Customer Reviews

He Hit Me First

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I read this book as part of my research on a parenting presentation on Sibling Rivalry and Jealousy. It had some good components to it with practical advice on dealing with fighting dilemmas. As an educational consultant and parent of three fighting boys this book gave insight on why kids rival and fight as well as strategies to help deal with it and minimize it. A great resource to use. -Straightforward Parenting and Consultation.

I am the mother of three, ages 8, 6 and 3. My older two, boy and girl, fight constantly...about everything. Over the years I have bought at least a dozen parenting books and tried every suggestion. Time outs only work for the time the kids are "out". Taking away treats doens't work...the ability to get a rise out of a sibling is worth the loss. My husband and I do not model hitting, screaming or calling each other stupid head. And, when one kid is pummeling another, I cannot ignore it and let the blood fall where it may. This book, actually made me feel better about parenting children who continuously CHOOSE to fight. It was the first book I read which said that the kids actually LIKE fighting. It doesn't seem possible, but since getting along would be so much easier, the fighting must bring about a payoff for them. The book also lists each age and the demeanor typically associated with that age and how well each age is able to get along with every other age. So if you have kids ages 7 and 8 they will typically have a different dynamic then kids ages 5 and 6...and be prepared for the next stage. I actually breathed easier after reading this book. My kids still fight, but I am no longer desperately searching for the magic bullet to make them stop. I am no longer going to bed every night wondering where I went wrong. Reading this book is like having an understanding friend nod and say "been there it's tough". I'm not sure anything will keep siblings from fighting if that is where their hearts are, but at least this book gives insight into why they do it and how to cope with it.

This book is actually copyright 1982, so it is almost 30 years old, and hasn't been revised since. This turns out to be a good thing and a bad thing. The good aspect of it is that it actually just comes right out gives advice on how to deal with conflict between siblings. Most contemporary parenting books start out with a bunch of trite anecdotes about this family and that family that I just find aggravating. The advice seems right on the money, too: kids fight because they get something out of it; they enjoy the activity as well as the attention they get from it. So you should ignore what you can and take simple, direct steps to stop more serious fighting, not making a big emotional deal out of it. There are a bunch of little ideas on do's and dont's that are very useful. So the first four chapters are great. Then thing get weird. They start talking about how kids with different body types (i.e. fat and skinny) have different personality traits. Wasn't that discredited, like, 80 years ago?? They make all kinds of generalizations about personality traits based on birth order and gender too. Almost all of the generalizations were completely, hilariously off-base for my kids. They also seem to view "working mothers" as some kind of anomaly from normal family relationships, which I guess might not have been totally off-base in 1982, but makes the book pretty dated. So buy this for the first four chapters; the rest is an interesting time capsule, at least.