Helping Siblings Get Along

There are days when I feel on top of the world as a mother.  The birds are singing, the sun is shining, I know what we’re having for supper and my children have laughed most of the day.

Then there are those other days…(Mama said there’d be days like this.)

Days when I collapse into bed at night, melancholy with a keen sense of failure.

Those days are awful.  They can be accompanied by a sense of hopelessness and strong desire to “give up”.

But what I love about those days is that they almost always create in my life the clouds that allow the sun to illuminate all the brighter the next day.  They don’t last.  Joy comes in the morning….a fresh, new perspective and surge of energy is waiting from the hand of my Father.

Such was my morning.

Enough backdrop.  Now onto a blessed little mother-moment that may give you some hope when you come off a hard day:

Two of my children rub each other like sandpaper.  Not all the time, but often enough.  Whoever said children can’t learn socialization at home didn’t have 8 children spending all their days together.  Socialization is what we do.

I fought the urge to sleep and got up to see the beautiful sun rise.  Coffee in hand, prayers on my lips, I woke the oldest of the “sandpaper couple”.

We read Colossians 3 together, snuggled up in a chair, under a blanket.  A ripe condition for heart-talk.

“Do you know how a bank account works?  In order to take money out, you must put money in.  People are kind of like bank accounts.  Praise and criticism must be at least equal.”

Child listened intently.

“Do you know what I think?  I think you can “head off” strife by deliberately beginning the day with a kind word or gesture.  That way, when you need to ask [insert other child’s name] to stop doing something, you will have already padded your ‘friendship account’.

So, when she gets up this morning, instead of just being in the same room, do something actively kind.  A smile, a tender touch on the shoulder, a cheerful greeting.”

Child was so receptive.  Like a light bulb had gone off.

I gave a few more hints:  “Watch the difference in the way I say this phrase, once with a demanding tone and face, then with a gentle one…”

Child was amazed at the difference.

(Wait for it…..)

Up the stairs the children began coming.  They were all greeted with such sweet voice, child offering to pour bowls of cereal, and inquiring of the night’s sleep.

I almost cried.  It was beautiful.  A genuine heart of friendship oozed out.  They need more than a “be kind”.  That’s what we’re here for.  To show them what that looks like.  And on those days when I want to check out, well, that’s just not an option.

The simple little gestures, the ones that perhaps just needed a verbal nudge, worked like giant shock absorbers that headed off the friction so easily found in our mornings.

The birds are singing. God is good.