“Katie, he won’t let me play with him!”

“She won’t share her toy!”

“He yelled at me.”

“She took the game that I was playing with!”

After a few rounds of hearing this, you might just want to yell Enough! We’re supposed to be measured and considerate and helpful and perfectly patient when helping kids deal with their problems, right? Right. But if a lot of the problems that we hear about are small or divisive, then how should we behave? Should we always stop what we’re doing when someone comes into the room to report a hit and run (“He hit me and then ran away!”)? Should we always model how to solve conflict with appropriate words, while trying to make everyone feel heard? When is it ok for my patience to run out?

This happened to me just the other day. One kid came into the room with some tears to complain about a brotherly infraction (“He’s using my hideout!”). She wanted me to come into the other room and tell her “unruly” brother to get the heck out of the hideout! If she couldn’t control the situation, she wanted to find someone who she thought could. I stayed put and calmly talked to her about what she could do to try and get her point across. I asked her if crying and yelling was the way to get what she wanted. She sniffled and said no. I asked her what else she could try. She sniffled again and said “Say please.” After that, I wanted to leap onto the counter and yell, “You do know what to do! You don’t need me at all!” But I contained my excitement and listened to what would happen next. She left and used her words instead of her whining to try and kowtow her older brother. About 2 minutes after she left the room, her brother entered with the exact opposite complaint that she had (“She won’t let me play in her hideout.”). Every parent or caregiver has been in this situation. How can we make everyone happy? It takes real skills of diplomacy to enter into talks with young kids since the general answers are “Mine!” and “No!”. I thought for a second about what to do, because he was looking for the same thing as his sister. I want this adult to intervene on my behalf. She has the power to make changes happen! However flattering that is for me that I’ve been voted into the position of referee, it’s not always the most useful for them to have me solving their disputes. So I tried to stay out of this one as well. Since he’s a little older, I told him that I couldn’t always solve the problems that he has with his sister. He has to work to try to solve them himself. Probably not what he wanted to hear, but at least I didn’t have to get into a conversation about who had custody of said pillow hideout. He returned to the next room and they managed to work out a system of sharing the pillows but having two different neighborly hideouts. Wonderful! And all without too much adult interference!

Sometimes the best and most helpful thing for us to do is to hang up our referee whistle. Just like some fans get angry when there are a lot of penalties in a game (“Let them play ref!”), we should only call foul or intervene when it’s absolutely necessary. Oftentimes kids just need a reminder of how they can solve their problems without us stepping in to solve anything for them. I think that kids can do a lot more than we think they can, if only we let them play the game.

So, it’s official. I’m on strike.