As parents, we are so accustomed to our veneer of civilized adult behavior that we can sometimes forget the furious childhood brawls that many of us had with our siblings. I know that when I was pregnant with our second child, Helen, I worried about many aspects of parenting two kids, but the prospect of refereeing a couple decades of bloody scuffles and screaming matches didn’t even cross my mind.

      That’s especially surprising because I’m a little sister, and even though my brother and I got along fairly well, he still spent much of my childhood either teasing me without mercy or admonishing me to stop being such a baby. As for me, I would seek retaliation by any means, undaunted by the handicap of our three-and-a-half-year age difference. I remember scratching and pummeling him in blinding rage, so overcome with tears and fury that I would literally hyperventilate. And when his inevitable return blows started to hurt enough, I would quickly opt for strategic tattling, always hoping, always in vain, that the governing adult would recognize his utter depravity and banish him to reform school.

      My kids, Ned and Helen, just turned five and three respectively, but to my dismay a similar pattern is already emerging between them. I’ll never forget Ned at three, chirpily calling up a pretend demolition crew on his toy cell phone, à la Bob the Builder: “Hello? Could you come over and blow up Baby Helen? Thank you!” At the time we chalked it up to temporary anger about the uninvited addition of a sister to his little world. But as his memories of the pre-Helen era have faded, it’s become very clear that the antagonism isn’t going anywhere. 

      Nowadays, we regularly witness this sort of thing: “Dorothy, the Dinosaur!” the Wiggles will sing on Helen’s beloved CD.  “Dorothy, the Poopasaur!” Ned will respond in ghoulish voiceover. Or he’ll come bounding into Helen’s room, asking to join her quiet dollhouse play. Within minutes, a wild earthquake will strike, leaving furniture upended and most of the dolls in body casts. “Look, Helen!,” he’ll say gleefully. “The dolly broke its legs and the house is a big pile of rubble!”

      Until about six months ago, Helen didn’t show much reaction to this sort of thing. She would largely ignore the unauthorized lyrics, and just walk away from the dollhouse bedlam and scuffles over toys. Given my memories of little sisterhood, I would secretly marvel at her seemingly unflappable nature.

      But things have undergone a dramatic change recently. It’s as if she’s suddenly awakened to her status as an aggrieved party, and she’s hell-bent on making up for lost time. These days, even the slightest taunt from Ned will provoke an over-the-top response. She’ll reach out in instant fury, her entire body shaking, her eyes fixed wide in a fierce glare. Catapulted beyond the power of speech, she’ll revert to primitive grunting as she grabs a fistful of any available flesh, delivering a quick pinch-n-claw combination worthy of the WWF. 

      At first I was completely beside myself about their escalating conflicts. Eight or nine times a day, it seemed, someone would provoke or wound somebody else, and everyone would end up screaming, including me. It was dreadful, and all I could do was resort to the shopworn tricks of time-outs and enforced separation. But after a month or two of total ineffectiveness, the parenting fairy paid a surprise visit and blessed me with inspiration. Enter the friendly chair.

      These days when some fracas erupts that I haven’t actually witnessed, I don’t try to sort out blame, and I don’t send anybody to the corner based on hearsay. Instead, I herd both culprits directly to “the friendly chair” to sit together calmly, with no exchange of blows or unkind words, until they have convinced me that they’re ready to co-exist peacefully once again. They’re still small enough that any chair will do in a pinch, but I prefer the oversized blue chair in our living room, where adults and kids curl up for story-reading sessions, and where pirate ships and secret forts are regularly built from pillows and suspended disbelief.  Despite its fraying cushions and occasional ejection of stuffing, it’s one of the friendliest places in our hous

      And amazingly, it works its magic on my little warriors every time. In fact, more often than not, they end up giggling together over some juvenile nonsense that only they can understand. Meanwhile, I am left a bystander to the amazing resilience of the sibling relationship, in which friendliness and hatred are so intertwined that forgiveness is beside the point, because at the end of the day, everyone has to sit together in the same chair.