My Children May Kill Each Other, I’ve Been Told This is Normal

I am home from my hols and as lovely as they have been and as grateful as I am to have the means to travel to see my family, I am also relieved to be chez moi. Obviously, not for the weather. Nor the gloomy headlines. No, what I am most excited to be back for is the age-appropriate summer camps and the opportunity to remove my kids from each other’s company.

When you have tiny tots, parents of older children are constantly telling you, ‘bigger kids, bigger problems’ so much so that it’s like the sword of Damocles hangs over your head. When will my kid be big enough for this bigger problem? Can I prepare for this? How can anything be harder than today? Aside from the menacing anticipation of these grand issues, what I find most wrenching about this truism is that there seems to be zero gap between the old problems and the new. Two weeks ago, I was just easing out of the ‘HE’S GOING TO DIE ON THE STAIRS; HE’S GOING TO DIE BY INGESTING LEGO; HE’S GOING TO DIE BY SLIPPING IN THE BATH (this stage all very clearly death related). Just a fortnight later, I am no longer worried about any of this. Instead, my dread is focused on whether or not THEY ARE GOING TO KILL EACH OTHER BEHIND MY BACK IF I LEAVE THE ROOM (admittedly still death related). It’s amazing how one tranche of anxiety fades only to be immediately replaced by another—I think there were maybe two days in between. Of course, this is probably because the moment my youngest graduated from helplessness and turned into a bonafide family member, my eldest received a hormonal jolt to his brain, robotically moving him up to the rivalry stage. It’s like they could smell the shift between them and the extra bandwidth I’d momentarily been gifted and pivoted to grab the attention before I spent it on, oh I don’t know, shaving my calves.

What our holiday really underlined to me is how separate your children’s lives can be from each other in the midst of the regular family routine. Obviously, my boys sleep under the same roof and share breakfast and dinner and sometimes a bath, but between school and nursery, my eldest’s weekend clubs and play dates, they are rarely on top of each other for hours on end. They have their own rooms and own toys. There is also an iPad, so if during TV time, the eldest can’t bear Cocomelon, he can indulge in Sonic elsewhere. We are raising them together, but on different schedules and I think in some ways that has kept their mutual hostility at bay–but also perhaps, made them less accustomed to how much they annoy each other.

That’s not to say they haven’t fought before this holiday. The desolate disappointment when the youngest destroys an hour’s long Magna-Tiles creation is enough to make even the hardest heart weep. But there hasn’t been much meanness or particular violence. However, over the past month or so, the belligerence of two and a half has started to tell. I didn’t notice the terrible twos the first time around as it had all been pretty heated from day one, but this rodeo has been almost shocking. Like the onset of teen hood I imagine—one day I had the sweetest little boy singing me twinkle twinkle, now there’s this boisterous, determined force of nature that I hardly recognise. And it’s generally the little one starting the fights, though admittedly that tally is becoming hard to keep track of.

I definitely don’t want to disparage my kids in digital print. My eldest was an unusual handful when he was younger, these days he is a very ordinary one. And as I’m writing this, I can absolutely admit that so far, their competitive energy seems very much par for the course. It’s just that par, in the case of sibling rivalry, is un-fucking-bearable for anyone who has to be around it. ‘Get me dressed first; give me my cereal first; I won; no, I won; I want to go with just you mum; send him back; throw him in the bin; I hate him; he said I’m stupid; he said I smell of poo; I hate you; get me a drink, NO GET ME A DRINK FIRST; you gave him more than me; he pinched me; no, he pinched me.

Aghhhhhhhh.

My younger brother and I fought mercilessly, both physically and psychologically (I tortured him, he ruined my life). We were so incredibly competitive with each other for many and varied factors and influences which probably need an additional Substack. This is perhaps one of the reasons that I have found watching my own kids enter this era with such trepidation and why I’m so committed to managing the enmity in as mature a way as possible. But Jesus H Christ, even the fleeting research I’ve done so far into the impact that sibling conflict can have on individual kids is fricking terrifying. The stakes of getting it wrong can be so high.

This week I’ve reread sections of Phillippa Perry’s modern classic, The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read, which made me retrace the legacy of my own experiences as a child and consider how that might have impacted the foundations I’ve set for my own boys’ relationship. In addition, I’ve taken in Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish’s Siblings without Rivalry, full of all sorts of heteronormative language and presumptions as you would expect from a book written in 1987, but also illuminating and very practical. I have Dr Laura Markham’s Peaceful Parent, Happy Siblings to crack on with next week. What I have so far gleaned is that one of the most important aspects of helping children to get on with each other is allowing them space to express (non-physically) how much they bloody hate each other. Acknowledging and validating the feelings of rivalry can, it is suggested, take the sting out of the rancour. For sure, this goes contrary to many of the tactics I’ve been employing thus far (more ‘don’t say that it’s so unkind’ or ‘you don’t mean that, we love each other in our family’ – which both minimise and dismiss the natural feelings of rivalry). Siblings Without Rivalry may be dated, but it highlights so many important points, like the roles which we as parents assign for our children (the ‘bully’ vs the ‘victim’, the ‘smart one’ vs the ‘pretty one’ etc). From my current vantage point, both of my boys seem like wildlings, with both giving as good as they take, but it’s a really solid reminder that while parents may not be able to cure rivalries, they can certainly make them worse. In better news, reading about how natural and inevitable these feelings are, that all children are instinctually hardwired to covet their parents’ exclusive attention as a means of primal survival, helps with acceptance too—they are simply doing what they have been genetically built to do.

So far, it’s too soon to say if what I’ve learnt has made any improvement. But what I do know is that so much of parenting is actually engaging with an issue and making a decisive choice about how you are going to approach it. The step back, take a breath, read some things, then make a plan ‘plan’ is about the only way I’ve learnt how to cope with any of it. Because unless you start studying for a PhD in child development, the problems, which do indeed increase in scope over time, are going to catch you short and find you wanting. That is just a given. Making mistakes at the beginning is also par for the course, so we can’t beat ourselves up about something we said last week when we weren’t yet abreast of the situation. With kids, you can only move forward from today and try and implement advice which appeals to your sensibilities…While trying not to listen to anyone else’s two cents about how you’re doing x or y wrong.

This all sounds like I’m very clear-headed and I do hope I’ve learnt to tolerate frustrations far better over the past nearly six years. But like everyone 14 days into the school hols without a minute to do the things that keep them human, good intentions are beginning to unravel. It is so easy to think surely it can’t be like this for everyone. Lying in bed at 9.30pm frazzled by yet another bickering bender, I’ve found myself reminiscing back to my teenage days of Duke of Edinburgh survivalism (obviously the outdoorsy life was not for me, I was just obsessed with my UCAS form). In every group of young adventurers which I was assigned to, there were always two or three people who did the literal bare minimum, who the rest of us had to carry both metaphorically and literally at times. They simply opted out of persevering when the going got tough—I’m sure at the time they were baffled at the rest of us and questioned why the hell we were taking it all so seriously. Yet, I also do wonder, do these people now have children? If so, how the f are they getting through? I have tried and failed to discover the softcore option, it seems it’s impossible to shirk or even dial down the intensity of the conflicts. Am I missing something? As I would definitely like to join the band of refuseniks, screw the certificate.

Some days I do think what is wrong with my children, but mostly my thoughts drift to wondering what is wrong with me. Why am I so excruciatingly stressed and exhausted by their energy and demands and animosity for each other? They are just ‘normal boys’, so why are my eyes bursting out of their sockets? I wonder if many of you have had similar thoughts? When my eldest lad was tiny, during the depths of the summer holidays, I found myself in a pub in Queens Park ordering a midday desperation rosé.  Within minutes my son was kicking the leg of a highchair while wailing for no apparent reason. I caught another woman’s eye – she was around my age and had her three kids in tow and I recall thinking Lord, I can’t manage one and she’s got three times that many. How is she getting through the day? Anyway, without any pleasantries, she leant over and whispered loudly across the table, “they’re all arseholes. All of them. No-one tells you.” That was it. Whenever the memory comes to me and it does often, I wish I’d thanked her more profusely because it has offered me a huge amount of reassurance as well as always making me smile over the years. In that moment her kids looked well-behaved enough, at least none of them were rhythmically banging furniture, so it was a generous message to have passed on.

Today I do the same for you. These babes we have bred, fed and adored are absolute magic. But they are also all arseholes, at least at some of the time. The pressure and stress level of trying to guide your kids towards the light when they would obviously prefer to delete each other’s existence is absolutely ridiculous. That study that’s doing the rounds on social media at the moment saying 98% of the world’s occupations are less stressful than being at home with young children (noted by psychologist and New York Times Bestselling Author, Rick Hanson on Zoe Blaskey’s insightful and supportive podcast, Motherkind) is no joke.  The constant interruptions, the anticipation of conflict, the ear piercing and panic triggering screams and crying, the true fear of physical harm coming to your kids in the moment, the true fear of harm coming to your kids mentally in the future, the unpredictability of emotionally volatile smalls and the knowledge that you just cannot control all of this is brain frying.  If you can’t recalibrate, however it is you do that, it goes beyond the pale. Not sure I’ll be getting a book deal with this message, but hopefully someone reads this and sleeps a little sounder tonight.