My Two Kids Fight More Than They Play, and I Stopped Lying About It
I’m sitting on the living room floor folding mismatched socks right now, and I can hear them in the playroom down the hall. Ten seconds ago they were both screaming so loud I thought someone had lost a finger. Three seconds before that, they were cackling so hard over a drawing of a butt that Lila snort-laughed, which I can hear through the walls even when it’s quiet. Right now it’s quiet, actually. Wait, no – there it goes. “MILO THAT’S MY MARKER I SAVED IT FOR THE END OF THE RAINBOW GIVE IT BACK.” Yep. There we go. That’s our average.
People who have two kids ask each other this all the time, don’t they? Do yours play or fight more? For the first two years after Milo turned two, when the real fighting started, I lied. I’d smile and nod and say “Oh, they play pretty well together most of the time!” even if I’d just pulled Milo off Lila’s hair five minutes before we left the house, even if I had a fresh nail scratch on my forearm from breaking up a fight over who got to sit in the shopping cart first. Last week at the grocery store, a mom with two boys around the same ages as mine asked me that question, right there by the cereal aisle, and I almost told her the truth before I chickened out and said the usual lie. I don’t know why we do that. Act like if our kids fight more than they play, we’re doing something wrong.
I did that thing a couple weeks ago, where I kept a rough mental count all morning just to check. Let’s see: 9am, fight over who got the blue spatula for pancakes. 9:17am, they were partnering up to make me a “pancake cake” out of extra batter and sprinkles, laughing so hard batter got on the cat. 9:42am, fight over who got to press the beater button on the hand mixer. 10:15am, they built a fort out of my old Amazon boxes behind the couch and hid from me when I said it was time to clean up. 10:47am, fight over which stuffed animal got to be the fort guard. 11:20am, fight over who got to sit next to me while I answered a quick work email. By lunch time, I counted 7 fights, 4 play stretches. Total play time added up to 26 minutes. Total fight time – all the yelling, sulking, me negotiating, separating them – was almost 40 minutes. They’re three years apart, close enough that they want all the same stuff, far enough that one’s always bigger and more stubborn about getting it. So math doesn’t lie. They fight more than they play.
My in-laws were over two weekends ago, and I was trying to be the chill, hands-off mom that I see all over my feed, so I told myself I wouldn’t intervene unless someone was bleeding. Ten minutes later, Lila called Milo a “stinky garbage boy who ruins everything” and Milo bit her ankle. Right there by the coffee table, in front of my mother-in-law. Lila wailed, I jumped up, and my mother-in-law just leaned back and said “Well, that’s two kids for you.” I wanted to crawl under the rug. I kept apologizing, like I’d planned the whole bit just to embarrass her. Later I thought, why am I apologizing? That’s just what they do.
A couple nights ago, I went up to check on them after bedtime, like I do. The hall light was on, I peeked in, and Lila had snuck out of her twin bed and crawled up into Milo’s top bunk. They were both huddled under the blanket, sharing the lollipop she’d hidden in her art bag after a birthday party (I thought I’d thrown it away, oops). Lila was whispering a story to him, about when he was a tiny baby and she came to the hospital and gave him her favorite plastic T-Rex, and how she dropped it in his bassinet and the nurse had to fish it out. They were both giggling so quiet, their shoulders shaking, and they didn’t hear me. I stood there for a full minute, and I didn’t want to interrupt.
That’s the thing, right? All the fighting is just the noise they make while they figure out how to be around each other. They don’t know how to share, or compromise, or be nice when they want something bad. They’re 7 and 4. Everything is the most important thing in the world right now. That sparkly marker? That’s the whole world. The spot next to mom on the couch? That’s everything. I used to lie awake worrying that I’d messed them up, that I’d failed at fostering that “sibling best friend” bond everyone talks about. That if they fight more than they play now, they’ll hate each other when they’re grown.
But I still get frustrated, don’t get me wrong. I still yell “STOP TOUCHING EACH OTHER” at least five times a day. Last night I sat on the couch after they went to bed, drinking cold coffee, and complained to my husband that I’m tired of breaking up fights, that I wish they’d just play for a full hour without screaming. He reminded me that he and his sister still fight about who got the better Christmas ski jacket when they were 12, and they’re both in their 40s now. So I guess it never really stops, it just gets quieter, and more about stupid adult stuff instead of sparkly markers.
There’s a scratch on the front of my fridge, right by the handle. It’s from three weeks ago, when Lila tried to pull Milo off the counter by his hoodie, and his sneaker scraped right down the paint. I’ve been meaning to get a touch up pen for it, but I haven’t. It just feels like it belongs there, you know? It’s just a mark of how we live right now.
Do my kids fight more than they play? Yeah, they do. I don’t lie about it anymore. It doesn’t mean they won’t be best friends one day. It doesn’t mean I messed up. It just means we’ve got two kids, and two kids make a lot of noise, and a lot of that noise is fighting. That’s okay. Some days the quiet parts, the secret lollipop sharing in the top bunk, the hiding from the vacuum together, those parts matter more than any count anyway. I don’t need a perfect conclusion to wrap it all up right now. This is just where we are. It’s enough.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » My Two Kids Fight More Than They Play, and I Stopped Lying About It