This is episode 145 How to Stop Kids Fighting of the Parenting in Real Life Podcast. You can read the blog post or listen here. Find us wherever you listen to podcasts.
We wanted to stop kids fighting
With 5 kids really close in age, there’s a lot of fighting in our house. We were tired of breaking up fights and having to think about punishments, so we usually just told the kids to say sorry. But that didn’t seem to satisfy the kid who was bothered and then they would yell at us that we weren’t doing enough. They wanted greater punishments! (But of course, not for themselves). We were tired of getting involved all the time and dolling out punishments that we didn’t follow through with. Something needed to change.
My husband spent some time with a family in Arkansas and they told him how they did family council. We took what he remembered and tweaked it for our own family. Now each Sunday we do a family council. This is what we’re doing right now and so far we’ve had some good results.
What is a family council?
According to an article written by the University of Missouri, a family council is:
- A meeting of family members at a routine time and place.
- A time for family concerns to be discussed
- A chance for each family member to express thoughts or feelings
- A joint effort to make family decisions.
They continue to talk about how it’s a valuable tool for families that allows families to communicate openly. It helps families live more satisfied lives and helps children learn how to be respectful to others’ opinions, learn how to problem solve, and learn how to make decisions with others.
We have definitely found this to be true in our own family.
How it works
So how do we do a family council to stop kids fighting? We have 2 jars in the living room with a pad of sticky notes and a pen. When someone gets offended or hurt (minorly) or bugged, they write it down and put it in the jar. The second jar is for kind things that people do – this one gets used much less frequently, but we want to figure out a way to incentivize the kids to write more nice notes.
On Sunday afternoons, we go through the jar and read what everyone said. We allow anyone involved in what happen share their side of the story. Then we let the person who did something wrong suggest something they could do to make it up to them. Some of the things that have been suggested are:
- Apologize
- Write a note
- Do a chore for the other person
- Pay for something they ate or broke
- Do research on why that’s not a good way to handle anger
Then the family decides together if the suggestion is a good thing to do to make up for the offense they committed. We have made some rules along the way, like hitting is always more than an apology (we have a lot of hitting going on).
Then we put the things they have to do in their Greenlight app as a one time chore so they don’t forget to do it.
The Pros of a Family Council
- People aren’t as angry and can think logically
- We’ve had kids actually admit that they had done the action where if we ask them while it’s happening they always deny it
- We can council together so it doesn’t make the parent the referee all the time
- We don’t have to be breaking up the fights and punishing when people are mad. We just tell them to write it down and usually separate the kids.
- We’re helping them talk about hard things and solve problems
- Everyone gets to tell their side of the story and feel heard
The Cons of Our Family Council
- Sometimes after a week they can’t remember what happened
- Saying sorry doesn’t always satisfy the person who was affected
- Sometimes there’s A LOT of notes
Overall, we feel like this has been a really positive experience and a better way to help stop kids fighting. We have seen less notes as the weeks go on and the kids like that they have a say in what happens in our family.
Have you ever tried a family council? How do you do it?