Totally! That’s so sweet. I love it when my boys are doing something altogether. The sweet giggles and conspiring murmurs warm my heart.? Until the sweet turns into sour and howling screams… sigh… ?

It can happen so quickly… one minute joy and a millisecond later it’s like World War III (I might exaggerate slightly).

The animals become flying projectiles?!

Lately the boys have been playing football ? in the backyard. It always starts off so well. But then someone gets too rough or a bigger brother exerts his physical prowess or someone turns into a bad sport and says something hateful.?

Your guess is as good as mine. But it is a lot of work to be the conflict negotiator! Not a role I imagined when I thought about being a mom.

And it’s one that is pretty important in the whole scheme of training our children in the way they should go. And it gives us a lot of opportunities to talk about choosing to love one another and not hate each other.

You have to want to see it another way first. And that is so hard to do myself let alone to teach.  I want my kids to really be on the same team in the long run. There’s so much out in the world that they will need to rely on each other for.

Well, I certainly don’t have that answer, BUT MAYBE it isn’t such a bad thing for them to fight and learn how to work out their disagreements with each other

I think you may be onto something there. We are in a Bible study that is studying 1 Samuel right now. This week we did the chapters where David is anointed as the next future king of Israel. Do you know that Samuel passed on the first 7 brothers until he got to the youngest brother David?  I mean, can you imagine what David must have gone through? How those older brothers might have teased and tormented him?! ?

And then when “little” David (maybe a teenager) shows up to bring his big brothers food on the front lines of battle and then that little pipsqueak of a brother not only fights the giant Goliath, but kills him in the name of the God of Israel?! The Bible doesn’t say, but I wonder if that changed the hearts of his brothers? Made them see David in a new light?

Can we help our kids to see each other in that new light? To help them use these sibling squabbles to really learn who God made the others ones to be?

Yes!! They could be such a force for peace in the world when they work together. I know this seems like crazy talk when I can practically hear them fighting in my sleep. Do you think there’s hope?

So what you’re saying is that though we may be in a season of “hate” and “war” now, we are preparing them to live their lives in a season of “love” for others and in “peace” with those around them? That makes the title of conflict negotiator seem a great honor and privilege.

Wow. Talk about new perspective. For me that is! It’s not going to be easy, of course, but knowing that you are there with me (and every other mom of more than one child), sure does make it a little less daunting.?