Why do Children Fight?
It’s not unusual to hear parents asking why children fight.
We don’t accept that the children in our Nollamara day care centre actually do ‘fight’ but of course, children being children, they will have the odd and rare squabble with each other. Why is that and how do we react?
Why do Children Fight
Flare-ups
Young children of preschool age groups have not yet fully mastered their emotions. As we all know, that is also true of some adults!
As a result of that, they will sometimes act impulsively when driven by a need or emotional reaction. So, a child who has just taken their crayon might not just get reasoned with, they’ll possibly get angrily pushed. They in turn, might not understand what’s happening, having immediately forgotten they’d picked up the crayon, so in anger, they’ll push back. Voila – a little scuffle has broken out!
Almost all such incidents in a day care centre are trivial and of that sort of nature. They can arise due to misunderstandings, miscommunication between children or just an inability to control an impulse.
In the vast majority of such cases, both parties will have forgotten the incident about 5 minutes after it happened.
Our reaction
We spot many sources of possible tension that might lead to some pushing and shoving, moving in quickly to defuse the situation before that actually happens. Of course, sometimes we might miss the warning signs and a squabble breaks out but we’ll immediately and gently separate the children.
What happens then depends upon the circumstances. Where both children appear to immediately have forgotten the incident (a frequent occurrence!), we may just let it pass. However, if tempers are still running a little hot, we’ll usually encourage the children to sit somewhere quietly with one of our personnel and discuss what happened, trying to understand their own emotions and how to control them.
In the above example, we might discuss with one child why it isn’t nice to simply take something another child is using without their consent. For the second child, we will probably discuss with them why asking for it back is better than starting to push.
In almost all cases, this is very effective at calming things down and also avoiding a repetition.
Why these things happen
This isn’t clear. Apart from the above-mentioned immature emotional control, it is assumed to be linked to hormones.
The young of many species will engage in physical aggression, often just mock aggression, with humans not seeming to be immune to such tendencies. In many cases, instances of fighting first arise in the 1–3 year-old age range and often is seen initially between siblings in their home environment, where competition for parental attention may be a major factor.
It is also a myth that girls don’t physically fight. They do, though to a lesser extent than most boys. Once again, that is probably due to hormonal differences with girls over 3-4 years typically engaging in social squabble tactics (name calling, rumour spreading etc.) rather than physical action. That sort of squabbling is harder to spot and deal with unless very experienced personnel are in place to observe and counter it.
Is it harmful?
Physical or emotional injuries from squabbles in preschool are exceptionally rare. Children have very short memories and also attention spans.
Of course, such behaviours are undesirable in overall terms but paradoxically, many developmental psychologists argue that they’re a necessary part of growing up because they help children to learn how to control their temper and emotions.
We’d love to discuss this subject and others like it with you in more detail. Why not call us for an appointment to come down for a chat and look around?
