And it worked!! I only recently bought he book and went through it with one eyebrow raised thinking it was all just 'a nice idea' but wouldn't actually work in reality. I've been trying the 'match the kids energy when empathising' thing while dealing with tantrums and that hasn't worked at all. Neither has 'The Problem Is' instead of 'But'. Nope, got nowhere with those ones. However today the kids (4 and 7) who normally get on very well, had a massive fall-out and another technique suggested in the book really helped. I thought I'd post on here in case it could be useful for you to try in a similar situation.
We had a toy BBQ set up in the garden. There's this tray thing between the legs. 4yo wants to put play food on it, 7yo strongly opposed to this idea. Cue acrimony ramping up til they're pushing each other, toy food is thrown. everyone is crying, 7yo shouting that it's the worst day ever, general meltdown, you can imagine. I remembered one technique suggested in the book is that when a problem comes up everyone thinks of possible solutions and they're all written down, then you go through them together and cross off any that are no good until you settle on the best choice together. I didn't hold out much hope but figured nothing ventured, nothing gained and got some paper and a pencil. I asked them to suggest solutions but they were all 'I don't know!' so I started writing some down and reading them aloud, like 'We take turns being in charge of the BBQ. When it's 4yo turn she puts food on tray, 7yo doesn't' and 'We put the BBQ away so nobody plays with it' and then the children started making suggestions. At first it was ones like 'I can play with it but they can't!' and 'We just play with the BBQ and not the food!' which ordinarily I would have just said were silly, but the book says to write ALL suggestions down, so I did. I came up with a couple more and the kids' ones became more sensible until we had about 7 or 8. Then we went through the list together and crossed off the ideas we didn't like until we eventually settled on the first one I'd written down, then they went on to play happily with it for quite a while and we didn't have any more squabbling. I don't know if it was just a fluke, if it was just because the idea was a novelty, or if this genuinely is a game-changing approach, but for this one incident today it really made a difference. I just wanted to share in case the technique can be of use to anyone else!!