Imagine this:

You have come home after an unusually busy day, full of errands and your arms stuffed with heavy packages.

You are greeted with a completely messy home with hungry, bored and tired kids. The television is blaring. Dinner has to be prepared.

The kids immediately swarm you, rattling off the day’s highlights, complaints about each other and homework that they need help with.

You dump the packages on the table and try to take stock of the situation. You attempt to simultaneously tell your 12-year-old son to turn down the volume of the TV and your 5-year-old daughter to stop jumping up & down on the new sofa. Both the kids are preoccupied and don’t listen to your repeated instructions.

Just when you think you’ve had enough….your daughter bumps into her brother who pushes her away. She slips and falls to the floor bringing an antique vase down with her.

SMASH!

The TV is the only noise now. Sonny boy smirks and whispers to sis, “Now you’ve done it!”

The little one looks at you with big eyes and is wavering between yelling at her brother angrily and howling in pain, unsure of which one will help her get a lesser penalty!

Such scenes have played out plenty of times at my home (maybe yours too). They have frequently ended with a big fight, a massive scolding, general sulking and me feeling totally burnt out.

But this one time…
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Do you ever find yourself wishing you could whip out a magic wand when your child is acting out?

I do this frequently. Especially when I’m stressed and tired.

In my mind’s eye, with an impressive flourish of the sparkle stick and a few random mysterious words, I have it all under control. I remove my pointy hat and cape and normal Mom service resumes. Smug smiles all round.

Then I snap out of my reverie and realize that my 4 year old has just released the wooden brick he was threatening to throw at his big sister. It is a millisecond from connecting with the side of her head. And I am two milliseconds away from having to switch from Magic Mom to Nurse-and-Disciplinarian Mom.

The ‘How do I deal with this?’ question in response to unacceptable behavior like this is usually followed by an instant decision fueled by the emotion of the moment.

But snap decisions aren’t always the best. In that moment of anger or frustration, our parenting sense is compromised. Our response comes from a place of internal conflict rather than from one of calm consideration. And it is often punitive as a result.

Fed up with yelling at my kids, I have recently been trying very hard to arrest my learned response of shouting and doling out punishment, choosing instead to actively employ positive, calm discipline.

In the wise words of Dr. Laura Markham at AhaParenting:

Think Loving Guidance, not punishment. Punishment is destructive to your relationship with your child and ultimately creates more misbehavior.

This is the basis of positive parenting. At an instinctive level, this idea resonates strongly with me. And in those moments of parenting calm and joyfulness, I even manage to muster up a fair impression of being that ideal positive parent.

But in times of stress, when snap decisions need to be made, I often flounder. I need something to ground me in those moments. A reminder of how to be that positive parent.

A solution presented itself during a word game with my daughter. We’ve been playing with mnemonics to help her remember things. Her favorite is Roy G Biv, where each letter acts as a reminder for the order of colors in the rainbow – Red, Orange, Yellow, and so on.

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You know how we have epiphanies as we grow older?

One of the most profound ones for me has been the realization that just because someone doesn’t agree with what you’re saying at the moment doesn’t mean that they don’t agree with you all the time or that they don’t like you anymore.

This simple realization has had a huge impact on my life.

Just recently, my parents and brother were in town for my daughter’s birthday. We were at dinner the night before her party, and my brother hadn’t put his phone down the entire half hour we’d been seated. I made a comment on this – that it’s not pleasant to share a meal with someone that can’t take their eyes away from their smart phones – and he stormed off, refusing to engage in any conversation.

This isn’t the first time he’s had a violent outburst of anger over a small conflict. As his family member, it upsets me that this happens so frequently.

While I tried to make amends over text message (the only way he was willing to communicate), I noticed something in what he was saying – he thought that any criticism of his actions was a criticism of him. He thought that if I respected him, then I would not say anything negative to him. And worst of all, he thought that disagreeing meant we couldn’t be friends.

I started to wonder why this might be. Did we not have good examples of conflict resolution growing up? Did we witness violent outbursts of anger? When I think back on it, I can’t remember my parents ever arguing. And while that may seem like a good thing, I think that may be where the problem lies.

In order to know how to handle conflict in a productive and healthy manner, we need models of healthy conflict resolution. While on one hand fighting and inflamed emotions only create pain, on the other, never seeing adults disagree means our children don’t know how to deal with conflicts at all.

Productive arguing and even conflict is good and can bring us closer when handled well. Among the many things we teach our kids, how to resolve conflict without resorting to either drama or fighting, or just simply sweeping it under the rug to fester, is very important.

Here are some ways we can teach our kids to argue in a way that builds connections, instead of destroying them:

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