We are a lot of fun at The Rec.  We come up with all kinds of crazy plans to make sure the kids have fun and memorable experiences.  Over the years, we’ve done some things that have been really good ideas and we’ve also done some things that have been terrible ideas.  Here are some examples:

1.  Ant Farm—When you have ants in your home, you call an exterminator.  When we have ants at The Rec, we call an exterminator.  Why, then, would we have thought that buying a flimsy plastic “farm” and filling it with Fire Ants was a good idea?  I mean, ants are fascinating creatures and all—did you know that they build a little cemetery and drag their dead friends into it?  But what happens when someone uncaps the lid?  I’ll tell you exactly what happens.  Ants find their way out of the nice farm home you provided and spread out everywhere in your room.  And who wants to catch them and try to stuff them back in the tiny hole they came out of? No one!  Who HAD to catch them?  Me.  Bad idea.  Very bad idea.
2. Hatching Chicks—Watching a chick hatch from an egg is absolutely breathtaking.  It is a beautiful moment of new life and hope and you can actually hear angels singing when it happens.  We thought this would be such a great experience for the kids so we got an incubator, procured some eggs, carefully tended the humidity levels and temperature and waited.  One morning before school, two of the eggs started rocking and moving around.  Tiny little holes appeared in the shell and we held our breath…..until it was time for the buses to come and then the kids had to go to school.  Unfortunately, they missed the best parts of the whole experience, but Susan and I stayed and watched.  One of the chicks hatched out perfectly.  The other chick still had not absorbed the remainder of the yolk sac through his navel.  (Did you even know that chickens have belly buttons?  Crazy!)  We immediately researched the problem and found out that the chicken would likely die because of infection.  Some people had limited success with a little “chicken surgery” using dental floss to tie off the yolk sac and seal up the navel.  Unfortunately, in that nice warm incubator, the yolk was now stuck to his little chicky belly and we had to give him a little chicky bath to get it loose enough to tie on the dental floss.  All of this trauma gave him a little chicky heart attack and the kids got to learn about new life AND death all in the same day.  Very bad idea.
3. Homemade Ice Cream—Doesn’t that sound fun?  You take a small zipper bag of the ingredients and place it inside a gallon size bag of ice and rock salt and then you shake it up until the ice cream hardens.  That would all be such a great idea if the children just shook it like the kids in the pictures did.  No….our kids were way too wild and before we knew it, the bags were leaking and salty water and sticky ice cream fixings were all over the floor.  Also, not one of our better ideas. 

     I could tell you stories of coloring Easter eggs and carving pumpkins and using rubber gloves like udders for painting during farm week.  The list of bad ideas we’ve had is a mile long, in fact!  The good thing is, the bad ideas DO make GOOD stories. 

     Ahhhh….summer: time for family barbeques, endless days of popsicle juice on the kitchen floor, and sibling squabbling.  From sunup to sundown, it seems like the number and variety of things to argue about are as generous as the weeds in your flower beds.  Just when you’ve solved one problem, the next one is seeping in to take its place.  It’s enough to make a mama want to stick knives in her ears!
      Even with 30,000 toys in the playroom, the only one anyone wants to play with is the one their brother has.  No matter how many times you’ve coached them to ask nicely for a turn, snatching that toy from their sister is always the go-to technique for acquiring what they want.
     My grandkids have claimed their own barstools at the kitchen counter at my house.  Want to see them get bent out of shape in a hurry?  Let their sibling climb onto the stool that is “theirs”.  And even if everyone sits on the right stool, they love to stick their feet on the stool of their neighbor.  If that doesn’t elicit a response right away, they will give the other stool a little shove to make sure the offended party notices that they are being messed with. 

     What’s a parent to do?  How can you keep your cool when the world around you is in meltdown mode? 

1.  Establish a “no tattling” policy and try to stay out of the fray.  It is actually a good thing for them to learn to solve petty disagreements on their own.  If you intervene and solve problems constantly, they don’t learn to negotiate with others and you become a pawn in their Game of Crazy.  (At the Rec, we define tattling like this:  Is someone going to get hurt?  Is something going to get broken?  Have you tried to solve it yourself?  If the answer is no, then we want them to go back and try to take care of it themselves.) 
2. If there is a problem that they can’t solve themselves, try a little cooling off area.  We often send kids to the game table to have a little quiet time.  They can do a puzzle or play a board game or build with Lego bricks, but they have to stay there for an appointed amount of time.  It isn’t a time out, just a time to cool down and diffuse the situation.  And since both offenders are generally sent there, they usually end of playing something together.
3. For bigger offenses, a little more “togetherness” might be just the ticket.  When my kids were little, I would make them hold hands if they couldn’t get along.  They could do anything they wanted as long as they held the other’s hand.  It is hard to play without cooperating when you only have one hand to work with and you have to agree on where you’re going.  If they kept fighting, I’d just add time to their sentence.  It was amazing to see how creative they could get when they decided to work together.
4. For kids who can’t keep their hands to themselves, we often make them clasp their own hands together.  Again, they aren’t in time out and they can do whatever they want as long as their hands are clasped. 
5. If using words nicely seems to be the root of the problem, we just impose a “silence” penalty.  They can continue to play, but they aren’t allowed to speak for a period of time.  Generally, we find that they are more judicious with their speech when the privilege of speaking has been suspended for a little while.  And, if nothing else, you get a few minutes of quiet time.

     If you’ve tried all of these techniques and the quarreling is still driving you nuts, here’s a little hope.  My boys were arch enemies when they were growing up.  No matter how many times I had serious discussions about how fortunate they were to have a brother, they weren’t buying it.  What finally made them ditch the fighting and start appreciating each other?  Time and distance and a tiny bit of maturity.  When the older son moved out, it wasn’t two weeks before he started inviting his brother to his apartment to have pizza and hang out.  So take heart, parents!  You only have 10-15 years left of listening to all this bickering before it will be over.  :)