CSI: Cleveland Heights Edition

I really just don’t care.

That’s what you think when you’re peacefully settling in, doing something you enjoy like reading a book, and one of your children runs up from the basement and tells you the awful and terrible thing that their sibling just did to them.

But you can’t just not care, because you’ve probably told them that this is what they’re supposed to do. You said: “If your sister tries to start a fight with you, don’t hit her. Come tell me or your mother. We’ll deal with it.” That’s what you unfortunately said. And now you’re living with the consequences.

Lots of parents renege on this commitment. They listen to one child’s story and then try to redirect them into another activity. After hearing how their sister hit them, instead of looking into it, they say “do you want to sit up here in the kitchen and color?” Other parents intentionally try to not get involved, under the theory that it’s better if you let kids work out problems themselves instead of always mediating for them (of course, if kids figuring it out without parents is always better, why not let them do everything without parents: fix their own meals, take themselves to school and … hell, why not get them their own place at age 8?)
Unfortunately for me, the 10-year old version of myself made me promise to myself that I would not do this. That I would not be overly hands off when it came to family fights.

For when I was younger, I “clashed” quite a bit with my sister that was 2 years younger than me (note: as used in this paragraph, the word “clash” includes everything up to and including attempted strangulation). We fought a fair amount but, at times, when things were escalating, one of us would have the good sense to back off and run and tell our mother that a fight was brewing. But inevitably our mother’s response was unsatisfying. If you were just sitting there and got hit and told mom, she’d try to redirect you. You’d be offered a carrot and told to play in a different room. But you didn’t come get your mom because you wanted a carrot. You wanted justice.

It quickly became clear to me that appealing to the authorities would get me nowhere. I was going to have to take matters into my own hands. And luckily, in the early 1980s, I had plenty of role models for this endeavor.
And so my sister and I waged some epic battles. Weaponry and shrieking like a female Asian mercenary was involved on her end. Biting was once involved on my end (which wouldn’t be that embarrassing if I hadn’t been in middle school at the time), amongst other sordidness. Ultimately we learned to stay the hell away from one another. And although my sister and I became friends again when older, I can’t help but wonder how much we damaged our relationship during the several-year period we were at each other’s throats.

Looking back, it seems clear that my mom’s approach wasn’t all that bad, but was less than ideal. I mean, for 90% of the kids I hung out with, we really did work it out ourselves. But for 10% of the kids I was around (for my sister and two other younger kids I knew while growing up), it only made us stop involving the parents and take things into our own hands. But all too often, that involved getting so angry that even I knew things were getting out of hand, and I knew deep down that something was very wrong with how mad I got. And so all that led me to promise myself that I would not employ a similar hands off attitude toward my children’s fights.

So now, in my house, when a child comes to me with a complaint about how they are being treated, CSI: Cleveland Heights springs into action. I put on my David Caruso sunglasses and get down to work with a five-step investigative program.

Step one is to segregate the offenders. Place the combatants in separate rooms where they can’t see one another or anyone else. Isolation will weaken the criminal mind.

Step two is to search for eyewitnesses. Unfortunately, in our house, if the older kids are fighting, the eyewitness is 22 months old. And if normal eyewitness testimony is unreliable, I can only imagine what baby eyewitness testimony must be like.

Step three is to review the physical evidence. My wife normally cordons off the area of the fight with police tape and then declares that she will be unable to clean that area of the house for the next month “because it is a crime scene.”

Step four is a thorough interview of each side. It’s best to employ re-enactment techniques here. Use of toddler children as stand-ins is encouraged. Since toddlers love being allowed to be a part of anything, this can double as “quality time” with them.

The fifth and final step is to bring both sides together and subject them to rapid fire questioning (while holding their wrists to utilize pulse-rate lie detection techniques). If you’re lucky, after repeated incidents, one of them will eventually develop a stutter.

Employing these techniques has led to some Perry Mason moments:

“Your baby sister couldn’t have thrown a block and hit you from way over there, as she can only throw things directly into the floor, approximately 12 inches away.”

“But he couldn’t have called you that name, because he doesn’t even know that word!”

“Your sister couldn’t have used her penis to make the floor wet”

Even if none of the kids crack and confess and there is no Perry Mason moment, normally, with enough perseverance, you’ll catch the culprit.

And your kids will dislike your bizarre behavior so much that they will do anything to avoid fighting with one another.