within the
practical life activities, whichif you're brand new to
Montessori, are those super popular activities that you've
probably seen on social media where children are pouring
(06:23):
things back and forth. Or maybe there's a cute little
set up on a tray and there's some tongs and some beans or
something. Children are transferring or
maybe you've seen a very small child sweep up a spill with a
broom. Those are all practical life
activities because they're practical things that we do in
our daily lives that we don't necessarily think children need
(06:45):
to be taught. But there is a sub category of
practical life that Montessori guides know that you probably
wouldn't really necessarily knowif you were just learning
Montessori from social media, primarily just looking at those
images because it doesn't reallyfeature a very well on social
media because it's a role play. And that is our grace and
(07:07):
courtesy lessons. Yep.
So it's actually a hole. I don't know if you found any
cards in here that were labeled grace and courtesy.
Yeah, there's one. So here's an example.
This is an example of a regular practical life activity that you
probably have seen before. Rug rolling, buttoning,
(07:28):
snapping, zipping. So self-care.
Yeah, so these are the more, I don't know, when we think about
practical life and you're cruising the, you know,
Instagrams or whatever, you're going to see depictions of this
kind of stuff because it films easily, right?
It looks you can, it looks cute,but there's a lot within the
(07:51):
this practical life domain that doesn't really film as easily,
but super important. And that would be your grace and
courtesy lessons. Things like or on our card here,
these are level 1, blowing one'snose, coughing, sneezing,
yawning, opening and closing books, decorating the peace
(08:14):
table. So things related to grace and
courtesy, how to sort of carry oneself.
And this would be lessons you'd be teaching to a 2 year old.
Yeah. So Grace and Curtis's lessons
are very, very powerful because it's an opportunity to teach our
children these skills, but maybeeven before or sometimes after
(08:36):
they've experienced them in reallife.
So think about the classic example that's in our primary
curriculum, and it always makes people laugh.
Is Maria Montessori herself did this very dramatic lesson on
blowing one's nose appropriately.
And what Yeah, I just she did this just sit down in front of
(08:57):
the children and and demonstrated how to properly.
And I imagine she did this whilewearing her Victorian garb.
Sure. Blow one's nose, you know into a
tissue and or probably a kerchief.
You know, in the in the time it would have been a kerchief,
right. That's right.
And at the time, the children were fascinated because they'd
(09:18):
never seen anybody actually demonstrate how to do such a
basic skill. And here Marie Montessori, the,
you know, very fancy, beautiful lady here she was coming in and
showing the children how to to do this.
Kind of gross. Yeah, rude thing.
This rude thing, right, that thechildren she found and she kind
(09:39):
of thought, I think she thought,and we laugh at it today because
it's kind of a silly like lesson.
But I think that she thought that the children would think it
was funny. Like she came in and did this
big dramatic presentation thinking that the children would
like see kind of the humor in itand just, you know, go along
with it. You know, like, OK, that's how
(10:00):
you blow your nose. It was kind of fun, right?
But instead, the children were overcome with gratitude.
And they, some of them began to cry.
And they came up and they huggedher, and they thanked her for
giving them this lesson on how to blow one's nose
appropriately. And she herself was overcome by
(10:23):
emotion because she realized like, no one had bothered to
teach these children this, you know, very basic thing before,
you know, like. And they felt grateful because
now they wouldn't have runny noses and just be making a big
mess of goopy mess of things. They now knew the proper way to
(10:43):
be in polite society, right we. Just practice some basic
hygiene. Yeah, And so care of them
that's, I mean, that's not necessarily about discipline or
siblings exactly. But Maria Montessori, this was
like the beginning of the grace and courtesy development of this
part of the Practical Life curriculum.
(11:04):
And so after having this experience with, you know,
teaching the children how to blow their nose, she realized,
oh, there's so many other lessons that we could teach
children about how like, you know, I think we think of it as
like, manners, you know, or being polite out and about, you
know, things that you need to know in order to get along with
(11:27):
other people and to kind of behave in a way that's accepted
by your culture. And so grace and courtesy
lessons can be very, very different depending on where
you're from. In some cultures maybe you want
to teach children how to handshake, shake someones hand.
In another culture maybe it's a hug or kisses on the cheek.
(11:50):
Or there's just a million different types of lessons that
we could give children about howto behave or present themselves
with other people. And a component of that is being
with the people who are in your intimate community around you,
and that includes siblings. And so there's lots and lots of
(12:12):
grace and courtesy lessons that you could give your children to
help them with that sibling dynamic.
Do any come to your mind right away?
Well, I mean the most obvious tome would be peace route, like a
peace table. Yes, the resolution, right and
making peace. And we even have this, you know,
right down here. We have these listed as lessons
(12:33):
in our little cards for GNC grace and courtesy.
So just to clarify, these cards are the scope and sequence.
I think sometimes we don't clarify that enough.
So we've taken the whole scope and sequence for ages 2 to 9 and
we've created a card system thatwill allow you to work through
the scope and sequence and follow your child at the same
(12:55):
time. So when we talk about our cards
and we talk about our levels, what we're describing as our
scope and sequence. And so a level 1 would be
earliest skills and then Level 3, this would be at the end of
the road for our practical life,which only goes through Level 3
because it's a primary. And so at this stage, you've
(13:16):
already introduced the peace table and now you're doing
things like mediation at the peace table, right?
Yeah, you know, right. I mean, there's lots and lots of
lessons. We could even come up with other
lessons outside of these. I tell the members in our
courses like there's an endless number of grace and courtesy
(13:37):
lessons you could give for sure.And you can think them up
yourself. And so this is actually a really
good strategy for parents to usewhen helping their their
children, which, you know, we assume that they have siblings
if they're working through this particular issue.
If you don't have more than one child, maybe your child plays
with friends or a cousin or, youknow, just conflict with other
(14:00):
family members. All of this, this is the same
strategy that works for all of it, that if you're thinking
particularly about, you know, let's say your two children who
just can't stop bickering with each other, you might think
about what is happening just before the bickering.
Well, this goes back to what we talked about with like why
(14:21):
conflict is normal and what causes right.
So when you're thinking through to the point where you're having
a grace and courtesy lesson and you're asking and modeling and
encouraging them to resolve, part of what you're thinking
about is did the conflict arise from a desire for individual
attention? Were they fighting over
(14:42):
resources like a toy or a space?Is there just a natural kind of
incongruity between incongruity between the developmental stages
and that can help you as you arehelping prepare the environment,
so to speak, for the mediation to happen?
Yeah. So let's say what happens just
(15:04):
before two children start fighting in the car.
Let's think, what were they doing before?
Like, are they, do they know howto entertain themselves in the
car? Do they understand the the
concept of like where one's personal space ends?
(15:25):
I know that's a particular issuefor us with our kids or always
has spent like 1 is always pushing his foot into the other
space. And so it's not like you can,
you know, train them to never have conflict in these areas.
You know, there will be ways that they find to annoy each
(15:45):
other for the rest of their lives, I'm sure.
But a lesson that you might give, it's a grace and courtesy
lesson that might not be listed in the curriculum, but there's a
tangent from it. A way you could use it in your
Montessori home is you could say, hey, like, we're really
having a whole lot of problems in the car.
Like, that's where a lot of the fighting is happening.
And So what kind of grace and courtesy lessons can I teach
(16:09):
about being in the car that would be helpful for them to
avoid conflict? And so one of those things might
be just a, a lesson about where your personal space is in the
car and you know, where you keepyour things and where things
(16:30):
belong and how your, your body like.
So in a, in a Montessori way, wecould role play this by
pretending to get into your car seat and, you know, keeping your
feet on your side, right? And I know that sounds kind of
silly, but it's actually could be a Montessori lesson is very,
(16:51):
very legitimate Montessori lesson.
Another would be could be like, I know in a classroom you often,
or at least we often heard the words like keep your hands to
yourself, you know, or like don't touch your neighbor.
OK, those. But obviously just telling kids
like don't touch your neighbors isn't going to stop them from
(17:12):
touching them. But in a Montessori situation,
you might give a lesson on whereto put your hands because
sometimes children just like don't know.
And so we might give a lesson about like you could put your
hands in your lap like this, or you could put them in your
pockets or you could put them onyour back or you could, you
(17:33):
know, just hang them in front ofyou.
But like, teaching them a proactive, positive way to
handle their own personal space in their body can be really
powerful. Yeah.
So another thing is that we can also.
(17:54):
We can also create ways for children to practice.
You mentioned the peace table. We can create ways for children
to practice that conflict resolution.
And you know, we don't have timeto get into that whole gateway
of positive discipline in this session right now.
But if anyone is out there and they're wondering like, I'm
(18:16):
struggling with this, how do where do I go with actually
resolving the conflict? Positive discipline, gentle
discipline is that is your pathway.
But in the Montessori context, we can also use all kinds of
lessons to teach children how towork together.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
(18:36):
So if you look in any of our, ifany of our lessons or you've got
a challenge, OK, a challenge. I know you've got the lower L
ones right there. I've got our primary curriculum.
No, I am vice versa. Here's here's practical life
from the primary curriculum. I've got our lower L curriculum
and I'm gonna pull one out too. I'm actually gonna just yank one
(18:59):
out. OK, well I've got mine.
OK, I've got mine. I pulled mine from level 5 life
science We're. Doing well, I also put life.
Science. You did?
Oh my gosh, we're really insane.OK, well read me one of your
lessons. Parts of a flower.
Parts of a flower? Yep, right.
(19:20):
Yeah, so this is a Level 3 from the green grass grows parts of a
flower. Well, how could we use that
lesson to teach children how to be better siblings with each
other? Now, are you talking
metaphorically? Or I'm talking about literally
with that lesson. How could?
We. Turn that into a collaborative
(19:41):
lesson is what I'm asking. So parts of a flower could be
taught with parts cards, which have a puzzle like quality.
And in fact, we saw an example of siblings completing a
categorizing activity. It wasn't parts cards, but it
was a categorizing activity together.
He had an older brother, I think, and a younger brother.
(20:03):
We saw a video of this recently,one of our members.
And do you remember that? Yeah, it was very cute.
And they were working together. And mom was there kind of
guiding it, and she would hold the card up.
Oh, I know which one it was. It was from our pets unit.
It was the cat. And then you would find a
(20:24):
sentence. The cat is hungry and then you
would find a command to feed thecat.
Oh. Yes.
All right. And so the brothers.
Do you remember that now work? Together to solve the puzzle.
I think it was a photo, not a video, no.
No, definitely a video. Yeah.
Because we saw them working together and I thought it was a
(20:45):
beautiful like, so they're both,they're different.
I think they were different ages.
Yeah, well, an older one and a younger one, but it was
beautiful to see them working together.
So I think that's an example of how you would bring kids
together to work together collaboratively on a project.
And actually that is our second tip.
It's you would create collaborative work activities
(21:07):
for them to practice these graceand courtesy ideas, right?
So you're instilling them with the grace and courtesy mindset.
And there are specific lessons that you can give them to help
reinforce that. And of course, as you were
saying, there could be very evenmore than the ones that we would
include in our curriculum. Because grace and courtesy
(21:29):
really is just sort of like how we conduct ourselves in polite
society in order to, you know, help with social cohesion and to
feel good about ourselves and topractice good hygiene and all
those sorts of things, right. So as they're internalizing that
you would then give them opportunities to practice and
those opportunities to practice could be pulled right from your
(21:49):
curriculum. So this is where we would say
this is kind of goes back to thepremise of multi age teaching
and why it's so great because itgives you a chance to bring
different ages and stages together and have them
collaborate and practice not only the academic concept, but
(22:10):
the collaborative, loving, graceful, courteous process.
OK, that was actually a good one.
So parts of a flower, you could might maybe get one flower out
and work with both children to name the parts together.
(22:31):
Yep. And identify them.
It's a perfectly fine lesson to do.
It was kind of like a random example that we pulled that one
out. What I pulled out was botanical
nature journaling. OK, which also is a live science
activity. That's for an older life, right?
Yeah. It's, I mean it's in our lower
elementary curriculum, but thereis there any reason why you
couldn't also have your younger child doing botanical nature
(22:53):
journaling? So how would you, how would you
bring Grace the collaboration tolife with this journaling?
Because journaling is, well, notisolated.
No. But solitary.
It does feel like it's a solitary activity.
Well, what actually what came tomind was maybe the concept of
(23:14):
like a journal itself is kind ofa solitary activity.
But I remember doing a lot of projects with our two kids where
they would each journal something or Draw Something.
And then I would Draw Something and we would make as many pages
as we would want. And we would staple it together
(23:34):
to make a book together. And So what it would look like,
what it would look like is, you know, one page would be, you
know, a book about plants you know, by, and then the three of
our names. And then the next page would be
one that maybe our oldest child drew with, like a sentence about
(23:55):
the plant that he found while wewere out in nature.
And then we turned the page and it would be like a page of
scribbles where I had asked our youngest what he wanted to say
about his plant. And he might have said something
like, my plant has teeth and eats flies, but you can't tell.
It's like a big scribbled mess. And then you turn the next page.
(24:15):
And then maybe it's my example. And we just make a whole bunch
of pages and staple them together.
And we actually did a lot of that when they were in this
particular age group. And I think that it's teaching
your oldest. Now, if your oldest doesn't want
to participate in this whole thing, they want to make their
own book, that's fine. But it is an example of a really
(24:36):
easy way that you could make a collaborative project while
everybody retains their own individual piece of it that
they're contributing. Like you're contributing
something to the group project and you set it up ahead of time.
Like we together are going to create a book or a map or a a
game or or whatever it is a project that you're creating and
(25:00):
then each person brings something to the table.
That's right. And you know, I think what you
might be, what you might hear isthe older brothers say he ruins
it or the older sister say she ruins it, right, Like, oh, I
don't want them to mess up my journal, right.
Like, I worked real hard on it, and that's understandable.
(25:23):
This goes back to what are the sources of sibling conflict?
And some of it is that sometimesthe child just needs to feel
that their work, it needs to be respected and they don't
understand why they have to share it.
It's important to them. And in those cases, it might not
be the right time to introduce that.
No, we're going to do a collaborative lesson.
(25:44):
However, it often is a good ideato at least approach it with the
older child. And this goes to like gracing
courtesy is really you need to think of it as an academic
subject in itself. It's not just niceties or
disciplinary, A discipline goal,right?
(26:05):
It's it's a mindset. And so coming to the older child
beforehand, as you said, and say, I want to do this natural
journal together, or we're goingto do this travel journal or
whatever it is nature journal. We're going to go to the
botanical gardens and I want youguys each to make your own.
We're going to put them together.
And your brother, you know, he can't, he can't write the same
way that you can. But he really, really loves
(26:26):
participating. And I think it'd be so nice to
have one book for all of it together.
And if you write, set the right context, you can create a
situation where the older brother can start to feel really
proud of the leadership that he feels with his younger sibling.
And that especially if they're in that lower L that that second
(26:47):
plane, that could be super empowering because they're in an
age of ethics and moral decisionmaking in that sense of the Big
Brother has something to share and loves and protects his
little brother or sister is really, really powerful.
That's an expression of love that's appropriate for that age.
(27:10):
I it's, this is bringing back memories.
Actually, I think humor is a really important tool that we
can use in this. It doesn't work for all
children, but I remember doing alot of we would our older, our
oldest and I would look at the page of scribbles that the
youngest had just done and we would kind of wink to each other
(27:33):
like, oh, yes, this is a pictureof the Venus flytrap.
I see it's right here. And then our oldest would join
in the fantasy aspect of it and say, oh, yes, are these the
teeth? I think I see one of the teeth
right here. And the youngest would just like
(27:54):
puff up with, you know, pride and just be like, yeah, that is
one of the teeth. And I think that those kind of
invitations to give compliments or to, you know, maybe even if
it's not just like I like it or I love it, you know, it's like a
descriptive praise type of which.
Is the way a praise should be like Yeah.
(28:15):
And for adults to children as well.
Yeah, I think that those creating those opportunities for
your youngest to interact with your oldest work and give
feedback on it, you know, positive feedback or
acknowledgement of the hard work, you know, and so you're
right, like in order to set the stage for those kind of positive
(28:37):
collaborative experiences, it was helpful to talk first to the
old, the oldest child, usually our oldest, who in our context
is 3 years older and was well aware, you know, of the
difference in skills. I didn't always want to share.
And didn't always want to share.Yeah.
And so, no. But talking ahead of it, ahead
(28:58):
of time, like getting a game plan, like we made this book.
And I want you to know your younger brother, he worked real
hard on his. And we want to make sure that he
really feels like we see his hard work and just saying
something like that, you know, not saying, so you better be
nice. Or So, you know, we're going to
(29:20):
give him compliments even thoughyou think it's, you know,
terrible. None of that.
We just, like, set the stage positive, like, like we're going
to have this experience. And yes, I know he doesn't draw
like you. You know what a Venus 55 really
looks like, Right. And the illness will be like,
well, yeah, then I'll be like, his motor skills are still
(29:43):
developing. And it's just being really
honest about the differences there.
Now, would this work with twins?No.
Maybe. I don't know.
I. Don't know.
I mean, even as the kids get older and the.
Collaborative work definitely can.
Yeah. And as they get older and their
differences change, you know, I think even with twins there's,
(30:03):
it's natural to have a kind of asense of rivalry between the
two. Oh, for sure, you.
Know so and I think that's whereso.
And also maybe different skill levels.
So what I'm hearing that I want to under score from you is that
goes with the concept of recent.Curiously, there's no guy out
there like you're not. You're not denigrating the
younger's work in order to win favor with the older or to puff
(30:25):
him off. What makes him feel good is that
he's being invited to share in an adult experience.
You're acknowledging that he hasdeveloped a skill that is better
in some, like objectively better, right?
He can draw the shape of the flytrap more accurately to
(30:48):
nature without comparing him to his brother as being worse or
superior or inferior. Just rather we're together.
You've got something here, he's going to get there too.
We really excited. You couldn't do this at one
point either. But we're all learning together.
And there's no trickery or guileor or deceit.
(31:11):
It's or an attempt to play a cool or something or bribe.
There's no bribery. There's no negative attention.
And so that's a kind of a piece to it, like abiding the older
child into that experience will be empowering.
(31:33):
Yeah, I, I, so I this example was a bit esoteric.
You know, we just randomly picked things from the
curriculum to talk about how we could make it a collaborative
activity. But I'm going to give some
really concrete ways that are probably a bit easier to think
of. And that is like, think about
practical life activities that kids could do together, whether
(31:57):
it's raking leaves, although that's kind of thought of as
outdated these days, isn't it? Like you're supposed to mulch
the leaves and then let them decompose.
I think raking leaves is still fun, right?
You make big piles. But like working together to do
things like working outside together, you each, you know,
(32:20):
you take the wheelbarrow this time full of the heavy stuff.
Now it's your siblings turn likewe're working together to create
something as a family unit or asa partnership.
And you'll see your children do this on their own as well.
They children do it naturally. They go to the playground and
it's so funny to watch them because if, if there's no
(32:40):
obvious work to be done, they will make work.
They will load up their dump trucks and start hauling them
from one side of the sandbox to the other.
And you're like, you know, as a,as a school teacher, when we had
sandboxes, it was like, this happened all the time.
Like it sand was constantly being transported from one side
of the playground to the other. Why?
(33:02):
Because it's something that you can do together and it feels
good and it's sensory. But you'll see children kind of
organizing each other or their peers and their siblings to like
make sure that like all of this stuff gets all over here and
we're all working together to make sure that it happens.
And it's great. Those are just natural
collaborative activities. You can also play games with
(33:26):
your kids, but I recommend that for unless your kids are like
really into the lower plane and even then saw sometimes like
competitive games can make the sibling rivalry worse and.
For sure. Yeah, I know I you really love
(33:46):
competitive games and so I don'tknow if you had a different
experience growing up with them,but for younger children
especially, I think collaborative games are going to
lead you to more positive sibling happy relationships and
competitive games can really make things harder.
(34:09):
Well, I think when you put a, when you use competitive games
where one, especially the younger or smaller, is always at
a disadvantage, it feels demoralizing.
I think if you have a competitive game and there's an
equality, it can be fun and natural and healthy.
Competition is an important partof human existence.
(34:34):
It doesn't have to mean exploitation or dominance or
corruption, but it could feel good.
Especially I know like for, I'llspeak for our own boys.
Like competition, especially physical competition, is just
sort of in them. They want to see who can run
(34:55):
faster, jump higher. You know, they just did it last
night when they were, you know, they're, they're older teens now
and they raced home. They tried to race each other
from the park and they just naturally kind of came up with
it. So I think competition in itself
is not bad. I think it's when you associate
(35:15):
it with these high stakes or youcreate circumstances where it's
just unfair, like you can never,of course the older, like the
seven-year old is always going to be able to run faster than a
three-year old. Right.
Right. Or beat him in checkers or
something. Right, right.
But how about like a game of chance?
(35:36):
Like we've got lots and lots of games out there that are being
made for kids that involve a clear winner and a clear loser.
And in my experience, older kidslike ours who are already
teenagers, Upper L kids generally handle that much
better. They're in the second plane.
They haven't. The second-half of the second.
(35:58):
Plane Yeah. So they've developed ethical
reasons. Children under the age of 9.
They have not. Developed.
They don't handle it well. Yeah, they haven't.
They're not at the, they haven'tprogressed, matured through the
moral age yet. And so it just the world is more
black and white. I mean, it's literally a
sensorial world for babies and it's a long walk from the
sensorial to the full abstract world of let's say a 12 year
(36:22):
old, right? By the time you get to 12,
you've kind of the, a 12 year old's brain and an adult's brain
are dissimilar, really that dissimilar in terms of what they
can like learn and remember and process.
But before you get to that point, there's a lot of
maturation that has to happen. And so I agree, I think, I think
cooperative games are great. And fortunately, there are a lot
(36:45):
more options for cooperative games.
So, but my answer to your question of like the competitive
game, if it's a game of chance, I think part of it, and this
goes with like a three-year old isn't going to understand this,
but it's still something you canconvey you did nothing to win.
If it's a game of chance, like it's just the luck of the draw.
And that there's also a life lesson in that as well about
(37:09):
fairness and how games work and play and then putting your own
victory in the right context. And again, I think for a three
or four year old, you're not going to, they're not going to
get that. But I think for this is a lesson
you'd want to start teaching a second plane child to have them
understand. And second plane is 6 and up.
(37:30):
Yeah. So I mean honestly, what you
want them? To understand yeah, what I
noticed is under sixes, kids cancompletely lose it when they
lose the game and just be super frustrated when you could get
into tantrum land. Sure.
They just developmentally aren'tin a place to really be able to
understand that kind of competition.
So I, I guess I hear what you'resaying that competitive games
(37:52):
aren't necessarily bad. They they offer good lessons to
teach children about life and about they can be fun and they
can be fun. But if you're thinking
specifically about sibling dynamics and you've got children
that are tending to bicker and pester each other and fight,
(38:12):
competitive games aren't going to get you.
You're just going to enhance therivalry.
Right. You're just going to stoke a
fire. And so my, my personal thought
is if you've got an issue like this with young children, stay
away from the competitive games until they're older and their
relationship is a little more stable.
Yeah, if you're a Roman emperor and you're trying to create a
(38:34):
brood of cutthroat offspring to challenge for the throne, then I
would say go all in on the competitive games.
But if you're like trying to teach a loving relationship, and
then yes, I think you have to bemindful of how the competitive
(38:55):
game works, especially when there is an inherent
disadvantage on one side becauseof your age, ability size,
something like that. And I think that's where we can
get in trouble. It's family game night.
We're all going to play together.
The five year old isn't. It is old enough to play Uno,
but doesn't really have the maturity to play in the same way
(39:15):
as the 8 year old. How do you invite the five year
old in to play? It's a competitive game by
nature. It's not a cooperative game,
right? Uno as an example.
How do you allow the five year old to participate, knowing that
five year old probably won't winas frequently because they won't
have the same well, they just don't have the same maturity and
(39:35):
intellectual capacity as the older children.
And you want to invite them intoplay.
You don't want to exclude them, but you also want to make sure
that they're not feeling disadvantaged, harmed, anger.
You know you're feeding the kindof jealousy.
A lot of games can be made to becollaborative, even if they're
(39:59):
set up to be competitive games. There are ways to do it and so I
would encourage you if you do have a whole lot of competitive
games out there to play with therules because you can tweak the
rules often to make it a little more fair for everyone and I
think more fun. This is an 8.
This is something we've argued about for many, many years.
(40:21):
We haven't talked about this in a long time.
I guess we haven't. We have argued about competitive
versus collaborative games for many decades now, and the answer
is there's like, I don't know, it's a personality choice.
But I would say that there is definitely an emphasis on
collaborative games, especially for younger ones is great.
(40:41):
I think actually a lot of moderngames emphasize collaboration,
like Dungeons and Dragons emphasize collaboration or can
emphasize collaboration. But competitive games can also
be really fun and appealing, andyou just need to be aware that
there can be unintended consequences, which actually is
a great way to segue into our final tip, which is set the
(41:04):
expectation for love and friendship.
Yes, OK, All right, So we agreedto disagree about competitive
games this. Is twice we've agreed to
disagree in this episode, solitude versus isolation and
competitive versus competition. This is a disagreement.
(41:27):
Place your vote, friends. I don't know what's going.
On today, team isolation or teamsolitude, Are you team
competitive games or team collaborative games?
I don't know what's going on today.
It's July 1st. It must be the day.
Of yes. OK, so we probably should
explain the games thing. David grew up in a house where
(41:49):
you guys play games constantly and he's really good at them
too. But I lost all the time.
I don't care that you lost all the time.
I mean, just because you say I'mgood at them doesn't mean that I
always wanted. No, here's what I mean by you're
good at them. When you get a new game, you can
read the rules that go with the game and understand them and
(42:11):
then teach everyone else what todo.
And when I get a new game, I look at it and I like read those
rules like 10 times. I'm like, this makes no sense to
me and why is this fun? This is fun.
And then we start playing the game and I'm like, I think it's
fun. This is fun.
It's not really fun. I mean, it's fun that other
people are having fun and that'show I have fun playing games,
(42:32):
but they're just not my thing. And so like you're talking,
you're looking at two people like 1 loves games to pieces and
we'll play any game and the other like please, like if you
never, if I never had to play another game in my life, I would
be happy. Next week on on Old Married
Couple Live, we will be talking about brown rice versus brown
(42:55):
rice. I know.
OK, so anyway, so my tip is makeall the competitive games,
collaborative games and then everybody's happy and you know,
tips from a long time gamer. Accept the expectation for love
and friendship and you'll. Have and then play whatever
(43:19):
games you like and and just helpeveryone deal with the the loser
vibes. OK, so a.
Very revelatory episode, I know.So, well, we did just have our
25th. So, you know, I mean, these are
all the things we had to work through and I guess we're still
working through them. OK, so love and friendship is
(43:43):
the third tip. This is probably the most
important tip, dealing with siblings.
You can teach all the grace and courtesy lessons that you want.
You can create all the collaborative work and gaming
opportunities that you can thinkof.
You can teach all the lessons and think of ways to make a lot
(44:04):
of them collaborative so that you can work together as a
family towards a common goal. But if you haven't agreed in
your heart and in your mindset that you are setting this
expectation that there will forever be this baseline of love
and friendship in your family, like, then the rest is just not
(44:25):
going to work. And I know this one is a little
bit nebulous. Like there's lots of practical
things you can do with positive discipline.
There's lots of practical thingsyou can do with collaborative
lessons together and those graceand courtesy.
But when it comes to setting theexpectations for love and
friendship, I want to be really clear that we have had like
(44:48):
thousands of conversations with our kids where we start the
conversation with you guys are each other's best friends.
Yeah, you are always. Brothers.
Or you'll never not be brothers and it is a special and unique
and precious relationship and you will rely on each other and
(45:13):
need to be able to rely on each other for many, many years to
come. You know, at some point we will
be in a different stage of life and you're going to have to make
decisions together about our ourhealth and our well-being.
Like that's just the way it is. It's a natural course of things.
And we, you know, the foundationyou're building today as
(45:37):
siblings is what will carry you forward as you go through these
many travails in life, includinghow you handle things like your
elderly parents or when you get a job and you have to move far
away, how do you continue to stay in touch with each other?
Or if you have kids, how do you bring them together and have
(45:58):
cousins together? Like the things that do will
have to navigate in life. You'll have many friends and and
hopefully you'll have a loving partner.
You know a spouse that will be with you by your side for your
whole adult for the whole of your life as well.
You may not always agree with that person, but they will.
You will be with them. But your brother is special.
(46:20):
Your brother is unique and you should value that.
And setting that expectation from the get go is vital.
I would say it is the paramount obligation.
Like it really will determine everything else.
If you want to, you know, I usedit, I kind of jokingly was
(46:42):
talking about like the Roman emperor, but that is actually
how it was, right? There are family structures
where they intentionally set outto create competitiveness within
the amongst their children and that's their goal.
If, if that's your goal, then you can, you know how to do
that. You create circumstances and
stakes where they have to vie for limited resources like love
(47:05):
and affection. However, if you don't want to do
that, you have to be just as crystal clear that in this
house, we love each other and wehold each other very close and
sacred and dear. And that is especially true for
our brothers and sisters. I remember starting this with
(47:27):
our oldest when our second was born, actually in our first
introduction, as he met the new baby for the very first time, We
were still in the hospital. We introduced him as his new
best friend. Like he's your brother and he's
going to be your brother foreverand he's going to be your
friend, like your best ever friend forever.
(47:50):
And I think like, it's not that a three-year old during such a
monumental time can understand the significance of that, but I
think that, like, setting it forward from the very first day,
like this is how it's gonna be. Guess what?
You're going to be on the same team forever.
(48:10):
It's not gonna be you and US against the other one, or it's
not going to be me and you against him and him, you know,
it's going to be the two of you and the two of us.
And we're here to guide and loveand support you as family.
That you're in it together. Kids like this is your
generation. This is your gift to each other.
(48:33):
And it's a gift of, of love and support and it's something that
you could have for the rest of your life.
And it's just an an amazing gift.
And children are obviously not going to feel that all the time
or really understand it probablyuntil they're a grown up.
But I think that setting that expectation, rather than saying,
(48:57):
I think we could set an oppositeexpectation.
You, you know, and some familiesdo.
They're like, I have two kids and maybe they like each other
and maybe they don't. It doesn't matter.
You know, they're two different people.
They've got different personalities.
Some siblings like each other, some siblings don't really get
along. Do your kids get along?
And so we actually have gotten that question a lot.
(49:18):
And there's actually been a lot of surprise around our kids when
they are in public interacting, People will strangers will be
watching our kids and then they'll come up to us and
they'll be like, well, your kidsreally get along.
That's so great that you have kids that get along, that really
like each other. They do, they do, they always
get along. And we're like, of course they
(49:39):
don't always get along. Like, of course they fight
sometimes and secret, their fights can be really, really
big, OK. Their conflict can be really,
really big, but I think that some people just don't enter
into this family relationship with the expectation, the strong
expectation that you are growinga pair or a trio or a trio or a
(50:05):
quartet. Or whatever of quintet.
Of human beings that are just intimately connected with each
other, with friendship. And I think that that
expectation can make a big, big difference in how close they
are. So it's not just that we're
lucky that our kids we're close or that our kids get along like
(50:26):
as if they could get along or they could not get along.
It's one or the other. It's not sometimes they're going
to have conflict, but they're going to get along like they're
going to, they're together, theylove each other.
They're going to be best friends.
We tell them this all the time. You guys are so lucky, you know,
to have each other and that you are friends with each other.
(50:46):
It's so special and precious andyou and we tell them outright
like you should know, not everybody has this with their
sibling. You know, there are a lot of
siblings that don't have this relationship and it's a
treasure, you know, and you guysshould really work hard to keep
it. And we have witnessed over the
course of their lives, growing up to teenagehood than
(51:11):
understanding that developing that relationship takes work and
effort, a lot of work. And it has taken a lot of effort
on our part as well to be mediators when there is conflict
and also to allow them to solve some of their own conflicts, as
hard as that is, you know, want to solve their problems all the
(51:31):
time. Like we try and play the balance
between that. Like if someone's about to get
injured or punch each other, we intervene.
But otherwise, if they're just like arguing or disagreeing
about it, we tend to try and take a backseat and let them
work it out themselves and then give them suggestions for ways
(51:52):
that they might handle it. And the way David and I do this
in real life is we do a lot of tag teaming.
Fortunately, you know, we have each other.
And I know that there are a lot of some single parents out
there. And hopefully you have someone
in your life that you can take alittle load off with, you know,
and that it could be anyone, it could be a grandma, you know, it
(52:14):
doesn't just have to be a married partner, you know, or
spouse. It it could be somebody else in
your life. But it really is helpful to tag
team and to take one kid aside and to talk to them about
strategies for how they might approach this conflict or the
situation or something that might make a sibling feel better
(52:36):
or more prideful or braver. And it just takes a lot of time
and, and work to foster it. But I think that really what it
comes down to is that commitmentthat you like you're, you are
going to raise children who loveeach other, period.
Like you're not going to raise kids that don't get along.
(52:56):
Yeah. And I guess that's the bottom
that for me, that's kind of the underlying point is I think a
lot of we don't all set out to create a team of rivals, so to
speak. But but I think a lot of times
if we're not intentionally creating a brotherhood or a
sibling hood, that can be one ofthe consequences.
Now, again, sibling rivalries are normal.
(53:19):
They come even really well functioning team jealous.
They'll fight sometimes they'll fight big.
It happens. But if your expectation as a
family, as a parent, is one of love, then and.
And responsibility too, like you're, we tell both of our kids
(53:40):
like it's not the oldest job to protect the younger always.
It's it's a vice versa. Like it's they have the
responsibility to protect and love each other.
That's right. Yeah, yeah, that's right.
And we just make that really clear with them all the time we
have since they were very, very,very little.
And if you don't take the time to do that, then you can't
guarantee what your results are going to be.
(54:01):
But I can say, like if you take the time and you are committed
to it, growing children who havehealthy boundaries, who have a
good sense of self and understand what it means to love
and be a good friend to other human being, then your chances
of raising kids who will be goodfriends for life are really
(54:24):
good. Yeah, totally.
Yeah. All right.
Well, I think that kind of wrapsup our tips.
So in essence, grace and courtesy, collaborative work,
these are the Montessori things that you can do that are very
practical and setting that expectation of love.
Like, those are our tips for youfor handling sibling dynamics at
(54:45):
home in a very realistic Montessori way.
Yeah, totally. Yeah.
So if you'd like to learn more about that or if you do need a
crash course in gentle discipline techniques, you can
join our unlimited plan and you get free and full access to our
loving discipline course. And this year, just like last
(55:08):
year, I got to teach that courselive.
We did real workshop section sessions in February and you're
welcome to join. Totally.
That's right. It's one of the many perks of
being an unlimited member. If you'd like to know more about
our unlimited plan or any of ourplans, go to
childoftheredwoods.com and clickon the plan section.
(55:31):
All right, well, we are out of time today, so we will see you
in one week. I hope it is the 4th of July
here in the US. So I hope if you're out there
celebrating, have fun and be safe and we will see you in a
week.
Hey there friends, I'm Aubrey Harkis.
Today's episode is a replay fromthe Child of the Redwoods live
show that I host with my husbandin Montessori homeschooling,
partnering crime, David Harkis. You can watch the full episode
on the Child of the Redwoods YouTube channel.
Here's the clip. They fight, fight, fight, fight,
(00:24):
fight, and then they love you, love you, love you, love you,
love you. And then they play together
peacefully. And then before you know it,
they're fighting again. What gives?
Friends, siblings, squabbles, sibling dynamics is one of the
most popular questions we have been asked in our Montessori
(00:46):
community over and over, and it just seems like nobody has the
perfect answer. Is there a perfect answer?
We're going to tell you that Montessori can help you overcome
a lot of these hurdles. And yet the conflict between two
human beings who are both born into this big, beautiful world
is very normal. Yeah, for sure.
(01:11):
So so let's actually talk about like why siblings fight in the
1st place? Where is the conflict coming
from? Yeah, right.
I mean, I have a sister, a younger sister.
You have a younger brother. I know I fought with my sister
and was pesky and it felt vice versa and all the other things
that go with it. And you were?
The older brother you you know and you describe yourself still
(01:34):
as being pesky. Wish you were, but generally we
think of like the younger sibling is always annoying the
older child, but it's not true. It can also happen in reverse.
Yeah, that's right. So, I mean, I think we sometimes
would say that like we wouldn't describe the older brother being
pesky. We would say he's being mean or
(01:54):
bullying, right. But it's the sort of the same
thing. We just use a different word to
describe it because of the age dynamic and it's normal.
Where does it come from? Well, one of the places that you
might find it is a desire for individual attention.
So I don't know if that was the case for me always, but I know
there was the desire to be seen and given my own space.
(02:18):
Another reason that you see dynamic, this kind of dynamic is
there's a struggle to find your place in the family.
Who are you? We see this a lot when you have
a new baby in the house, right? And the older kid gets a little
more jealous. Who am I now?
Or sometimes you see that with the middle child, right, where
the middle child is not the oldest anymore and he's not the
(02:39):
baby anymore. And it's sort of a wondering who
am I? How do I fit into this family?
And then another is, of course, there's just natural
developmental differences. You know, children, as they go
through the developmental stages, will enter different
periods of readiness for collaboration or isolation, and
sometimes those don't necessarily mesh.
(03:01):
Isolation in a good way though. Yeah, I mean, I tend.
To think of isolation as like a negative unishment.
Yeah, exactly. But like sometimes we just don't
want to talk or see anybody. An I think in our culture we
forget that little children are just human beings with needs for
(03:24):
being alone sometimes and being with other people sometimes.
And then this actually can vary depending on your temperament
and personality, just like it does with us.
I feel like as personally, as anintrovert, I require a lot of
introspective alone time and I'mvery happy, like kind of doing
my own thing. Not that I never want to be with
(03:45):
people, but just like that's kind of my norm is to seek that
alone time and to enjoy the solitude.
Solitude is a better word for itrather than isolation, OK, Don't
you think? No, but I'll go with it.
I think solitude is thought of as being really positive.
Like we go out into the forest in solitude to seek solitude,
(04:09):
but no one, no one seeks isolation.
OK, right. Well, anyway, what can you, I
don't agree, but what can you agree?
What can you do about this natural occurrence, this sort of
natural sibling rivalry? We all experience it to some
(04:29):
degree or another. Even in our our house, we work
really hard to make sure that our two kids are, don't, you
know, feel competitive. But it's only natural.
But we can do things to help alleviate that tension.
And the Montessori method gives us some really good guidance.
So what's the first one that kind of leads us along this
(04:52):
journey? OK, when I think about siblings
fighting, I really do think we start with that acceptance that
it is a normal struggle and thencome at it instead of the
perspective of like, I've got tosquash it, See it as an
opportunity for you as a parent to help your children learn how
(05:14):
to deal with it. Because conflict is super, super
normal. And one of the things that we do
as bonusorians is we integrate it into our curriculum.
That's right. And I think it's a unique part
of Montessori. Not a lot of general teaching
philosophies. I'm not going to say none of
them because some, some obviously like there are other
(05:38):
teaching methods out there that incorporate a lot of social
learning as well. But Montessori is, is unique in
that we build it into our curriculum in ways and places
where you normally wouldn't think of it occurring.
So one example of this would be within our practical life
curriculum, we have an entire curriculum.
(06:00):
We can just kind of pull this whole thing out right here.
Let's see, these are level 4. That's going to be lower L.
Let's take a look at our primary.
Can you just pull out the practical life within the
practical life activities, whichif you're brand new to
Montessori, are those super popular activities that you've
probably seen on social media where children are pouring
(06:23):
things back and forth. Or maybe there's a cute little
set up on a tray and there's some tongs and some beans or
something. Children are transferring or
maybe you've seen a very small child sweep up a spill with a
broom. Those are all practical life
activities because they're practical things that we do in
our daily lives that we don't necessarily think children need
(06:45):
to be taught. But there is a sub category of
practical life that Montessori guides know that you probably
wouldn't really necessarily knowif you were just learning
Montessori from social media, primarily just looking at those
images because it doesn't reallyfeature a very well on social
media because it's a role play. And that is our grace and
(07:07):
courtesy lessons. Yep.
So it's actually a hole. I don't know if you found any
cards in here that were labeled grace and courtesy.
Yeah, there's one. So here's an example.
This is an example of a regular practical life activity that you
probably have seen before. Rug rolling, buttoning,
(07:28):
snapping, zipping. So self-care.
Yeah, so these are the more, I don't know, when we think about
practical life and you're cruising the, you know,
Instagrams or whatever, you're going to see depictions of this
kind of stuff because it films easily, right?
It looks you can, it looks cute,but there's a lot within the
(07:51):
this practical life domain that doesn't really film as easily,
but super important. And that would be your grace and
courtesy lessons. Things like or on our card here,
these are level 1, blowing one'snose, coughing, sneezing,
yawning, opening and closing books, decorating the peace
(08:14):
table. So things related to grace and
courtesy, how to sort of carry oneself.
And this would be lessons you'd be teaching to a 2 year old.
Yeah. So Grace and Curtis's lessons
are very, very powerful because it's an opportunity to teach our
children these skills, but maybeeven before or sometimes after
(08:36):
they've experienced them in reallife.
So think about the classic example that's in our primary
curriculum, and it always makes people laugh.
Is Maria Montessori herself did this very dramatic lesson on
blowing one's nose appropriately.
And what Yeah, I just she did this just sit down in front of
(08:57):
the children and and demonstrated how to properly.
And I imagine she did this whilewearing her Victorian garb.
Sure. Blow one's nose, you know into a
tissue and or probably a kerchief.
You know, in the in the time it would have been a kerchief,
right. That's right.
And at the time, the children were fascinated because they'd
(09:18):
never seen anybody actually demonstrate how to do such a
basic skill. And here Marie Montessori, the,
you know, very fancy, beautiful lady here she was coming in and
showing the children how to to do this.
Kind of gross. Yeah, rude thing.
This rude thing, right, that thechildren she found and she kind
(09:39):
of thought, I think she thought,and we laugh at it today because
it's kind of a silly like lesson.
But I think that she thought that the children would think it
was funny. Like she came in and did this
big dramatic presentation thinking that the children would
like see kind of the humor in itand just, you know, go along
with it. You know, like, OK, that's how
(10:00):
you blow your nose. It was kind of fun, right?
But instead, the children were overcome with gratitude.
And they, some of them began to cry.
And they came up and they huggedher, and they thanked her for
giving them this lesson on how to blow one's nose
appropriately. And she herself was overcome by
(10:23):
emotion because she realized like, no one had bothered to
teach these children this, you know, very basic thing before,
you know, like. And they felt grateful because
now they wouldn't have runny noses and just be making a big
mess of goopy mess of things. They now knew the proper way to
(10:43):
be in polite society, right we. Just practice some basic
hygiene. Yeah, And so care of them
that's, I mean, that's not necessarily about discipline or
siblings exactly. But Maria Montessori, this was
like the beginning of the grace and courtesy development of this
part of the Practical Life curriculum.
(11:04):
And so after having this experience with, you know,
teaching the children how to blow their nose, she realized,
oh, there's so many other lessons that we could teach
children about how like, you know, I think we think of it as
like, manners, you know, or being polite out and about, you
know, things that you need to know in order to get along with
(11:27):
other people and to kind of behave in a way that's accepted
by your culture. And so grace and courtesy
lessons can be very, very different depending on where
you're from. In some cultures maybe you want
to teach children how to handshake, shake someones hand.
In another culture maybe it's a hug or kisses on the cheek.
(11:50):
Or there's just a million different types of lessons that
we could give children about howto behave or present themselves
with other people. And a component of that is being
with the people who are in your intimate community around you,
and that includes siblings. And so there's lots and lots of
(12:12):
grace and courtesy lessons that you could give your children to
help them with that sibling dynamic.
Do any come to your mind right away?
Well, I mean the most obvious tome would be peace route, like a
peace table. Yes, the resolution, right and
making peace. And we even have this, you know,
right down here. We have these listed as lessons
(12:33):
in our little cards for GNC grace and courtesy.
So just to clarify, these cards are the scope and sequence.
I think sometimes we don't clarify that enough.
So we've taken the whole scope and sequence for ages 2 to 9 and
we've created a card system thatwill allow you to work through
the scope and sequence and follow your child at the same
(12:55):
time. So when we talk about our cards
and we talk about our levels, what we're describing as our
scope and sequence. And so a level 1 would be
earliest skills and then Level 3, this would be at the end of
the road for our practical life,which only goes through Level 3
because it's a primary. And so at this stage, you've
(13:16):
already introduced the peace table and now you're doing
things like mediation at the peace table, right?
Yeah, you know, right. I mean, there's lots and lots of
lessons. We could even come up with other
lessons outside of these. I tell the members in our
courses like there's an endless number of grace and courtesy
(13:37):
lessons you could give for sure.And you can think them up
yourself. And so this is actually a really
good strategy for parents to usewhen helping their their
children, which, you know, we assume that they have siblings
if they're working through this particular issue.
If you don't have more than one child, maybe your child plays
with friends or a cousin or, youknow, just conflict with other
(14:00):
family members. All of this, this is the same
strategy that works for all of it, that if you're thinking
particularly about, you know, let's say your two children who
just can't stop bickering with each other, you might think
about what is happening just before the bickering.
Well, this goes back to what we talked about with like why
(14:21):
conflict is normal and what causes right.
So when you're thinking through to the point where you're having
a grace and courtesy lesson and you're asking and modeling and
encouraging them to resolve, part of what you're thinking
about is did the conflict arise from a desire for individual
attention? Were they fighting over
(14:42):
resources like a toy or a space?Is there just a natural kind of
incongruity between incongruity between the developmental stages
and that can help you as you arehelping prepare the environment,
so to speak, for the mediation to happen?
Yeah. So let's say what happens just
(15:04):
before two children start fighting in the car.
Let's think, what were they doing before?
Like, are they, do they know howto entertain themselves in the
car? Do they understand the the
concept of like where one's personal space ends?
(15:25):
I know that's a particular issuefor us with our kids or always
has spent like 1 is always pushing his foot into the other
space. And so it's not like you can,
you know, train them to never have conflict in these areas.
You know, there will be ways that they find to annoy each
(15:45):
other for the rest of their lives, I'm sure.
But a lesson that you might give, it's a grace and courtesy
lesson that might not be listed in the curriculum, but there's a
tangent from it. A way you could use it in your
Montessori home is you could say, hey, like, we're really
having a whole lot of problems in the car.
Like, that's where a lot of the fighting is happening.
And So what kind of grace and courtesy lessons can I teach
(16:09):
about being in the car that would be helpful for them to
avoid conflict? And so one of those things might
be just a, a lesson about where your personal space is in the
car and you know, where you keepyour things and where things
(16:30):
belong and how your, your body like.
So in a, in a Montessori way, wecould role play this by
pretending to get into your car seat and, you know, keeping your
feet on your side, right? And I know that sounds kind of
silly, but it's actually could be a Montessori lesson is very,
(16:51):
very legitimate Montessori lesson.
Another would be could be like, I know in a classroom you often,
or at least we often heard the words like keep your hands to
yourself, you know, or like don't touch your neighbor.
OK, those. But obviously just telling kids
like don't touch your neighbors isn't going to stop them from
(17:12):
touching them. But in a Montessori situation,
you might give a lesson on whereto put your hands because
sometimes children just like don't know.
And so we might give a lesson about like you could put your
hands in your lap like this, or you could put them in your
pockets or you could put them onyour back or you could, you
(17:33):
know, just hang them in front ofyou.
But like, teaching them a proactive, positive way to
handle their own personal space in their body can be really
powerful. Yeah.
So another thing is that we can also.
(17:54):
We can also create ways for children to practice.
You mentioned the peace table. We can create ways for children
to practice that conflict resolution.
And you know, we don't have timeto get into that whole gateway
of positive discipline in this session right now.
But if anyone is out there and they're wondering like, I'm
(18:16):
struggling with this, how do where do I go with actually
resolving the conflict? Positive discipline, gentle
discipline is that is your pathway.
But in the Montessori context, we can also use all kinds of
lessons to teach children how towork together.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
(18:36):
So if you look in any of our, ifany of our lessons or you've got
a challenge, OK, a challenge. I know you've got the lower L
ones right there. I've got our primary curriculum.
No, I am vice versa. Here's here's practical life
from the primary curriculum. I've got our lower L curriculum
and I'm gonna pull one out too. I'm actually gonna just yank one
(18:59):
out. OK, well I've got mine.
OK, I've got mine. I pulled mine from level 5 life
science We're. Doing well, I also put life.
Science. You did?
Oh my gosh, we're really insane.OK, well read me one of your
lessons. Parts of a flower.
Parts of a flower? Yep, right.
(19:20):
Yeah, so this is a Level 3 from the green grass grows parts of a
flower. Well, how could we use that
lesson to teach children how to be better siblings with each
other? Now, are you talking
metaphorically? Or I'm talking about literally
with that lesson. How could?
We. Turn that into a collaborative
(19:41):
lesson is what I'm asking. So parts of a flower could be
taught with parts cards, which have a puzzle like quality.
And in fact, we saw an example of siblings completing a
categorizing activity. It wasn't parts cards, but it
was a categorizing activity together.
He had an older brother, I think, and a younger brother.
(20:03):
We saw a video of this recently,one of our members.
And do you remember that? Yeah, it was very cute.
And they were working together. And mom was there kind of
guiding it, and she would hold the card up.
Oh, I know which one it was. It was from our pets unit.
It was the cat. And then you would find a
(20:24):
sentence. The cat is hungry and then you
would find a command to feed thecat.
Oh. Yes.
All right. And so the brothers.
Do you remember that now work? Together to solve the puzzle.
I think it was a photo, not a video, no.
No, definitely a video. Yeah.
Because we saw them working together and I thought it was a
(20:45):
beautiful like, so they're both,they're different.
I think they were different ages.
Yeah, well, an older one and a younger one, but it was
beautiful to see them working together.
So I think that's an example of how you would bring kids
together to work together collaboratively on a project.
And actually that is our second tip.
It's you would create collaborative work activities
(21:07):
for them to practice these graceand courtesy ideas, right?
So you're instilling them with the grace and courtesy mindset.
And there are specific lessons that you can give them to help
reinforce that. And of course, as you were
saying, there could be very evenmore than the ones that we would
include in our curriculum. Because grace and courtesy
(21:29):
really is just sort of like how we conduct ourselves in polite
society in order to, you know, help with social cohesion and to
feel good about ourselves and topractice good hygiene and all
those sorts of things, right. So as they're internalizing that
you would then give them opportunities to practice and
those opportunities to practice could be pulled right from your
(21:49):
curriculum. So this is where we would say
this is kind of goes back to thepremise of multi age teaching
and why it's so great because itgives you a chance to bring
different ages and stages together and have them
collaborate and practice not only the academic concept, but
(22:10):
the collaborative, loving, graceful, courteous process.
OK, that was actually a good one.
So parts of a flower, you could might maybe get one flower out
and work with both children to name the parts together.
(22:31):
Yep. And identify them.
It's a perfectly fine lesson to do.
It was kind of like a random example that we pulled that one
out. What I pulled out was botanical
nature journaling. OK, which also is a live science
activity. That's for an older life, right?
Yeah. It's, I mean it's in our lower
elementary curriculum, but thereis there any reason why you
couldn't also have your younger child doing botanical nature
(22:53):
journaling? So how would you, how would you
bring Grace the collaboration tolife with this journaling?
Because journaling is, well, notisolated.
No. But solitary.
It does feel like it's a solitary activity.
Well, what actually what came tomind was maybe the concept of
(23:14):
like a journal itself is kind ofa solitary activity.
But I remember doing a lot of projects with our two kids where
they would each journal something or Draw Something.
And then I would Draw Something and we would make as many pages
as we would want. And we would staple it together
(23:34):
to make a book together. And So what it would look like,
what it would look like is, you know, one page would be, you
know, a book about plants you know, by, and then the three of
our names. And then the next page would be
one that maybe our oldest child drew with, like a sentence about
(23:55):
the plant that he found while wewere out in nature.
And then we turned the page and it would be like a page of
scribbles where I had asked our youngest what he wanted to say
about his plant. And he might have said something
like, my plant has teeth and eats flies, but you can't tell.
It's like a big scribbled mess. And then you turn the next page.
(24:15):
And then maybe it's my example. And we just make a whole bunch
of pages and staple them together.
And we actually did a lot of that when they were in this
particular age group. And I think that it's teaching
your oldest. Now, if your oldest doesn't want
to participate in this whole thing, they want to make their
own book, that's fine. But it is an example of a really
(24:36):
easy way that you could make a collaborative project while
everybody retains their own individual piece of it that
they're contributing. Like you're contributing
something to the group project and you set it up ahead of time.
Like we together are going to create a book or a map or a a
game or or whatever it is a project that you're creating and
(25:00):
then each person brings something to the table.
That's right. And you know, I think what you
might be, what you might hear isthe older brothers say he ruins
it or the older sister say she ruins it, right, Like, oh, I
don't want them to mess up my journal, right.
Like, I worked real hard on it, and that's understandable.
(25:23):
This goes back to what are the sources of sibling conflict?
And some of it is that sometimesthe child just needs to feel
that their work, it needs to be respected and they don't
understand why they have to share it.
It's important to them. And in those cases, it might not
be the right time to introduce that.
No, we're going to do a collaborative lesson.
(25:44):
However, it often is a good ideato at least approach it with the
older child. And this goes to like gracing
courtesy is really you need to think of it as an academic
subject in itself. It's not just niceties or
disciplinary, A discipline goal,right?
(26:05):
It's it's a mindset. And so coming to the older child
beforehand, as you said, and say, I want to do this natural
journal together, or we're goingto do this travel journal or
whatever it is nature journal. We're going to go to the
botanical gardens and I want youguys each to make your own.
We're going to put them together.
And your brother, you know, he can't, he can't write the same
way that you can. But he really, really loves
(26:26):
participating. And I think it'd be so nice to
have one book for all of it together.
And if you write, set the right context, you can create a
situation where the older brother can start to feel really
proud of the leadership that he feels with his younger sibling.
And that especially if they're in that lower L that that second
(26:47):
plane, that could be super empowering because they're in an
age of ethics and moral decisionmaking in that sense of the Big
Brother has something to share and loves and protects his
little brother or sister is really, really powerful.
That's an expression of love that's appropriate for that age.
(27:10):
I it's, this is bringing back memories.
Actually, I think humor is a really important tool that we
can use in this. It doesn't work for all
children, but I remember doing alot of we would our older, our
oldest and I would look at the page of scribbles that the
youngest had just done and we would kind of wink to each other
(27:33):
like, oh, yes, this is a pictureof the Venus flytrap.
I see it's right here. And then our oldest would join
in the fantasy aspect of it and say, oh, yes, are these the
teeth? I think I see one of the teeth
right here. And the youngest would just like
(27:54):
puff up with, you know, pride and just be like, yeah, that is
one of the teeth. And I think that those kind of
invitations to give compliments or to, you know, maybe even if
it's not just like I like it or I love it, you know, it's like a
descriptive praise type of which.
Is the way a praise should be like Yeah.
(28:15):
And for adults to children as well.
Yeah, I think that those creating those opportunities for
your youngest to interact with your oldest work and give
feedback on it, you know, positive feedback or
acknowledgement of the hard work, you know, and so you're
right, like in order to set the stage for those kind of positive
(28:37):
collaborative experiences, it was helpful to talk first to the
old, the oldest child, usually our oldest, who in our context
is 3 years older and was well aware, you know, of the
difference in skills. I didn't always want to share.
And didn't always want to share.Yeah.
And so, no. But talking ahead of it, ahead
(28:58):
of time, like getting a game plan, like we made this book.
And I want you to know your younger brother, he worked real
hard on his. And we want to make sure that he
really feels like we see his hard work and just saying
something like that, you know, not saying, so you better be
nice. Or So, you know, we're going to
(29:20):
give him compliments even thoughyou think it's, you know,
terrible. None of that.
We just, like, set the stage positive, like, like we're going
to have this experience. And yes, I know he doesn't draw
like you. You know what a Venus 55 really
looks like, Right. And the illness will be like,
well, yeah, then I'll be like, his motor skills are still
(29:43):
developing. And it's just being really
honest about the differences there.
Now, would this work with twins?No.
Maybe. I don't know.
I. Don't know.
I mean, even as the kids get older and the.
Collaborative work definitely can.
Yeah. And as they get older and their
differences change, you know, I think even with twins there's,
(30:03):
it's natural to have a kind of asense of rivalry between the
two. Oh, for sure, you.
Know so and I think that's whereso.
And also maybe different skill levels.
So what I'm hearing that I want to under score from you is that
goes with the concept of recent.Curiously, there's no guy out
there like you're not. You're not denigrating the
younger's work in order to win favor with the older or to puff
(30:25):
him off. What makes him feel good is that
he's being invited to share in an adult experience.
You're acknowledging that he hasdeveloped a skill that is better
in some, like objectively better, right?
He can draw the shape of the flytrap more accurately to
(30:48):
nature without comparing him to his brother as being worse or
superior or inferior. Just rather we're together.
You've got something here, he's going to get there too.
We really excited. You couldn't do this at one
point either. But we're all learning together.
And there's no trickery or guileor or deceit.
(31:11):
It's or an attempt to play a cool or something or bribe.
There's no bribery. There's no negative attention.
And so that's a kind of a piece to it, like abiding the older
child into that experience will be empowering.
(31:33):
Yeah, I, I, so I this example was a bit esoteric.
You know, we just randomly picked things from the
curriculum to talk about how we could make it a collaborative
activity. But I'm going to give some
really concrete ways that are probably a bit easier to think
of. And that is like, think about
practical life activities that kids could do together, whether
(31:57):
it's raking leaves, although that's kind of thought of as
outdated these days, isn't it? Like you're supposed to mulch
the leaves and then let them decompose.
I think raking leaves is still fun, right?
You make big piles. But like working together to do
things like working outside together, you each, you know,
(32:20):
you take the wheelbarrow this time full of the heavy stuff.
Now it's your siblings turn likewe're working together to create
something as a family unit or asa partnership.
And you'll see your children do this on their own as well.
They children do it naturally. They go to the playground and
it's so funny to watch them because if, if there's no
(32:40):
obvious work to be done, they will make work.
They will load up their dump trucks and start hauling them
from one side of the sandbox to the other.
And you're like, you know, as a,as a school teacher, when we had
sandboxes, it was like, this happened all the time.
Like it sand was constantly being transported from one side
of the playground to the other. Why?
(33:02):
Because it's something that you can do together and it feels
good and it's sensory. But you'll see children kind of
organizing each other or their peers and their siblings to like
make sure that like all of this stuff gets all over here and
we're all working together to make sure that it happens.
And it's great. Those are just natural
collaborative activities. You can also play games with
(33:26):
your kids, but I recommend that for unless your kids are like
really into the lower plane and even then saw sometimes like
competitive games can make the sibling rivalry worse and.
For sure. Yeah, I know I you really love
(33:46):
competitive games and so I don'tknow if you had a different
experience growing up with them,but for younger children
especially, I think collaborative games are going to
lead you to more positive sibling happy relationships and
competitive games can really make things harder.
(34:09):
Well, I think when you put a, when you use competitive games
where one, especially the younger or smaller, is always at
a disadvantage, it feels demoralizing.
I think if you have a competitive game and there's an
equality, it can be fun and natural and healthy.
Competition is an important partof human existence.
(34:34):
It doesn't have to mean exploitation or dominance or
corruption, but it could feel good.
Especially I know like for, I'llspeak for our own boys.
Like competition, especially physical competition, is just
sort of in them. They want to see who can run
(34:55):
faster, jump higher. You know, they just did it last
night when they were, you know, they're, they're older teens now
and they raced home. They tried to race each other
from the park and they just naturally kind of came up with
it. So I think competition in itself
is not bad. I think it's when you associate
(35:15):
it with these high stakes or youcreate circumstances where it's
just unfair, like you can never,of course the older, like the
seven-year old is always going to be able to run faster than a
three-year old. Right.
Right. Or beat him in checkers or
something. Right, right.
But how about like a game of chance?
(35:36):
Like we've got lots and lots of games out there that are being
made for kids that involve a clear winner and a clear loser.
And in my experience, older kidslike ours who are already
teenagers, Upper L kids generally handle that much
better. They're in the second plane.
They haven't. The second-half of the second.
(35:58):
Plane Yeah. So they've developed ethical
reasons. Children under the age of 9.
They have not. Developed.
They don't handle it well. Yeah, they haven't.
They're not at the, they haven'tprogressed, matured through the
moral age yet. And so it just the world is more
black and white. I mean, it's literally a
sensorial world for babies and it's a long walk from the
sensorial to the full abstract world of let's say a 12 year
(36:22):
old, right? By the time you get to 12,
you've kind of the, a 12 year old's brain and an adult's brain
are dissimilar, really that dissimilar in terms of what they
can like learn and remember and process.
But before you get to that point, there's a lot of
maturation that has to happen. And so I agree, I think, I think
cooperative games are great. And fortunately, there are a lot
(36:45):
more options for cooperative games.
So, but my answer to your question of like the competitive
game, if it's a game of chance, I think part of it, and this
goes with like a three-year old isn't going to understand this,
but it's still something you canconvey you did nothing to win.
If it's a game of chance, like it's just the luck of the draw.
And that there's also a life lesson in that as well about
(37:09):
fairness and how games work and play and then putting your own
victory in the right context. And again, I think for a three
or four year old, you're not going to, they're not going to
get that. But I think for this is a lesson
you'd want to start teaching a second plane child to have them
understand. And second plane is 6 and up.
(37:30):
Yeah. So I mean honestly, what you
want them? To understand yeah, what I
noticed is under sixes, kids cancompletely lose it when they
lose the game and just be super frustrated when you could get
into tantrum land. Sure.
They just developmentally aren'tin a place to really be able to
understand that kind of competition.
So I, I guess I hear what you'resaying that competitive games
(37:52):
aren't necessarily bad. They they offer good lessons to
teach children about life and about they can be fun and they
can be fun. But if you're thinking
specifically about sibling dynamics and you've got children
that are tending to bicker and pester each other and fight,
(38:12):
competitive games aren't going to get you.
You're just going to enhance therivalry.
Right. You're just going to stoke a
fire. And so my, my personal thought
is if you've got an issue like this with young children, stay
away from the competitive games until they're older and their
relationship is a little more stable.
Yeah, if you're a Roman emperor and you're trying to create a
(38:34):
brood of cutthroat offspring to challenge for the throne, then I
would say go all in on the competitive games.
But if you're like trying to teach a loving relationship, and
then yes, I think you have to bemindful of how the competitive
(38:55):
game works, especially when there is an inherent
disadvantage on one side becauseof your age, ability size,
something like that. And I think that's where we can
get in trouble. It's family game night.
We're all going to play together.
The five year old isn't. It is old enough to play Uno,
but doesn't really have the maturity to play in the same way
(39:15):
as the 8 year old. How do you invite the five year
old in to play? It's a competitive game by
nature. It's not a cooperative game,
right? Uno as an example.
How do you allow the five year old to participate, knowing that
five year old probably won't winas frequently because they won't
have the same well, they just don't have the same maturity and
(39:35):
intellectual capacity as the older children.
And you want to invite them intoplay.
You don't want to exclude them, but you also want to make sure
that they're not feeling disadvantaged, harmed, anger.
You know you're feeding the kindof jealousy.
A lot of games can be made to becollaborative, even if they're
(39:59):
set up to be competitive games. There are ways to do it and so I
would encourage you if you do have a whole lot of competitive
games out there to play with therules because you can tweak the
rules often to make it a little more fair for everyone and I
think more fun. This is an 8.
This is something we've argued about for many, many years.
(40:21):
We haven't talked about this in a long time.
I guess we haven't. We have argued about competitive
versus collaborative games for many decades now, and the answer
is there's like, I don't know, it's a personality choice.
But I would say that there is definitely an emphasis on
collaborative games, especially for younger ones is great.
(40:41):
I think actually a lot of moderngames emphasize collaboration,
like Dungeons and Dragons emphasize collaboration or can
emphasize collaboration. But competitive games can also
be really fun and appealing, andyou just need to be aware that
there can be unintended consequences, which actually is
a great way to segue into our final tip, which is set the
(41:04):
expectation for love and friendship.
Yes, OK, All right, So we agreedto disagree about competitive
games this. Is twice we've agreed to
disagree in this episode, solitude versus isolation and
competitive versus competition. This is a disagreement.
(41:27):
Place your vote, friends. I don't know what's going.
On today, team isolation or teamsolitude, Are you team
competitive games or team collaborative games?
I don't know what's going on today.
It's July 1st. It must be the day.
Of yes. OK, so we probably should
explain the games thing. David grew up in a house where
(41:49):
you guys play games constantly and he's really good at them
too. But I lost all the time.
I don't care that you lost all the time.
I mean, just because you say I'mgood at them doesn't mean that I
always wanted. No, here's what I mean by you're
good at them. When you get a new game, you can
read the rules that go with the game and understand them and
(42:11):
then teach everyone else what todo.
And when I get a new game, I look at it and I like read those
rules like 10 times. I'm like, this makes no sense to
me and why is this fun? This is fun.
And then we start playing the game and I'm like, I think it's
fun. This is fun.
It's not really fun. I mean, it's fun that other
people are having fun and that'show I have fun playing games,
(42:32):
but they're just not my thing. And so like you're talking,
you're looking at two people like 1 loves games to pieces and
we'll play any game and the other like please, like if you
never, if I never had to play another game in my life, I would
be happy. Next week on on Old Married
Couple Live, we will be talking about brown rice versus brown
(42:55):
rice. I know.
OK, so anyway, so my tip is makeall the competitive games,
collaborative games and then everybody's happy and you know,
tips from a long time gamer. Accept the expectation for love
and friendship and you'll. Have and then play whatever
(43:19):
games you like and and just helpeveryone deal with the the loser
vibes. OK, so a.
Very revelatory episode, I know.So, well, we did just have our
25th. So, you know, I mean, these are
all the things we had to work through and I guess we're still
working through them. OK, so love and friendship is
(43:43):
the third tip. This is probably the most
important tip, dealing with siblings.
You can teach all the grace and courtesy lessons that you want.
You can create all the collaborative work and gaming
opportunities that you can thinkof.
You can teach all the lessons and think of ways to make a lot
(44:04):
of them collaborative so that you can work together as a
family towards a common goal. But if you haven't agreed in
your heart and in your mindset that you are setting this
expectation that there will forever be this baseline of love
and friendship in your family, like, then the rest is just not
(44:25):
going to work. And I know this one is a little
bit nebulous. Like there's lots of practical
things you can do with positive discipline.
There's lots of practical thingsyou can do with collaborative
lessons together and those graceand courtesy.
But when it comes to setting theexpectations for love and
friendship, I want to be really clear that we have had like
(44:48):
thousands of conversations with our kids where we start the
conversation with you guys are each other's best friends.
Yeah, you are always. Brothers.
Or you'll never not be brothers and it is a special and unique
and precious relationship and you will rely on each other and
(45:13):
need to be able to rely on each other for many, many years to
come. You know, at some point we will
be in a different stage of life and you're going to have to make
decisions together about our ourhealth and our well-being.
Like that's just the way it is. It's a natural course of things.
And we, you know, the foundationyou're building today as
(45:37):
siblings is what will carry you forward as you go through these
many travails in life, includinghow you handle things like your
elderly parents or when you get a job and you have to move far
away, how do you continue to stay in touch with each other?
Or if you have kids, how do you bring them together and have
(45:58):
cousins together? Like the things that do will
have to navigate in life. You'll have many friends and and
hopefully you'll have a loving partner.
You know a spouse that will be with you by your side for your
whole adult for the whole of your life as well.
You may not always agree with that person, but they will.
You will be with them. But your brother is special.
(46:20):
Your brother is unique and you should value that.
And setting that expectation from the get go is vital.
I would say it is the paramount obligation.
Like it really will determine everything else.
If you want to, you know, I usedit, I kind of jokingly was
(46:42):
talking about like the Roman emperor, but that is actually
how it was, right? There are family structures
where they intentionally set outto create competitiveness within
the amongst their children and that's their goal.
If, if that's your goal, then you can, you know how to do
that. You create circumstances and
stakes where they have to vie for limited resources like love
(47:05):
and affection. However, if you don't want to do
that, you have to be just as crystal clear that in this
house, we love each other and wehold each other very close and
sacred and dear. And that is especially true for
our brothers and sisters. I remember starting this with
(47:27):
our oldest when our second was born, actually in our first
introduction, as he met the new baby for the very first time, We
were still in the hospital. We introduced him as his new
best friend. Like he's your brother and he's
going to be your brother foreverand he's going to be your
friend, like your best ever friend forever.
(47:50):
And I think like, it's not that a three-year old during such a
monumental time can understand the significance of that, but I
think that, like, setting it forward from the very first day,
like this is how it's gonna be. Guess what?
You're going to be on the same team forever.
(48:10):
It's not gonna be you and US against the other one, or it's
not going to be me and you against him and him, you know,
it's going to be the two of you and the two of us.
And we're here to guide and loveand support you as family.
That you're in it together. Kids like this is your
generation. This is your gift to each other.
(48:33):
And it's a gift of, of love and support and it's something that
you could have for the rest of your life.
And it's just an an amazing gift.
And children are obviously not going to feel that all the time
or really understand it probablyuntil they're a grown up.
But I think that setting that expectation, rather than saying,
(48:57):
I think we could set an oppositeexpectation.
You, you know, and some familiesdo.
They're like, I have two kids and maybe they like each other
and maybe they don't. It doesn't matter.
You know, they're two different people.
They've got different personalities.
Some siblings like each other, some siblings don't really get
along. Do your kids get along?
And so we actually have gotten that question a lot.
(49:18):
And there's actually been a lot of surprise around our kids when
they are in public interacting, People will strangers will be
watching our kids and then they'll come up to us and
they'll be like, well, your kidsreally get along.
That's so great that you have kids that get along, that really
like each other. They do, they do, they always
get along. And we're like, of course they
(49:39):
don't always get along. Like, of course they fight
sometimes and secret, their fights can be really, really
big, OK. Their conflict can be really,
really big, but I think that some people just don't enter
into this family relationship with the expectation, the strong
expectation that you are growinga pair or a trio or a trio or a
(50:05):
quartet. Or whatever of quintet.
Of human beings that are just intimately connected with each
other, with friendship. And I think that that
expectation can make a big, big difference in how close they
are. So it's not just that we're
lucky that our kids we're close or that our kids get along like
(50:26):
as if they could get along or they could not get along.
It's one or the other. It's not sometimes they're going
to have conflict, but they're going to get along like they're
going to, they're together, theylove each other.
They're going to be best friends.
We tell them this all the time. You guys are so lucky, you know,
to have each other and that you are friends with each other.
(50:46):
It's so special and precious andyou and we tell them outright
like you should know, not everybody has this with their
sibling. You know, there are a lot of
siblings that don't have this relationship and it's a
treasure, you know, and you guysshould really work hard to keep
it. And we have witnessed over the
course of their lives, growing up to teenagehood than
(51:11):
understanding that developing that relationship takes work and
effort, a lot of work. And it has taken a lot of effort
on our part as well to be mediators when there is conflict
and also to allow them to solve some of their own conflicts, as
hard as that is, you know, want to solve their problems all the
(51:31):
time. Like we try and play the balance
between that. Like if someone's about to get
injured or punch each other, we intervene.
But otherwise, if they're just like arguing or disagreeing
about it, we tend to try and take a backseat and let them
work it out themselves and then give them suggestions for ways
(51:52):
that they might handle it. And the way David and I do this
in real life is we do a lot of tag teaming.
Fortunately, you know, we have each other.
And I know that there are a lot of some single parents out
there. And hopefully you have someone
in your life that you can take alittle load off with, you know,
and that it could be anyone, it could be a grandma, you know, it
(52:14):
doesn't just have to be a married partner, you know, or
spouse. It it could be somebody else in
your life. But it really is helpful to tag
team and to take one kid aside and to talk to them about
strategies for how they might approach this conflict or the
situation or something that might make a sibling feel better
(52:36):
or more prideful or braver. And it just takes a lot of time
and, and work to foster it. But I think that really what it
comes down to is that commitmentthat you like you're, you are
going to raise children who loveeach other, period.
Like you're not going to raise kids that don't get along.
(52:56):
Yeah. And I guess that's the bottom
that for me, that's kind of the underlying point is I think a
lot of we don't all set out to create a team of rivals, so to
speak. But but I think a lot of times
if we're not intentionally creating a brotherhood or a
sibling hood, that can be one ofthe consequences.
Now, again, sibling rivalries are normal.
(53:19):
They come even really well functioning team jealous.
They'll fight sometimes they'll fight big.
It happens. But if your expectation as a
family, as a parent, is one of love, then and.
And responsibility too, like you're, we tell both of our kids
(53:40):
like it's not the oldest job to protect the younger always.
It's it's a vice versa. Like it's they have the
responsibility to protect and love each other.
That's right. Yeah, yeah, that's right.
And we just make that really clear with them all the time we
have since they were very, very,very little.
And if you don't take the time to do that, then you can't
guarantee what your results are going to be.
(54:01):
But I can say, like if you take the time and you are committed
to it, growing children who havehealthy boundaries, who have a
good sense of self and understand what it means to love
and be a good friend to other human being, then your chances
of raising kids who will be goodfriends for life are really
(54:24):
good. Yeah, totally.
Yeah. All right.
Well, I think that kind of wrapsup our tips.
So in essence, grace and courtesy, collaborative work,
these are the Montessori things that you can do that are very
practical and setting that expectation of love.
Like, those are our tips for youfor handling sibling dynamics at
(54:45):
home in a very realistic Montessori way.
Yeah, totally. Yeah.
So if you'd like to learn more about that or if you do need a
crash course in gentle discipline techniques, you can
join our unlimited plan and you get free and full access to our
loving discipline course. And this year, just like last
(55:08):
year, I got to teach that courselive.
We did real workshop section sessions in February and you're
welcome to join. Totally.
That's right. It's one of the many perks of
being an unlimited member. If you'd like to know more about
our unlimited plan or any of ourplans, go to
childoftheredwoods.com and clickon the plan section.
(55:31):
All right, well, we are out of time today, so we will see you
in one week. I hope it is the 4th of July
here in the US. So I hope if you're out there
celebrating, have fun and be safe and we will see you in a
week.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.