“Ha! I got my borhter grounded for hitting me and he didn’t even hurt me!”

Situation Number Two: “Johnny hit me!”

Magic Response: “Are you hurt?”

The vast majority of hitting incidents between children do not really hurt, and many, if not most, are not observed by any adult. So you are likely to be faced with a child coming for help with an incident you didn’t see and in which no one is hurt. Like in Situation Number One, what the child really wants is to win by getting you to reprimand and punish the other child. Again, if you do this, matters will only get worse. The best way to respond is with the three magic words, “Are you hurt?” It goes like this:

Child: Johnny hit me!

Adult: Are you hurt?

Child: No.

Adult: Good.

This leaves the child with nothing more to say, and he scurries off. Aside from having ended the incident in a matter of seconds, you will have accomplished the following:

1. When you ask if the child is hurt, he feels your genuine concern for his welfare.

2. When the child acknowledges he is not hurt, he realizes there is no problem.

3. When you say, “Good,” you are continuing your sympathetic manner, letting him know that you are happy he is not hurt.

4. Since you are not doing anything against the bully, he does not become mad at his victim or at you, so there is less chance of escalation or retaliation.

5. When the kids see you don’t consider the hitting (which didn’t hurt anyone) anything to be concerned about, they probably won’t, either.

If the child persists in trying to get you to reprimand the bully, handle it exactly in the manner prescribed above for name-calling, but adjusted for hitting. It goes like this:

Child: Johnny hit me!

Adult: Are you hurt?

Child: No.

Adult: Good.

Child: Tell him to stop hitting me!

Adult: If it bothers you, you should tell him!

Child: I keep telling him, but he doesn’t listen.

Adult: If I tell Johnny to stop hitting you, is that going to make him like you more, or hate you more?

Child: Hate me more.

Adult: And if he hates you more, will he be nicer to you, or meaner to you?

Child: Meaner.

Adult: And will it make him like me, or hate me?

Child: Hate you.

Adult: So is it going to do any good if I tell him?

Child: No.

Adult: That’s right!

Child: So what should I do?

Adult: When Johnny hits you, is he trying to hurt you, or is he trying to get you mad?

Child: He’s trying to get me mad.

Adult: That’s right. And when you get mad, does he feel happy or sad?

Child: Happy.

Adult: Do you want to make him happy when he hits you?

Child: No.

Adult: So stop getting mad. Let him hit you all he wants. After a while, he’ll get tired and stop.

If the child answers that he is hurt, then it needs to be dealt with differently. Here is how I suggest doing it.

Child: Johnny hit me!

Adult: Are you hurt?

Child: Yes!

Adult: Show me where.

The child then shows you. Inspect the area of injury, and if it requires first aid or medical attention, make sure the child gets it. Your immediate concern is to take care of the injury so that the child can heal as well as possible. This is more urgent at the moment than disciplining the bully.

When you are done taking care of the injury, then you can deal with the bully. However, what you should do is very different depending on whether you are the children’s teacher or parent.

For Parents: If one of your children hurt another, do not discipline him! This may sound crazy to you. How can a parent not discipline a child for hurting his sibling?! Let me explain.

It’s important to realize that your children do not really want to kill each other, no matter how much you see them fighting. They want to defeat their sibling, but they don’t enjoy drawing blood or breaking bones. So please relax.

Have you noticed that they seem to fight over nonsense? Do you wonder why they are willing to get themselves hurt and upset over such inconsequential matters?

Well, they’re not really fighting over inconsequential matters.

So what are they really fighting about? I’ll tell you.

When your children are having a fight over insults, TV shows, toys, dirty looks, etc, they are fighting over things that are not terribly important. But they know what’s probably going to happen because you do it most of the time. When they fight, they expect you to come over as usual to stop the fight and administer justice. As soon as you are there, the situation facing them completely changes. Before you came along, their concern was the insults, TV shows, toys, dirty looks, etc. These things are really not worth it for them to fight about. You, on the other hand, are worth fighting about. You are their parent, the most important person in the world to both of them. The last thing in the world they want is for you to take their brother’s side against them. Whichever one you decide against will be very hurt and upset. So they are now fighting over the most important person in the world (you), and they are practically willing to kill! They become prosecuting attorneys trying to get each other in trouble with you, and this doesn’t exactly enhance their mutual love. But being a good parent, you will hear them out and use your superior intelligence, judgment, and experience to make a decision. Whichever way you decide, the kids will continue being mad at each other because they didn’t work the problem out between themselves. The “guilty” one will now also be mad at you, and he’ll be even madder at his brother for getting you against him. And he’s going to try to even up the score by finding something else to fight about and hopefully get you on his side. Meanwhile, you keep yourself busy trying to stop the never-ending, insignificant battles, never realizing that you are actually what they are fighting about! You’re trying to stop the fights, but you are really making the fights happen! Therefore, the worst thing parents can do is to get involved in the conflicts between their children.

How about just stopping the fights, without taking sides? What’s wrong with that?

When you stop a fight without taking sides, you think you are creating a tie; there is no winner and no loser. But this is not true. The weaker one is automatically the winner because there is no way he should be able to have a tie against a stronger opponent. With your help, the weaker one knows he can do anything he wants to his stronger sibling, and you will prevent him from getting clobbered. He’s going to love this, and the stronger one will hate it, and the fighting will continue.

So if one of your children hurts the other, do absolutely nothing to him! Do not tell him to apologize. Do not lecture him. Do not punish him. Do not even give him a dirty look. And do not even be mad at him. If you are mad at him, he will become mad at both you and his brother. You will also be making the victim happy, so he will continue to provoke his brother to hurt him so that you’ll get mad at him again.

The only person who should be mad at the hitter is the victim himself. If the victim wants to tell him he’s hurt, that’s up to him. Then the hitter will probably feel sorry for hurting his sibling and will apologize on his own. But if you tell the hitter to feel sorry and apologize, he will get busy defending himself and arguing that it’s not his fault.

Warnings: I want you to succeed with this new approach. To make sure you do, and to avoid calamity, I must give you the following warnings:

1. The fighting will get worse before it gets better. Your children have known for years that you try to stop their fights, which is exactly what they want. When they see you are no longer concerned with their fights, they will think something is very wrong with you. They know the fights are supposed to bother you, so they will fight even harder to make you do something. But they will see you’re not doing anything. After a while, they will get tired of hurting and upsetting each other. The next day, they will try again, figuring you went back to normal. Again, they will see you don’t care. By the third day, they will hardly even try, and things will get much better. So when you see the fighting getting worse in the beginning, don’t think, “Oh, no! This isn’t working! The fighting is only getting worse! I have to make it stop!” It is working. It’s just that it often gets worse before it gets better.

2. You must follow this advice 100% of the time. 90% won’t work. If your kids see that you usually do nothing to stop them, but sometimes you do, they will know the fighting really does bother you; they just have to try harder and more often to get you involved. Therefore, they must see that you never care about their fighting, and then it will get and stay better.

3. Don’t let them go to the hospital just because you are following my advice. You are still responsible for your children’s well-being, and if you see the possibility of serious injury requiring medical attention, don’t let it happen just so they can learn a lesson. Don’t worry about punches or kicks or scratches or pulled hair. The kids will heal from these by themselves. However, if a child is about to use a weapon, or throw a sibling down the stairs, you must stop him. But you don’t care who started and what it’s about, and you aren’t even mad at anyone. Just take away the weapon, or move them away from the stairs, and tell them as lovingly as possible, “I’m sorry, but I can’t let you go to the hospital.” And then walk away.

4. The fighting will get 80, 90, or even 95% better, but it won’t get 100% better. Only dead people don’t fight. People who are alive and live in the same house fight and argue sometimes. No matter how precisely you follow my instructions, you can’t expect your children to never, ever fight again. So when you see them fighting once in a while, don’t think, “Oh, no! This isn’t working! They’re still fighting! I have to make them stop!” It is working. It’s just that they are still alive and living together.

Note: Sibling rivalry is a very serious and widespread problem. In almost every family in the world with more than one child, the kids fight every day. I cannot provide a comprehensive explanation of sibling rivalry in this website. I have been writing a full-length book tentatively called Mother Nature’s Simple Solution to Sibling Rivalry, which I hope to have published in the not-too-distant future. (If you are in the publishing business and want to help me with this, please feel free to contact me). In my humble, self-centered opinion, it will be the most useful book available on the subject. I will keep you posted when it is in print. Until then, please accept the concise explanations and instructions I am providing here. Also, if your fighting children are old enough to understand it, have them read Lesson Ten of my INSTRUCTIONS to victims of teasing on this website. Or you may order my audio self-help tape, How to Stop Being Teased and Bullied Without Really Trying, and have them listen to it.

For Teachers: As a teacher, you are in a more sensitive position regarding students hurting each other than parents are with their own children. Parents are best off leaving it to their children to confront a sibling who hurts them. Schools, though, are responsible for the care of other people’s children, and must take some disciplinary action when one child hurts another. Therefore, if you have determined that the victim is indeed hurt, you can’t just do nothing. Students must know they are not permitted to hurt each other. The best thing you can do is put the victim and aggressor together so they can work out the problem between themselves. It is important that the victim show the bully that he is hurt, not that he is angry. If necessary, coach the victim to express his hurt without sounding angry. If he sounds hurt, the bully is likely to feel sorry for what he did. However, if he sounds angry, the bully will be angry in return, and the conflict will escalate.

If the bully sincerely tells the victim he is sorry, and the victim accepts it, that should be enough. However, if the situation cannot be resolved so nicely, and the bully does not show remorse, then further disciplinary action is in order. The bully must be taught that he cannot hurt other children without facing consequences. I will refrain from telling you exactly how to do this, as your school’s current policy should do fine, and you should follow that policy.

Warnings:

1. Do not be mad at the bully. It is quite natural to feel anger towards a student who intentionally hurts another child. However, it is a big mistake to do so. Your relationship with him should not be damaged just because he is having a problem with another one of your students. If you are mad at him, he will become mad at you, and this will not help him learn from you. All you should convey is sorrow over the pain he caused, and how he should try never to do it again. The victim is the one who has the right to be angry with him, not you.

2. Tell his parents not to punish him. Teachers often believe that parents should discipline children for things they do in school. While this may sound reasonable, it is a terrible thing to do. Countless relationships between children and parents are destroyed because the parents punish them for their behavior in school. The child committed his act in school, and it has nothing to do with his parents. If his parents punish him for what he did in school, he becomes angry with both the teacher and the parents. He’s angry with the parents for punishing him for something that has nothing to do with them, and he’s angry with the teacher for getting him punished at home. This anger is far more likely to make him continue acting aggressively than to become a content, compliant student. Children are far more afraid of their teachers and principals than they are of their parents. Have you ever stopped to realize that one teacher can get thirty students to work for six hours more easily than two parents can get one child to work for five minutes? Understand, then, that children take discipline by school authorities far more seriously by than they take discipline by parents. So if you need to report the incident to the child’s parents, and you don’t want to destroy families, make it clear to them that they may compassionately discuss the incident with their child, but that the school alone will administer the consequences.

Point to Remember: The goal is to reduce conflict as much as possible. It is not reasonable to expect children to never, ever hurt each other, and I am not providing you with much new instruction about what to do when there is real injury. However, the simple instructions I am giving will cut out all the phony incidents, which is what the great majority of them really are. What do I mean by “phony” incidents? Those are the incidents in which no one is really hurt. They are happening only for the purpose of getting each other in trouble with you. These phony incidents will disappear when you follow my instructions, and, without exaggeration, you should see at least an 80 or 90% reduction in conflicts. This will leave you with much more time to teach, and your time in school will be more enjoyable. The only time you will have to do something is on that rare occasion when someone really is hurt.