Help me talk to my kids!

amother

Royalblue

Mon, Jul 27 2015, 7:06 pm

I feel like I'm out of my depth. This morning the kids (9,8,5) had a huge fight. Once I managed to separate them all, I gave them a cooling off period and then we spoke about what happened during breakfast.

Truthfully, I had no idea what I was supposed to say. I started by getting each of them to tell me what happened in their own words, then summarised it back to them. There was a misunderstanding between the older 2 and the 3rd was stuck in the middle. So once we established what happened, I tried to talk about how to prevent this in the future. But got nowhere! The oldest started getting angry all over again and was no longer listening to anything I said (although I still need to clarify what I should have been saying). I have a feeling the 8yo wasn't being completely truthful and said he hadn't agreed to something when really he had. The 5yo wasn't really involved but it wasn't really her problem TBH.

I basically told them that before they start yelling and screaming at each other they need to clarify what/why the argument is (because of the so-called misunderstanding: she heard him say one thing and he insists he didn't. Again, debatable). But now I'm not sure that's something that can be expected of them. But what do I suggest should be done in future??

I never know how to teach my kids about behaving in certain situations. I feel like I'm out of my depth and don't know how to make suitable suggestions and that I'm not knowledgeable enough to help them.

One has to learn to control their anger, the other needs to learn not to get distracted and to listen. I don't know what to tell them!! I don't even know if I'm making sense!!!