What the Fights at Home Are Really About

By mid-July, many households have been together for weeks without the structure of school, and the fighting has often increased. Siblings quarrel over the same toy, the same seat, the same slight. Parents snap at children and at each other. It is tempting to explain all of it by tiredness and heat, and those are real, but James offers a deeper diagnosis that is more useful precisely because it goes further down. What causes fights and quarrels among you, he asks. Do they not come from your desires that battle within you? You want something and do not get it, and so you fight.

This is a tool, not just an observation. When two children are shouting, the question underneath is what each of them wants that they are not getting. Often it is not the toy. It is to be first, to be noticed, to win, to not be the one who always gives way. Naming the want out loud, calmly, changes the conversation. You wanted to go first and your brother went first, and that made you angry. A child who hears his desire named accurately often quiets, because he has been understood. Then the parent can do what James does next, which is to point to God. You can ask God for what you want, and you can ask him to help you want the right things.

It works on parents too, and that is the harder half. When a father finds himself sharp with a child at bedtime, the honest question is what he wanted and did not get. Usually it is quiet, or control, or a sense that the evening went as planned. James says we do not have because we do not ask, and when we do ask we ask badly, for the sake of our own comfort. A parent who prays in the morning for patience and for the good of the children is asking well. A parent who simply wants the day to be easy and gets angry when it is not has been fighting for a desire he never brought to God.

There is a practical habit that grows out of this. Teach the household to say what they want before they fight for it. At the table, in the car, when tension rises, anyone can say, I want this, and I am not getting it, and I am starting to get angry. It sounds artificial the first several times. It becomes natural. It strips a quarrel of its momentum, because a want that has been spoken can be discussed, prayed about, negotiated, or surrendered, whereas a want that stays hidden can only be fought over.

James goes on to say that God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble, and that if we come near to him he will come near to us. A home in which people admit what they want and bring it to God is a humble home, and it is a home God draws near to. That does not end the quarrels. It does give every quarrel somewhere to go. Before the school year starts and the pace changes again, it is worth building this habit now, while the fights are frequent enough to practice on.