I don’t think “every 5 minutes” is to be interpreted literally. After all, that would imply the siblings sleep in shifts so that one is always able to hit the other. (Or that they are in a constant boxing match throughout their waking hours to compensate for the lack of hitting during sleep.)
Most days, my children (3 and 5) have periods of the day (usually toward the evening) in which they have exhausted their patience for trying to talk it out and they hit each other at least every five minutes, unless we keep them separated. They also have periods in which they reason, empathise, and negotiate better than many adults I’ve met. The latter periods are rare, but getting more frequent with age.
My wife has been worried about the amount of hitting, so we have talked to child psychologists about it, and they claim it is well within a couple standard deviations. That doesn’t have to mean anything, of course, but the data on this is sparse, as one could imagine.
I don’t think “every 5 minutes” is to be interpreted literally. After all, that would imply the siblings sleep in shifts so that one is always able to hit the other. (Or that they are in a constant boxing match throughout their waking hours to compensate for the lack of hitting during sleep.)
Most days, my children (3 and 5) have periods of the day (usually toward the evening) in which they have exhausted their patience for trying to talk it out and they hit each other at least every five minutes, unless we keep them separated. They also have periods in which they reason, empathise, and negotiate better than many adults I’ve met. The latter periods are rare, but getting more frequent with age.
My wife has been worried about the amount of hitting, so we have talked to child psychologists about it, and they claim it is well within a couple standard deviations. That doesn’t have to mean anything, of course, but the data on this is sparse, as one could imagine.