My kids fight about forty times a day. I’m not exaggerating much. They’re 4 and 2, and they will fight over the red cup, the blue cup, the same crayon when there are nineteen others, who gets to push the elevator button, and once — I swear this happened — over who got to be sad first.

For a while I tried to referee every single one. I’d drop what I was doing, march over, and deliver justice. It was exhausting, it didn’t work, and I started dreading the sound of my own voice saying “okay, what happened this time.”

Here’s what I eventually figured out about what’s normal: most of it is. Toddlers and preschoolers fight over stuff because they’re wired to. They don’t have the brain yet for “you had it for five minutes, now it’s her turn” — not really. The fighting is how they learn it, slowly, over years. Knowing that didn’t make it less annoying, but it stopped me from treating every fight like an emergency.

When I step in now: only two situations. One, someone is getting hurt or about to be — hitting, biting, shoving near the stairs. Two, the same kid always loses. My 2-year-old will just hand things over and cry quietly, and if I never intervene she learns that big sister always wins. Everything else? I narrate once — “sounds like you both want the truck” — and I walk away. The first week I did this I had to physically sit on my hands in the kitchen. But most fights fizzle out in under a minute when there’s no audience.

The one rule that cut our fights in half: if you’re fighting over it, it goes on top of the fridge. Not as punishment. I say it flat, no lecture: “You’re fighting over the puzzle, so the puzzle is taking a break.” Then it sits up there until they forget about it, usually an hour. The first three times they were furious. By the fifth time, my 4-year-old started saying “let’s take turns so it doesn’t go on the fridge.” I nearly cried.

What flopped: the “kindness sticker chart.” I made this beautiful chart with stars for “being a good sister.” It lasted two days. My 4-year-old asked for a star for NOT hitting her sister, which — fair point, honestly — and then tried to negotiate stars for breathing near her nicely.

Also flopped: making them hug and apologize. Forced hugs after a fight just produced two stiff, furious children glaring at each other over my shoulder.

Honest ending: they still fight. Yesterday they fought over who got to hold the grocery receipt. But it’s maybe twenty times a day now instead of forty, nobody’s getting hurt, and I’ve stopped refereeing like it’s my full-time job. Some days I still lose it and yell “just share!” from the kitchen, which helps no one. We’re all learning.