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My son and daughter like to bicker with each other. It’s always been a mild form of pestering, poking and finger pointing. Kind of like how Congress works with each other. So, it hasn’t been the quality of the bickering that was wearing me down, but rather the sheer quantity of it. I was just plain tired of hearing them constantly pick at each other over every little inane thing. And I let it get to me. I turned their bickering into anger and stress, and they couldn’t understand why I was getting so mad for what was really rather innocuous behavior on their part. One day a few weeks ago, I read an article in Newsweek magazine titled “In Defense of Bickering”, and all sorts of lightbulbs went off in my head. Just like that, I was a changed dad/Idaho Dad, A Family Runs Through It. More here.
Question: Did you bicker with your siblings?
D.F. Oliveria is a columnist and blogger for The Spokesman-Review. Huckleberries Online was judged the best 2008 Idaho newspaper blog by the Idaho Press Club. And the best 2007 news blog in the Pacific Northwest by the Society for Professional Journalist. Print Huckleberries is a past winner of the Herb Caen Memorial Column contest by the National Association of Newspaper Columnists. The Readership Institute of Northwestern University cited this blog as a good example of online community journalism.
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Lynne on May 12 at 1:18 p.m.
Oh, yeah. I’d spend my whole weekly allowance paying two brothers a quarter to whomever could keep quiet the longest on car rides. Then they’d just poke each other, pull each others ears, stick their tongues out at each other, etc., etc. LOL
Liz on May 12 at 1:22 p.m.
I had no siblings to bicker with. Consequently, it took me by surprise when daughter and son do so much of it. I mean my gosh..SHE is sixteen. Shouldn’t she be past saying things specifically designed to tick her nine year old brother off? Who then responds by hitting her of saying something worse.
All the tickling and poking and deliberately touching…I just had no idea until I saw it with my own eyes…