On Brotherhood Diplomacy

There is a complicated balance of power in our house amongst the boys. Not unlike the foreign policy between countries on the world stage, the boys have established rules for how to interact and look out for their own interests in a communal environment.

The house superpowers are the five and 4-year-old. They have the most developed capabilities (including the brotherhood equivalent of nuclear arms: raw physical strength and size) although they differ greatly on how they use them. The 5-year-old is likely to flex his muscle and bully the less powerful bodies into cooperation (a la Russia). The 4-year-old has learned to handle shows of power by assuming an isolationist position (sort of like Cold War era America).

If the 5-year-old pushes him, he may push back to avoid being overpowered, but then he’ll punish him by going to play by himself. This has proven to be a very effective way of avoiding armed conflict as the 5-year-old does not like to play alone.

The 4-year-old is a master of building strong relationships with smaller allies. He’s quick to assist the 2-year-old with reaching something or getting a toy for him. And he’s always checking in on the 9-month-old and providing food aid to keep him happy.

Even though the 5-year-old often steamrolls over the 2-year-old’s territory, the 2-year-old has a strange allegiance to him. Kind of like South Africa and Swaziland. The 5-year-old will get sent to his room for fighting with the 2-year-old and within minutes the 2-year-old is sneaking back there to keep his older brother company.

The 2-year-old has turned into the unstable actor in the small scale geopolitical environment of our house.  His outbursts are often ineffective but with limited speaking skills, he just keeps going back to ground assaults. It’s not uncommon to find him striking or pushing his older brothers these days. However, due to his size and the aforementioned ineffectiveness, most of his provocations are tolerated or ignored by the big two.

In the backyard (the family life equivalent of international waters) I’ve seen the superpowers strike back a time or two knocking him to the ground. But, kind of like North Korea, he doesn’t seem to learn his lesson.

There is often an arms race of sorts at dinner to see who can clean their plate the fastest. The implications of this are nearly as catastrophic to contemplate as an actual arms race. Little kids’ tummies aren’t known for tolerating excessively fast eating well.

As the boys have grown, I’ve seen a lot more use of sanctions as a tactic to curb bad behavior in the group. The threat that, “I’ll take away my toy” or “I won’t let you play with (fill in the blank)” have done a lot to keep the boys at the negotiating table.

Also, since throwing punches and using force is likely to get the UN (in this scenario that’s the marginally more effective team of my wife and me) involved, they typically try to work around wailing on each other. Or at least they limit their use of force to minor shoves and wrestling when we’re not around.

I’m sure the diplomatic environment won’t last for long. The 9-month-old is already showing signs of being an instigator. And I recall the period when I was growing up that contained the most volatile interactions with my brothers being the early teenage years. So there’s that to look forward to. Now might be a good time to start working on a fallout shelter...