Love that they are playing together but...

It seems that lately one of the boys' favorite way of "playing" is roughhousing and play fighting. I don't mind a little of it but it seems like they don't stop. Of course someone always gets hurt somehow.

On one hand I'm happy to see it because one of my boys had autism and never paid attention to his brother. Now that he is recovered, they are inseparable. They even have little spats now.

I can usually get them to stop by letting them run around in the yard but what do you do when the weather is too bad/cold, etc. to go out? I can't even separate them because I work fulltime out of the house so they both always want to be with Mommy.

 

My girls are even roughhousing now, and they never used to at all! So to some degree I think it's the age.

I let them do it until someone sounds like she's not enjoying it. Then I step in and say, "It sounds like Sarah wants to stop," at which point Sarah will say, "I want to stop!" (Or vice versa, though not as often.) Then I often have to separate them and enforce it.

I also WOH full-time, and they always want to be with me. But I have to leave one alone if I'm going to separate them. They HATE it, but sometimes you just gotta. I can't be in two places at once, and the sooner they learn that law of physics, the better! (I'm hoping sometime in the next 10 years. )

If they were both eager participants in rougher play, I might even let them get mildly hurt once in awhile, but usually as soon as there's an actual danger of any physical harm, one of them is screaming for the other one to stop, and I think that needs to be respected.

 

I'd just set ground rules. Something along the lines of "both of you have to agree for you all to wrestle" and "it only happens in ___________ area of the house". Maybe also something along the lines of "if someone gets hurt, they'll be no wrestling for 3 days". I don't know that I'd forbid it, but I would set limitations on it.

Marissa

 

My boys are terrible with this. It seems like it's all they do. I wish I had the answer for you. I will separate them if I hear it escalating.

 

Thanks guys! I did a little of everything suggested. :give_rose:

I find that I get less stressed if I just let them do the rough-housing instead of trying to stop it. YAY! It does have to be in a relatively "safe" area. If someone says NO or STOP or something like that, then the rough play has to stop. So far, so good.

Now to get DH to stop yelling about it. :wacko:

 

We have ground rules for rough-housing too. I figure my brother and I did it all the way through high school, there's no way I'm going to get the twins to stop.