Flip’s been at his dad since Sunday. HelloKitty and SpiderMan, who normally don’t get along, have been getting along wonderfully the past three days. I suppose they realized they don’t have any other kids to play with while Flip’s gone, so they have been playing together.

It’s been wonderful, instead of rampant sibling rivalry, I get to hear peals of laughter coming from the kids’ rooms. But all good things have to come to an end, of course.

The instant Flip came home, he went into his room, saw it was a mess, and freaked out. HK and SM have been working on a fort all day, and Flip doesn’t like a messy room. HK then came to me and said cleaning up the fort made her feel like she had to take all the fun she had with SM, and throw it in the dumpster. This, of course, made Flip feel bad, and I had a room full of crying children.

Now, all the parenting wisdom I have encountered have said not to get in the middle of sibling fights. So I didn’t get in the middle, I gave out hugs as they came to me, but I didn’t get involved. I must admit, though, it feels inherently wrong not to try to intervene and try to clear things up between them.

How do you guys handle sibling rivalry and the fights that crop up? This is probably one of my hardest parenting challenges, not intervening when I really, really want to.