Solving it together

The sheet

For the argument that keeps happening: a conversation on a calm day that starts with your child’s side, then yours, then ideas from both of you, with one to try and a date to look again.

To fill in together · A4, two sides · Two pages · PDF, 57 KB

How it helps

When the same argument keeps happening, something is often getting in your child’s way that nobody has spotted yet. Hearing their side first, then looking for a solution together, helps you find out what it is, and a plan they have helped to make is one they are more likely to keep.

How to use it

1. Use it for an everyday argument, such as mornings, homework, screens or bedtime, on a calm day and one problem at a time. Read the back first: it is for you. If an argument ever turns physical, or anyone at home is frightened, don’t wait for a calm day: get help that day, using the routes at theparentbook.com/urgent-help.
2. Start with your child’s side. Say what you’ve noticed, ask what’s up, and keep asking until you understand. Then say what worries you, in one or two sentences. If your child tells you that someone is hurting them, that they are hurting themselves, or that they do not want to be alive, stop the problem solving and don’t ask more questions: the back says what to do that day.
3. Write down every idea from both of you before you decide, then choose one you can both really do, and that answers their worry as well as yours.
4. Try it for a week, and look at it again together on the date you wrote. If it didn’t work, go back to your child’s side.

How to get this sheet

This sheet comes with a subscription. It is also yours with its chapter, if that is the chapter you read free, or if a teacher or therapist sends it to you. School staff and therapists signed in to their shelf can print it too.

The first chapter you open here is free to read in full, with its sheets. This one goes with Siblings and the Fights That Aren’t Fair and Big Feelings and Co-Regulation.

Free to print

These are free to anyone, with nothing to sign up for.

• A plan for a bad dayTo fill in together · A4
• Before you ring the schoolFor a call or a meeting · A4
• What to say: school and friendsCards to cut out · A4, eight cards to cut
• Before the SENCo meetingFor a meeting · A4
• Three reports, side by sideFor a meeting · A4 landscape
• The return-to-school meetingFor a meeting · A4
• The move to secondary school, for a parents’ eveningFor a parents’ evening · A4, five pages
• The last half-hour before bedFor the fridge · A4
• The worry ladderTo fill in together · A4
• Before you see the GP about your childFor an appointment · A4, two sides
• A record of what happenedFor a call or a meeting · A4, two pages
• The people I can tellTo make together · A4, two pages

Every sheet, marked free or with a subscription, is at theparentbook.com/printables.