Over the weekend, my 5 year old daughter was playing with my 3 year old son. Surprisingly, they were getting along most of the weekend without much fighting or arguing. It wasn’t until the evenings that they were having some big feelings, but that’s a given since they were both tired and winding down from the day.

One of the evenings, my daughter was trying to get my son to let her sing on a “stage” so she could “open her restaurant” the way she wanted. She was trying to stand in front of him to sing, and he was trying to stand in front of her to sing even louder. Before it got into a pushing match, I asked both of them to stop, and I mentioned to my daughter that singing is not usually part of a restaurant (unless it’s a fun one!) and to just let her little brother sing away on stage so she could focus on the more important part of a restaurant - the food! She still really want him to stop singing and was starting to get upset about it. There was a lesson to learn here so I tried to help.

I mentioned to my daughter that instead of constantly telling her little brother, what to do, she should try to do less of that and more convincing. One example of that is if she created an activity for him to do that is more fun than singing and to ask him to participate in that. She needed to create that contrast and then convince him that doing something different was a much better alternative. My daughter thought about that for a few seconds, and decided to draw some branches with leaves on a whiteboard. She then asked her little brother to come over to the whiteboard and to try and help her color in the leaves. He was so excited to help that he jumped off the stage and forgot all about singing. My daughter flashed me a look and went right back to singing and opening her restaurant the way that she wanted to.

I don’t want my daughter to lose her voice and to be hesitant to tell people how to do things or what to do. I do want her to understand how to use balance and to leverage some other tools to get the right outcomes. If she has been constantly telling somebody what to do and it hasn’t been working, she should pivot and try a different strategy. There are multiple ways to get to the same outcome and hopefully this is one situation that helps her flex those other muscles.