“My kids keep fighting”

Structures for the argument that has been running since Tuesday.

Family Meetings · Guide
The Meeting Where the Rules Get Rewritten
Rules set for a nine-year-old rarely fit a thirteen-year-old. Here is how to renegotiate them deliberately, before they are broken into obsolescence.
25 minutes, once or twice a year
Routines · System
The Travel Day Routine
Travel days break every routine a family has, all at once. A small amount of structure, built before you leave, absorbs most of what usually goes wrong.
20 minutes of planning; the day itself
Family Systems · System
The Shared List That Replaces Nagging
When one person holds every task in their head, the only way to distribute the work is to speak — which everyone experiences as nagging. A visible list changes who is being asked.
20 minutes to set up; 2 minutes a day
Family Meetings · Guide
How to Start a Family Meeting That Doesn't Feel Like Another Lecture
Most family meetings collapse because they are called in a crisis and run by one adult. Here is the version that survives contact with a real household — including the one where somebody refuses to come.
15 minutes, once a week
Family Meetings · Conversation
What Should We Talk About at a Family Meeting? 25 Questions to Get You Started
Twenty-five questions that hold up in a real kitchen — for checking in, planning, solving something, reconnecting, marking a win and getting ready for what's coming.
Pick two. Five minutes.
Daily Practices · Practice
Connection Before Correction: A 30-Second Practice for Hard Moments
Thirty seconds of contact before the instruction. Not instead of the instruction — this is not a case for fewer boundaries, it is a case for boundaries that work.
30 seconds
Family Meetings · Guide
Repair at the Table
Repair is the most protective thing a parent can model. Here is how to do it in front of everyone, briefly, without turning the meeting into a trial.
5 minutes inside your weekly meeting
Family Meetings · Guide
When Siblings Bring the Same Complaint
"It's not fair" is the most common item on any family list. Handled badly it becomes a scoreboard. Handled well it becomes the first lesson in justice a child ever gets.
One agenda item, 6 minutes
Routines · Guide
The Homework Hour That Isn't a Fight
Most homework battles are not motivation problems. They are timing, transition and proximity problems — and all three are things a household can change.
40 minutes, four evenings a week

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