Rabbi Peretz Chen | How do we put out children's quarrels?

00:00 Hello. Fights between siblings—how much energy they take out of us. Sometimes, in the evening, after a busy, demanding day when we’ve worked and used up so much energy, we make ourselves a cup of coffee with a little snack on the side. We’re about to take a sip, and suddenly it starts: “Dad, he took it from me! Mom, she did something to me!” We immediately rush to the scene, step in, try to stop the fight, and come back exhausted, with no energy left. The coffee has gone cold, and we don’t even want it anymore. So what do we do? What can we do? One of the frustrating things is that it often seems to us that other people’s children don’t fight like ours do. What’s going on in our home? What’s wrong with us? More than once, we even close the windows so nobody will hear, because it’s embarrassing. How humiliating! After all, only our children fight. Everyone else’s children always seem so quiet and calm. They don’t fight the way ours do—in such an awful way. So in our forum, in the group we share, several parents raised this question: What do we do? How do we deal with these fights between the children? And if it always bothers us, it’s especially difficult now, during the war. Although schools have reopened in many parts of the country, there are places like here in Ashkelon where the children still aren’t going to school. They’re learning over Zoom in various ways, but they aren’t going to school. So they’re spending many hours at home—and with all those hours at home come many fights at home. How can we deal with it? In today’s class, we’ll talk first about what causes children to fight. What’s behind these fights? And also, what’s the right approach when there is a fight? How?

02:08 How do we approach it? What should we do, and what shouldn’t we do? What are the rules when siblings fight? But we want to begin with a story—a beautiful story that illustrates just how important harmony at home is, and how much a fight is something we don’t want to happen. It’s a story with a very powerful message. It’s told about Reb Menachem Mendel of Horodok, a student of the holy Baal Shem Tov, that one day a group of his chassidim sat down for a farbrengen, brothers sitting together in unity. They sat, said l’chaim, ate, and blessed one another. The Alter Rebbe, the first of the Chabad Rebbes, was sitting among them. He was a student at the time. In the middle of the farbrengen, one of those present, one of the chassidim, suddenly stood up. He was a poor Jew with many troubles, many problems and difficulties. He truly needed mercy from Heaven. He stood up in the middle and said, “Friends, have mercy on me. Friends, bless me that things should work out.” The chassidim sitting there thought to themselves, We should bless him? Who are we? Just ordinary chassidim. Let him go to a tzaddik, let him go to the Rebbe. What does he want from us? How do we have the power to bless him? So they paid no attention to his request, but he persisted. “Friends,” he began to cry, “help me, have mercy on me, bless me.” The chassidim saw that he wasn’t calming down, so they started singing a song loudly enough to drown out his cries. As I said, the Alter Rebbe, the author of Tanya, was sitting among them. He was young then. Suddenly he stood up, went “Shhh…” and quieted everyone. He said to them, “Dear friends, don’t you know? A note fell from Heaven, and on that note it was written that what a chassidic farbrengen can accomplish, even the angel Michael cannot

04:26 accomplish.” Then he explained what that means. It’s just like a father who has several children, and the children are always fighting with one another. Then they say, “Dad, give us this. Dad, buy us that. Dad, we want this.” Does the father feel like giving them what they want? He doesn’t feel like it; he’s not in the mood. He doesn’t want to give it to them. So what does that father do? The Alter Rebbe told them that the father brings in a guide who spends time teaching the children how to treat one another. After they learn to treat one another properly, they behave harmoniously and considerately. Then they come to their father and say, “Dad, give us this. Dad, buy us that.” And the father tells them, “With love, with joy, gladly—I’ll give it to you. I’m in the mood; I want to give it to you.” The Alter Rebbe told them: It’s the same with us. The father is Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and we are the children. When He sees Jews sitting together at a farbrengen, a time when they bless one another from the heart and sincerely wish one another well, He sees that togetherness and the way they support one another. Then the Father, Hakadosh Boruch Hu, is moved to listen and grant what they ask for. So, in essence, the Alter Rebbe was telling them: A Jew here, a friend of ours, is asking for help. Bless him. Bless him from your hearts. Surely, at a chassidic farbrengen like this, Hakadosh Boruch Hu will hear what is said and answer. How happy we feel when the children at home get along, are calm, and play together cooperatively. And how hard it is—how it takes away every pleasant feeling and spoils everything—when there are fights and fights and more fights. So

06:22 why do children fight? First of all, children fight because that’s how Hakadosh Boruch Hu created them. Children fighting with one another is something healthy, because that’s how they grow. Didn’t we fight when we were little? That’s how children grow. They fight with one another. And sometimes there’s a child we can’t understand: At school they tell us how sensitive and considerate and calm he is, but at home he suddenly fights. That’s completely natural. At school, everyone tries to show the people around them how good and nice they are, because everyone there is being judged. Someone who behaves well is treated accordingly, and the way the teachers, the staff, and the other children treat him matters to him. They’ll say, “Well done.” There, he feels a need to behave nicely. But the closer a place is to a person—like home, where we feel closest and most at ease—the more we allow ourselves to show the sides of us that may be less pleasant or calm, sides that exist in every one of us. It’s just like a couple: At the beginning of their life together, they’re much more considerate and calm. There aren’t so many fights or misunderstandings. But the longer they live together and the closer they become—and the word for closeness also evokes the word for battle—suddenly there are more misunderstandings, more arguments, more of what we might call fights. There’s more of that. Why? On the contrary, it’s precisely that closeness that brings out the part of us that feels comfortable being who we really are, without constantly trying to present ourselves one way or another. So the reason children fight with one another at home is that it’s their home, and these are their siblings. It’s

08:28 The family. They feel closest there, so they allow themselves to show the less pleasant sides of their personalities, and that’s natural, understandable, and perfectly okay. Often, when children fight with each other, they’re also looking, in a less obvious way, to find out whether we’re on their side or not. Notice how children always make sure we hear about their fights. They run to us; they do all sorts of things. There’s a fight, and they immediately call their parents. They always try to make sure we know about it. Why? Why do we need to know about the fight? You fought—work it out between yourselves, solve the problem. Why this constant need to bring it to us? Because they have this unspoken need to see whether we’ll accept their version, whether we’ll be with them or against them, whether we’ll say he was right or she was right. They’re trying to find out how much we believe them, trust them, and have confidence in what they say. And that’s a kind of trap, because if we really take one side in the fight, the other side will always feel very, very unfairly treated. So the first rule is: we don’t judge. When there’s a fight, we never come in and start saying, “You’re to blame,” because we genuinely can’t know who’s to blame. After all, each one will certainly tell the version that favors them. And who says the fight even started five minutes ago? Maybe it goes back to something that happened yesterday, the day before, last Shabbos, or a week ago. We don’t know when it started or what exactly lies behind it. So we can’t act as judges. It isn’t fair, right, or justified. Under no circumstances should we fall into the trap of

10:34 judging and deciding that you’re to blame, or you’re to blame, or someone there is to blame. We must never, ever judge. So what do we do? We’ll get to that, but we don’t judge. We don’t say who’s at fault. We’re not judges, we’re not police officers, and we’re not trying to find one person guilty and another innocent. That’s the first point. Another thing we sometimes do is tell one of them, “Give in. You’re the older one; he’s younger, she’s younger. The older one gives in to the younger one.” Or sometimes there’s a child in the house—there’s always that accommodating boy or girl. Some children are always, always the ones who give in. So what’s easiest for us? To tell that child, “Give in.” Then they give in, and we get some peace and quiet. But is that the right approach? We need to be careful with this approach too. Why? Because do we want that accommodating son or daughter to give in for the rest of their life? Is it right to always give in? The answer is certainly no. It isn’t right to always give in. They need to know that sometimes they have to stand their ground. Sometimes they need to get what they’re entitled to. Always giving in, even when it isn’t justified, is not a good way to go through life. They could lose out on things. In some situations, it could even hurt them very, very badly. So it isn’t right to always ask them to “give in.” And the little sister, too—we always tell the older children to give in to the younger ones—but she also needs to learn that people won’t always give in to her. They may give in to her at home, but who says they’ll do that outside the home? If she gets used to everyone giving in to her at home because she’s the youngest, people outside won’t necessarily treat her that way. So

12:29 how will she deal with situations outside the home, where no one will take her age into account and give in to her just because she’s young? And who says the older child has to give in this time? Who says? Maybe it isn’t right or fair. He knows he did nothing wrong. As he understands it, he really did nothing wrong, and now we’re against him and telling him he has to give in. Why should I give in? So she’s little, but it really isn’t my fault. I built a tower here, I worked hard on it, and she just bothered me and knocked it down. Why am I supposed to give in? That’s very frustrating for him. So asking children to give in isn’t always the right method or approach either. What should we do, then? One approach worth taking when siblings fight—one I’ve tried and continue to use at home myself, and it helps a great deal—is this: when we arrive at the scene, the first thing is, as I said before, we don’t judge. We come with an open heart and try to show empathy to each side. So when we enter the room, the place where the fight is happening, the first thing we ask, before expressing empathy, is: “Do you want help, or can you work it out yourselves?” If they say they can work it out, then let them work it out. That’s fine. Because sometimes children enjoy these fights. Sometimes it’s a fight, but it’s also a sort of game between them. So why should we get involved at all? If they both say, “We can work it out,” excellent. We’ll leave them to carry on and work it out between themselves. That’s fine. They both agree they can manage. But if that’s not the case, if they can’t work it out and it’s a real fight, then we’ll speak to each of them. Of course, we’ll stop the shouting and calm things down, and we’ll ask each one: “What

14:18 happened?” And one will say, “I was building this tower, and I spent so much time on it. Then my brother came along and just took the whole thing apart.” So we’ll say to him, “You built it, and he took the whole thing apart. Wow, that must be really, really frustrating.” “Yes, it’s very frustrating. It makes me angry; it really upsets me.” Then we’ll ask the other one, “And what happened from your point of view?” And he’ll say, “Well, I was using that very piece earlier, and he took it from me.” So I’ll say to him, “Oh, because you had it before. So it upset you when he took something you’d been using?” He says, “Exactly. That’s what happened.” And right away, we’ve gained something: both sides feel that we understand them. Neither one is angry with us. We’ve understood one, and we’ve understood the other. Then we’ll say, “Okay, so what do you suggest doing now? What do you suggest? What do you think? Let’s find some sort of compromise. Each of you say what you think.” And that way, perhaps, if it’s appropriate, we can let them talk to each other. It isn’t always possible, because they’re still caught up in the heat and anger of the fight. But we can stand beside them and ask, “So what can we do?” We try to help them communicate and find some sort of compromise, some middle ground between the two sides. This also helps us teach them how to deal with other situations they’ll face in life. After all, life is full of challenges, and they’ll gain tools for dealing with them: how to find a middle ground and how to bridge the misunderstanding that has just arisen between the siblings. Sometimes it really, really doesn’t work, because there’s no talking to them and they’re angry

16:14 So much. One thing you can do is simply take the very game, the very computer, whatever it is they’re fighting over, and say: “Okay, right now it’s not with either of you. It’s with me, but it isn’t mine to keep.” Because if we just take it away and say, “That’s it, no more game,” we’ve gained some quiet, but we haven’t really achieved anything meaningful. The fight hasn’t been resolved; we’ve just cut it short, and soon there’ll be another one. “It’s with me until you find a solution.” Since I have it and they want it, that will motivate them more to look for a way to resolve the situation. And that way, they’ll learn that in life, you have to look for solutions. I have to tell you that while I was preparing this class, there were fights in my house yesterday too. Thank G-d, I have children, and I tried this very approach. It worked amazingly well—much better than I expected. Just try it and see. It’s a wonderful approach that can really help when fights break out between siblings at home. And this approach, this idea, is a Geulah approach. Why? The Torah says in Parshas Shoftim, “You shall appoint judges and officers in all your gates.” We need to appoint judges and officers because a country can’t function without them. The judge’s job is to make decisions, and the officer makes sure those decisions are actually carried out. But interestingly, in Shemoneh Esrei, which we daven every day, we ask for these things to return, and there we say, “Restore our judges as in former times, and our advisers as at the beginning.” So the question is: Wait a minute. The Torah says “judges and officers.” Why, then, do we say in Shemoneh Esrei, “Restore our judges as in former times, and our advisers as at the beginning”? Why does it say “advisers” instead of “officers”? Where did the officer go?

18:31 What is this adviser? The explanation is that during galus, we have judges and officers. Why? Because during galus, when a judge makes a decision, the person may well refuse to carry it out. So an officer is needed to compel him. But in the time of the Geulah, we’ll all want to do what needs to be done. No one will say, “I don’t want to” or “I don’t feel like it.” Everyone will want to do good. Still, even when someone wants to do good, they may not know exactly how to go about it, despite their strong desire. That’s where the adviser comes in, advising them how to do things in the best way. So in the future, it will no longer be judges and officers, but judges and advisers who help people find the right solution. At home, we too need to become those advisers, not officers. We should advise our children on how to get out of the situation, how to resolve the conflict that’s arisen. That way, first of all, we’ll resolve the fight wonderfully. But they’ll also gain tools and an approach for dealing with similar situations later in life, with Hashem’s help. I would really love for you to share this solution, this approach, this method that is so right. Again, I’m speaking from my own experience, from what I’ve learned, read, and put into practice at home. Share this wonderful, helpful method with others. Share it with a friend. Give them this idea too. It will help them at home with their children. May we merit, with Hashem’s help, much nachas, good health, success, and joy, and may we merit the complete Geulah. Then, with Hashem’s help, all the difficult situations will be resolved.

20:41 With Hashem’s help, may we very soon be reunited with the hostages, safe and sound. May all the soldiers fighting now come home unharmed; may not a hair on our heads fall, G-d forbid. May they return home safe and sound, may the wounded recover, and may we merit, with Hashem’s help, the complete Geulah. Then we will see “Restore our judges as in former times, and our advisers as at the beginning.” There will also be techiyas hameisim, the resurrection of the dead, and we will see again all those holy souls who, sadly, have left us recently. Much nachas and good news.