Choice Day helps reduce bickering between competitive siblings

Irene's come up with a way to diffuse the daily arguments between her kids:

I have a 5 year old boy and a 3 year old girl who have become very competitive with each other.  They argue about who gets in the car first, who gets in the house first, who gets dressed first etc. etc.  This is also fueled by my 5 year old's desire to always be "the winner".  I got tired of refereeing the matches! 

Along their preschool teachers, we came up with "Choice" Day.  On their day, the child gets to choose certain things like whether they get dressed first, which way to drive to school and what CD to play in the car (the choices of course depend on the points of conflict!).  To keep track of choice day, I made magnets with a picture of each of them. I place that child's picture on our magnetic white board in the day that is their choice day.  If there is any question about whose choice day it is, we consult the board.

As strange as this sounds, this has served two purposes: (1) to get rid of many of the conflicts that I was dealing with every day, and (2) to help teach my 5 year old to value other people and their choices.

Comments

[Galatae]

I saw another solution to this in one of those parents magazines - one kid gets to make all the decisions on odd days and one gets to do it on even days, depending on where their birthdays fall. On months with extra days mom makes the decisions. Of course, it didn't address what you do with more than 2 kids.

[Stu Mark]

My kids are 11 and 15, but I am going to start this immediately. Brilliant suggestion. I have no idea if my kids are too old for this, but the bickering is pretty annoying.

[Gila Boucher]

Have 3 and 6 year olds and plan to start this right away too!!!

[landismom]

This is a really, really good suggestion. If only I had thought of it two years ago!

[jen]

Another idea is to make things beneficial for the 2nd person. Kid A gets to be first in the car, but Kid B gets to decide which seat he wants to sit in before kid A gets into the car. If they are splitting a sandwich, Kid A gets to make the cut, but Kid B decides which half he wants. It makes them think twice about rushing into something, as they might actually get the short end of the stick.

[Jason]

I love this hack!

I too have two kids a girl of 5 and a boy of 3 and they can be soooo competitive. I also have the same problems of them wanting to be the leader out of the house first thing in the morning. There's also, for some reason a particular chair that they both want to sit on at their table. I can't really see any benefits of this chair but they seem to. I also have the same problem with who gets in the shower first as neither of them like to do so. I've adopted half of tips above and tried to take it in turns on who's day its is to sit in the special seat, have the shower etc but sometimes I forget who did it yesterday and then a debate begins and I feel bad in case I've got it wrong.

Having a board that we can all reference when the disputes begins is a great idea.

I have found though that if one kid gets to choose things for the whole day then it creates more arguments esp. since if my 3 year old boy isn't happy about a descision made, he'll protest this for the entire day doing anything he can to be naughty despite loosing numerous stars from his star chart.

I think I'll mix it up a little so for example the child that gets to sit on the favorite chair when eating throughout the day, gets to go in the shower first which is as I said something that neither of them like.

Thanks again.

[Lisa]

Simple, but brilliant!

[Tracy WW]

For my 3- and 5-year-old sons, I make "choice" assignments on a case-by-case basis. For example, they argue over plates--who gets Nemo and who gets Spiderman. So, we have a rule that the younger boy chooses at breakfast and the older one chooses at dinner. (I choose for lunch to keep it fair!) This approach works for us, because (like an earlier poster said), my younger son would have a hard time getting through a whole day where he didn't get to choose. Mixing it up throughout the day minimizes the competition for us.

[Elizabeth]

I think this hack would work best with kids who are consistently competitive, rather than intermittently competitive. (I have a 3-year-old and 5-year-old too)

I know I'm determining it's effectiveness without even trying it, but haven't you ever tried something that works for your friend's kids, and you think it's going to be a fun novelty, but instead it just becomes it's own beast? (The quickest example I can think of is when, at a friend's suggestion, we color coded cups and bibs according to the kid. What was never a big deal in our house became a HUGE deal overnight. Took us weeks to go back to the good ol' normal way we were doing it.)

Maybe I'll use the hack with specific toys when they become the current "thing" in our house (a plastic camera is the current "thing"). I think doing a whole day of it will only BRING ON a competitiveness that my kids don't really have.

But it's a great hack for those with this issue!

[PioneerII]

[Comment deleted by the Editor.]

PioneerII: I delete insulting comments that add nothing to the discussion. If you disagree with something you read here, by all means, say so, but do it in a way that respects the constructive nature of the conversation. -- Asha

[FH]

I don't see the advantage over traditional "taking turns". Learning about using turns fairly is a life skill, whereas "choice days" don't often happen elsewhere. It is positively useful to learn to negotiate when it isn't clear whose turn it is because of forgetfulness or because one kid was absent yesterday. (How can the kids forget? -- if one of your kids is deliberately lying to the detriment of the other, that is a separate problem that needs sorting.)

Not mentioned here is the fact that if the older child is nearly twice as old as the younger then they ought to have greater responsibilities, and can fairly expect greater privileges in some directions.

Squabbling siblings certainly are hard work, I take comfort in the fact that the only ones I know of who don't fight live in tough circumstances, such as not daring to betray each other to a heavy-handed parent. Normal kids fight. You can control the style of fighting by punishing them both for overstepping the mark without holding a judicial enquiry into "who started it".

[Karen]

check this out.

[Jack Vinson]

This is something we did when we were kids. My brother and I alternated "days" and that entitled us to things like picking a TV program or whatever else we squabbled over. But it also created a system for deciding who was responsible for household chores. Things like emptying the trash happened ever Monday, and alternating days worked out that we rotated trash days too.

[Tim]

My brother and I have been living with the even/odd day system for my entire life, and it's always been nice, even as teenagers. My brother's older, so he gets the odd days, which there happen to be more of. Whosever day it is has to go first, or has to do the chore in question, if there's a choice between two, then he gets to pick. This keeps things fair, although he was always better at taking advantage of his days.