"He Hit Me First!"

When the Kids of a Feminist Get to Fighting

When I made it to the top of the stairs, I was met by my four-year-old Cairo holding his head with one hand and pointing at his sister with the other. “She pushed me down!” he made out between sobs. “Because he hit me first” my daughter said with slightly pursed lips and a little neck roll. I took a deep breath because I honestly hate this shit. If you have ever been the caregiver of multiple children, you know how this goes. You must decipher what happened, figure out whose story is the truest, and what kind of punishment to dole out. It’s one thing when you witnessed. It’s a-whole-nother thing when you weren’t there. I was able to figure out that he got upset because of the outcome of some video game and started wilding, she told him to stop hitting her and gave him several warnings, and when she finally had enough, she pushed him back hard enough for him to fall. Before I could figure out what I was going to say and what accountability was going to look like, she started crying too!  

Her tears surprised me. Why was she crying if she won? What happened to the neck rolling gangster in the hallway? Her tears reminded me that I forgot what it felt like to fight. See, I grew up fighting the other kids in my life. My older brother and I share the same four-year age difference as my children, and we physically fought over everything. We came to blows over the remote, who would get the front seat, and accusations of cheating in monopoly. I fought my favorite younger cousin for much of the same reasons and even me and my stepsister who was my best friend would scrap every now and then. And let me be clear. I grew up in a very loving household. There were bedtime stories, big Sunday dinners, countless hugs, and daily kisses. We were loved dearly. But, even in my loving household, the kids fought. And we fought hard! We slapped in the face so hard that whelps formed across our cheeks. We punched in the stomach so viciously that the wind left our bodies. We pulled hair and busted lips and broke furniture. We fought like our lives depended on it.  

Our parents told us that they did. The violence between us children was normalized through everyday conversations of how to handle someone who played you and reinforced during the aftermath of our blowups. The adults dried our tears while simultaneously reassuring us that “this is just making you tougher.” We were taught that we had to learn to fight because the world outside of our home would not be so loving to poor Black kids in and from the ‘hood. And losing a fight was far better than not fighting at all. If we did not fight, we would be a target, we would be taken advantage of, and we would be used as someone else’s opportunity to get cool points. I still don’t know if my parents, grandparents, and aunties were right or wrong. The daily three o’clock fights after school certainly affirmed their lessons. The school yard may have been the original World Star Hip Hop. 

That my children were fighting should not have been such a shock to me but it was. I’m a feminist who prides myself in raising my children with intention. I am a prison abolitionist who champions restorative justice. And my kids weren’t growing up in Brooklyn in the 90s. What the hell were they doing fighting? But as I mentally scanned where I went left, I saw it. My kids have definitely heard me talk about the fights I had growing up. They have seen and heard my “I wish a motherfucker would” reactions to viral videos that show someone spitting in someone’s face or telling a mother she shouldn’t be breastfeeding in public. And there was that one time a few years ago when Cairo hit Cori and I told her what my mama told me, “Hit him back! I bet he’d stop then.” The shock her in eyes that I would tell her to hit her little brother caused me to walk it back immediately and take care of the issue myself. But I said it and she remembered. I knew then that little neck roll was because she thought she was making me proud. And while he’s playing with legos he probably hears it too. Sneaky ass patriarchy.  

I really don’t know what we are supposed to teach these little Black kids about survival. However, I do know that I do not want my home to be a training ground for the violence of the “real world.” I want my home to be a place of reprieve. The tears gathering in my lap were a reminder that the master’s tools are not acquired without a cost. Wielding those tools cuts at pieces of our own humanity. They burn when we pick them up and those hot tears streaming when we lose or even when we win, are reminders that we never get used to the pain.  

So, what do I say to my Sweet Baby Girl? She is a natural softie. But as a Black girl she will be tested a lot and I do not think she will have the privilege of going through the world without having to assert her value and demand her respect. The tears pouring down her face betray her projection of badassery. She doesn’t want to physically fight and she shouldn’t have to. She may always have tears in her throat as she stands up for herself and she may cry a little as she stakes her claims. But I believe we can find a way for her to assert herself and what she will and won’t tolerate while also holding true to her values. How do I raise a strong girl?  

What do I say to my Bout-It Baby Boy? His emotions are big! He has a keen sense of fairness and he is always ready for action. He is tiny, but kids will think twice about skipping him in the line for the slide. I want him to experience all of his emotions and all that makes him a full human. I want him to have the kind of humanity men in generations before him did not get to have. He is little now but one day he will be big and strong, and those emotions may be scary. We will have to teach him how to manage them and take some of those buttons off so that he is the only one that can press them. He’s going to have to learn the arts of cooperation, negotiation, persuasion, and letting go as he works through the question this pandemic has made me grapple with every day, how do you get people to do what you want them to do without using violence?  

And for me? I will have to give myself permission to try things out, get things wrong, tweak things a little bit, and try again. And I will have to learn to give myself the grace I gave my mama and the grace I try to give to all Black mothers. For we are doing the best we can to try to raise children in a world where they were never meant to survive.  

So, here is what I did.  

First, I told them that they do not have to be the kind of siblings that are mean to each other. TV often portrays relationships between brothers and sisters as antagonistic. This is particularly true of the annoying little brother who constantly bothers their much more mature big sister. I pointed out that trope and then gave them permission to reject it in favor of kindness and friendship. My wish for them is that they will always be a safe and loving place for each other. 

Then, we walked through the scenario and chatted through some alternatives. I told Cairo that it is okay to feel whatever he is feeling, but that it was not okay to use his hands to hurt people. I reminded him of the importance of stepping away to cool off and reminded him of breathing exercise we learned on Sesame Street. I told Cori that that next time she could lock him out and refuse him entry until he is ready to act right. I also applauded her for trying to handle things on her own but told her that there is no shame in asking for help. She can always tag us in to intervene.  

Finally, I gave them the space to apologize to each other, which they did eagerly. As they hugged it out I assured them that we will figure this out together.  

But I'm not sharing this because I am trying to provide a blueprint for how to handle sibling squabbles. Hell if I know! I couldn’t even figure out who to punish in this situation so I just didn’t do that part and hoped they wouldn’t notice. Lol. Twenty years from now my kids may be publicly writing about this as an epic fail. I share this because as feminists we need to be concerned with all the ways the tools of patriarchy, specifically tools of violence and domination, structure our everyday lives. We need to keep our heads on a swivel for all the ways that patriarchy may be sneaking into our choices even when we think we are disrupting systems of harm. Especially when we think we’re disrupting systems of harm. 

I also share this because we need to see violence amongst siblings and cousins and children living in the same household as domestic violence. As Black feminists we have done excellent work in identifying the ways in which the legacy of slavery has influenced the physical discipline we received as children and the ways that that early violence impacts our relationships with our partners and our own children. However, we have not done that same level of introspection around the role of sibling fighting. What does it mean for us to normalize this form of violence in our homes? Our siblings are our peers, not authority figures. So, what does that teach us about structuring healthy relationships with our friends and partners? How can we build movements with our siblings in the struggle if we learned to resolve conflicts with fists in our homes?  

Finally, I share this because the personal is political. If relationships between children are key locales for the perpetuation of patriarchy, they can also be the place where we disrupt it. If we can figure this out, we can get a little bit closer to building a society that centers restorative and transformative justice. What will happen if we treated familial relationships and friendships amongst children as laboratories for us to practice liberation and build new worlds? That's certainly what I will be doing in my home.  

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If you enjoyed this piece you’ll love the new book Brittney, Susana and I wrote Feminist AF: A Guide to Crushing Girlhood. It’s available for pre-sale now!