My daughter and son are at a really fun age where they both know exactly how to send their sibling into a fit of rage with little to no effort. It’s amazing what they are capable of, and the screams emitting from our home at almost all hours of the day cause pedestrians on the sidewalk in front of our house to avert their eyes and pick up their walking pace.

Exasperated and exhausted, I recently looked to the only reasonable source of advice in this day and age: artificial intelligence. The most brilliant computers in the world surely know how to parent better than I do, so I was certain they would have the perfect solution. Below is the advice that our robot overlords would give to parents seeking relief from a house in turmoil. My reactions in parenthesis and italics.

Key actions to take:

Stay calm: Avoid yelling or taking sides, as this can escalate the situation. (Starting off strong here with the absolute hardest thing for me to do when my kids are screeching like territorial pterodactyls as they fight to get their sibling out of their room. I go from zero to rage in 3 seconds when they begin screaming. Staying calm is not only something I am not thinking about, I’m often actively trying to shock my kids into silence with new and wild ways to display my frustration without resorting to behavior that would scar them for life. Thanks AI, but so far, not so good.)
Separate the children: Give them space to cool down before trying to resolve the issue. (Love it. 10 out of 10. No notes. My favorite thing to do is banish them to their rooms when their fighting gets out of control. Now, the part about “trying to resolve the issue” is not something on my mind. I don’t feel obligated to resolve the fight they were having over who farts more.)
Gather facts: Listen to each child's perspective to understand the root of the conflict. (No thanks. My house is small, I heard everything, and I know what the problem is- they take way too much pleasure in ruining each others’ life.)
Facilitate communication: Encourage them to express their feelings and needs clearly. (Their screams usually make their feelings fairly easy to interpret. For example, based on her loud expressions of dissatisfaction, my daughter wants her brother to never touch or even look at anything that has ever belonged to her, regardless of whether or not she has thought about said item in the last 5 years. What’s hers is hers. Also, what’s his is hers.)
Problem-solving: Help them brainstorm solutions that work for everyone involved. (I suppose I will need to order a white board from Amazon to get that synergy and group-think going to figure out how to fairly resolve the dispute about how to make sure each child gets an equal amount of time to hang from my wife’s neck while she tries to eat dinner.)
Be fair: Avoid assigning blame and focus on finding a solution that is equitable for both children. (I am very equitable. I make sure they know they are both equally awful to be around when they are fighting.)
Model good behavior: Demonstrate healthy conflict resolution strategies through your own actions. (It doesn’t matter what we model, they dream up new ways to torture each other. My wife and I do not bite each other, and yet, my daughter somehow ends up with bite marks on her arm in a fight with her brother. )

Things to avoid:

Taking sides: This can make the situation worse and damage sibling relationships. (Easy. I’m never on their side.)
Yelling or punishing immediately: This can further escalate emotions. (Define “yelling”….)
Ignoring the conflict completely: Sometimes intervention is necessary to teach healthy conflict resolution skills. (Ignoring them has actually become my default. Unless there is blood, I’m turning up my podcast and continuing on with my life.)
Focusing on who started the fight: It's often a complex situation where both children share some responsibility. (I agree with AI- both children are equally terrible in most confrontations.)

It’s clear that this bot has not ever had baby bots to feed, clothe, and referee. Someone fed the server a million pages of gentle parenting articles and out came this trite list of things to do and not do. It reveals to me my underlying frustration with almost every piece of parenting advice out there- too often the expert (or the robot) offering advice is so far removed from parenting that their advice is unhelpful, overly simple, and unrealistic. It seems like most parenting experts are a decade or more removed from real life parenting, or they are one of the rare people who actually have “gentle kids” who respond well to gentle parenting. But what are the rest of us to do? How do we teach our children how to live somewhat harmoniously together when our house feels like a never ending episode of Jerry Springer? From one real parent to another, let me share with you some things that I am trying. These tips may or may not actually work for you, but I’m fully in the experimental phase here because I’m so tired of being the referee for my kids.

Immediate separation: If they can’t be in a common space without tearing each other apart, they are not welcome in the common space. My children have their own rooms, so this is easy. For parents who have kids in shared bedrooms, finding some other way to split them apart is imperative to quiet a squabble before it gets out of control.
Quick consequences: In an effort to deescalate a conflict, especially if it is not clear who the primary offender is, I don’t think it’s crazy to deal out reasonable consequences quickly. I’m not saying you should ground them for a month, but I think making it clear that losing a privilege if they can’t resolve the fight themselves in the next few minutes is a reasonable course of action. My children usually get 30 minutes each of screen time after school. Taking away some (or all) of their minutes in response to foolish bickering is an easy and quick way to communicate the importance of shutting down a fight as quickly as possible.
No positive reinforcement: Most experts would tell you to comment on good behavior when the children are getting along. Without fail, every single time I have thanked or affirmed my children for playing nicely together, they turn on each other. In an effort to prove that I am wrong, or reveal to me that they are actually the awesome one and their sibling is terrible, a new fight materializes out of nowhere. On the rare occasion that my kids get along and play well together, I keep my mouth shut, and enjoy the momentary peace.

In so many ways, AI can make life easier. When it comes to parenting, I just don’t think an aggregate of all the overly simplistic and idealistic advice found on the internet is helpful to most of us. Maybe one day AI will surprise me with some unique and effective parenting tips, but when it comes to kids fighting, the bots don’t understand the reality of sibling dynamics.

AI Parenting Advice: Kids Fighting