What if they grow up hating each other?

It’s 10 am Sunday morning, you’re enjoying a cup of coffee, and so excited for some downtime after a super busy week. But in the room next to you, you hear the jabbing starting between your kids. You think, Please just figure this out and don’t be mean to each other.

A few moments later, your boys are yelling at each other:

“What’s your problem?!”
“Get off me!”

You hear something slam. Then punches are being thrown. The girls try to stop it, but they get brought into it too.

“You’re so fat!”
“No wonder you have no friends!”

You run in trying to break it up.

“Stop that right now!”

No one listens. So you threaten to take their phones, and nothing changes.

Almost every parent I work with has this moment. We react quickly because we want it to stop, but the tension escalates instead.

In that moment, most of us think we’re stopping the fight, but we’re actually pouring more fuel on it.

When you see your kids tearing each other down, it’s crushing. It changes the whole feeling in the house—everyone’s tense, you’re exhausted from playing referee. We want our kids to be friends for life, which is why it’s so painful to watch them turn on each other.

You start to wonder,
What if they grow up hating each other?
What if I already damaged their relationship?

Of course we jump in fast. We’re trying to protect each of them, stop the hurtful words, and keep the situation from getting worse. That instinct comes from love, so it makes complete sense that we want it to end immediately.

But when we intervene with threats or punishments, we miss what’s actually happening. We think the problem is the behavior—the insult, the shove, the door slam. So we focus on stopping it.

But the real problem isn’t the mean insult—it’s how they’re feeling about themselves in that moment.

Most of us default to shutting it down fast. But there’s another way to see this.

When we understand what’s happening beneath the surface, these moments start to look very different.

Here’s what’s actually happening:

Teenagers are wired to care deeply about respect and how they’re seen socially. When that feels threatened, they react fast. They don’t want to be a jerk. But when their sibling insults them, they suddenly feel embarrassed, exposed, or small, and lash out.

When they feel vulnerable, they don’t have the bandwidth to be kind.

If this sounds familiar, reply and tell me what the fights in your home usually start over. No judgment. Just a mom who gets it.

You’re not the only one trying to figure this out.

🧡 Jeanine