Fighting

I am a pretty laid back easy going person. Very little really gets to me in a big way, but for some reason my brother has always been the one person who I have zero tolerance for. You may be thinking this is completely normal, and to some extent I agree. However, we were, and to some degree still are, beyond the normal. Here are a few examples:

- When we were both in middle school my parents left us home alone for a couple of hours. When they returned home there was a hole in the wall where the remote had been chucked at my brothers head.

- Again when my parents were gone…We had only one bathroom for a number of years and my brother decided to lock himself in it. I had to use the bathroom and after about an hour I banged on the door until it broke. That door became the door to the laundry room and still is broken.

- After yelling and screaming for a few minutes I slammed the door to my room and locked myself in. So my brother went and got a saw and sawed through the door. Seriously

So those are just a few more extreme examples, but I am sure you can imagine what it was like on a regular basis. I was thinking about this the other day when thinking about the siblings we have in youth group here. I’m not sure how my youth leader dealt with my brother and I, who had no problem getting into screaming/hitting matches even at church (I never started them, but I never stopped them either). If I had kids that fought like that I’m not sure what I would do, pull out my hair in frustration probably. You can seperate kids, but that doesn’t really solve anything long term. What would have worked for me and my brother? I’m not sure anything would have really worked- we could have been kicked out of youth group, but that also isn’t a great solution. What do you do when you have siblings or friends who are fighting at youth group?

By the way, my brother still knows how to push all my buttons, and although we don’t scream and yell and hit and break doors anymore I rarely spend large amounts of time with him without getting angry about something. Oh well, I guess that’s just the way it is