Julie Stauffer

Hello all,

After a couple of weeks going back and forth with yahoo, I can finally
receive mail again from the list (my mail kept simply bouncing out of my
mailbox for some unknown reason). Anyway, I had to change my ID, I used to
be jnjstau and am now callingmoon, but am still Julie in Texas. I missed
you guys.

About sibling fighting, my kids are all fairly close in age and often get
along really well and sometimes really fight. I try to take a look at what
is going on behind the fighting. Usually, somebody stayed up late and is
tired or its about lunch time and somebody is getting hungry. Sometimes,
the kids are just looking for attention from the other kids or they are kind
of transitioning in their interests and are somewhat at wit's end as to what
to do with themselves. So of course, they torment a sibling.

When we have a particularly bad spell, we have a "lock down". At least that
is what we called it when I worked on an adolescent psychiatric unit.
Everything becomes of secondary importance to getting our family back on
track. We talk, hug, cry, yell with each other. Whatever needs to happen
so that people feel listened to and again committed to our family. We talk
a lot about our family being a team and us needing to work together not
against each other.

Julie -- waving to Dar, Rain and Nana