Katharine Wise

One of the things we struggle with daily is trying to solve problems with a child who usually won't speak (in this situation... he's perfectly chatty when playing with his brothers!).

For example, this evening both of my older boys wanted to play pinball (we have a K'nex pinball game my oldest purchased years ago and they recently rebuilt). They had been playing D&D together for a long while. When they stopped my 7yo went to the pinball game and 10yo (almost 11yo) got upset. Apparently he'd been wanting to play for awhile. So I come out of the kitchen where I was fixing dinner to see 7yo playing pinball and 10yo very upset. 10yo would definitely have negotiated a way to take turns, but 7yo just wouldn't speak. Kept playing (including starting over several times... it wasn't that he was in the middle of a game and didn't want to lose) with a slight grin on his face.

I tried asking 7yo to hold the ball and stop playing while we talked, but he just kept playing. A year ago I would probably have held the balls myself so that one child didn't already have the power of having the item in question in their possession because I found that that made them less willing to negotiate, but I've learned that that's likely to send my 7yo into an aggressive rage which really doesn't help anything.

In the end I just comforted 10yo, accepting the reality that 7yo was playing and he clearly wasn't ready to negotiate at that time.

Actually, I'm realizing there are two pieces here I struggle with... One is trying to negotiate with a child who want participate. (Sometimes he does, but he frequently clams up this way.) The other is handling a situation where one child (always my 7yo) has an item in his possession -- which may or may not be rightfully his (for another instance, if he's mad at 4yo, he'll grab something of 4yo's -- that 4yo's playing with -- and hold onto it tight or hide it). I don't want to physically take it from him -- model grabbing or force -- but I also feel uncomfortable with 4yo's learning that since his brother's bigger he can take his things away and not give them back (for hours).

Any thoughts?

Katharine





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