This is your life, kids.

Do your children love each other totally and unconditionally? Do they support and love each other through thick and thin?

Go away.

My children fight. My children can fight about anything. My children will fight about anything. Really. The least consequential thing they ever fought about, well, I can’t even remember it. It was that inconsequential.

A few minutes ago, another mom at my son’s school dropped him off after a play practice. As we moms stood in the front hall, my son walked up to my daughter, who was playing with her baby stroller. He tried to wrest the stroller from her hands, fully knowing what was going to happen.

No, “hi, how are ya?” No, “what did you do today?”

Just immediate confrontation and goading. He knew what was going to happen. He strode into our house, and almost before he’d said hello to me, he made it happen.

The other mom and I watched in stunned silence.

Finally, I said, “Isn’t it amazing? He walks in and the first thing he needs to do is provoke her!”

She answered, “It’s just like that with my kids.”

Note: Both of her kids go to my son’s school. This school is noted for its wonderful program of emotional awareness. At school, anytime any child does something to provoke another child, it’s like Nonviolent Communication 101.

“Joey, let’s talk about how taking all Joanie’s pencils made her feel.”

And there’s a class meeting. And everyone has to work out everything.

I know all this, because some days my son comes home exasperated, and when I ask what happened that day, he says, “We had to have another stooooooooooopid class meeting!”

So this is one thing you can’t pin on homeschooling! Once we’ve been homeschooling a while, don’t tell me that my kids fight so much because they need time away from each other. They get that. And when they’re together again, they fight.

It makes me wonder whether anything we consciously do makes any difference. I know that their fighting has deep, deep roots. It has something to do with me and their father, the house they’re growing up in and the air in it, the food we feed them, the books they read, and possibly what color their bed covers are.

I’m not quite to the point of believing that it has anything to do with their birthdates, but if believing that sort of thing comforts you, please go ahead and believe.

But really, given the complexity of this, is there much point in trying? Can we fix all that complexity with family meetings and “I feel” statements?

If you’re someone who thrives on optimistic affirmations, here’s yours: Yes!! What we do can affect our children! We can make a conscious effort to change. We can be better. We will be better. We do not have to fall into the trap of all humanity past. We have free will, and we will exercise it!

OK, now all of you, please go away.

For the rest of us, here’s what I can say. I really hope that my attempts to educate my children in how to get along will bear fruit one of these days. But I can’t promise it. This big house is not big enough for these two big personalities. Sometimes sending them to their rooms does not seem quite enough.

Where is my Cone of Silence?

Where is my Narnia in the wardrobe?

Where is my divorce… that is, divorcing the kids from each other?

(Got my husband worrying there for a second…)

I realized, when she was still quite small and I’d been trying to put an end to this fighting, that sometimes the best remedy is this one: I am upstairs in my office. I can hear their voices rise and fall as they play a new game from the Educational Resource Center. Sometimes it rises to a scream. But if I can stand it long enough, the voices fall again. They’re still playing the game.

No Cone of Silence needed, they’re still brother and sister.

And that is my ultimate piece of wisdom for them: No matter what you do, no matter how hard you fight, you’re stuck with each other. You are brother and sister, and you’ll just have to figure that out. You may think that the gods are laughing at the gameboard they set up, putting the two of you in the same house. But there you have it.

This is your life, kids. Get used to it.