« Weekly Discussion Topics | Main | Tuesday January 20, 2009 »

January is never my favourite time of year. With the excitement of the holidays fading into distant memory and months of icy weather still to get through before spring, everyone in the family seems to be lower and grouchier than usual. It’s affecting all of us. I have to bribe myself with leftover Christmas chocolate to do my housework each day, John grumbles his way out the door to work in the mornings, and Lizzie is unusually whiny and sleeping more than usual.

Still, it shocked me when Connie told me that Lawrence and Michael got into a fist fight on Friday after school! They’ve been such good friends for so long, I found it hard to believe. The few disputes they’ve had in the past have always been settled with words. Not always totally mother-approved words, but at least they never sank to violence before. Even more surprising, Lawrence’s story was that they were fighting over a girl. That rocked my socks, I can tell you! These boys are five years old!

Now my problem is, what to do about it. Of course, Michael evaded all my attempts to get his side of the story. He is fiendishly good at doing that; never quite lying but not giving me straight answers either. There are times when I’m proud of his exceptional language skills. At moments like this, his creativity is just exasperating!

John tells me that we shouldn’t make a big deal of the incident, since it was a fair fight, neither boy was hurt, and they’ve already made up and are friends again. I’m not so sure. That was the attitude when we were kids, but surely the “Peace� generation can do better at teaching our children how to resolve conflicts without pounding on each other. And it seems to me that now that Michael is starting school, it is an important time to teach him those skills and make it clear that violence is not the way to settle disputes.

So my question today is, what you do think? Am I taking a minor incident too seriously? Any advice on how John and I should deal with Michael now? What has your experience been with fighting kids?

One thing we know for sure about parenting, there is never a dull moment!