The other day we had a nice moment of siblings crying out of true regret and asking each other for forgiveness. If you would have walked into our house at that moment, you might have been impressed. It really was a nice moment.

But before we really embrace that nice moment, let’s take a look at what happened in the 20 minutes leading up to it.

My 7-year-old daughter came into the living room sobbing that her brother had bitten her. After seeing the bruising teeth marks on her thigh, I asked what had happened. You see, this is not her 2-year-old brother we were discussing; it was her 6-year-old brother. Did you catch that? I said her 6-year-old brother bit her and left teeth marks on her leg.

She said she was just sitting on the couch while he kept bothering her; when she didn’t want to fight with him, he bit her. In a rare moment of self-control, I took a few minutes to think about what the consequences would be and what I wanted to say. Then I went to talk to my son.

He said Eden was sitting on his chest and he couldn’t get up. He kept telling her to move and she refused, so he did the only thing he could think of to free himself: he bit her leg. When I mentioned this part of the story to my daughter, she said, “Oh, I forgot.” More conversation ensued at that point about telling the truth.

Then Eden went to find Judah and they both cried and apologized all on their own — all on their own, after 20 minutes of work from me.

This parenting thing is not glamorous and it is certainly not fast. Our kids don’t get the lessons we are trying to teach them the first time, or the hundredth time. But they are growing and they are learning, and someday I like to believe they are going to be adults who can handle conflict in a healthy way. They still have a lot of years left to learn it, and I have a feeling I will be learning a lot during those years too.