Interesting comments - seems like the suggestions depend on your sex. From a male point of view - I would want to find out who actually hit first. If your daughter was defending herself, I would not do anything. If she started the fight, I would punish her. I suspect your little "angle" has a lot of "tom boy" in her makeup.
Actually no she is not a tom-boy, neither of them are for that matter. but to me who threw the first punch is less important, but yes it is a consideration. after gathering more info about what happened, i do feel a little bit better now but still my daughter britney has some blame. it sounded like this was over fairly trivial disagreements over games and activities they were playing at the time, but i know there was some tension between them before as well. but there was definitely some build up to this fight. a lot of arguing and verbal fighting for several minutes, apparently even a push or shove or 2. they got emotional and at one point britney was almost in tears but then she did the good thing and got up and walked away and sat on the couch. but then emily came over to her and grabbed her by the hair and punched her in the back and walked away. I think Britney lost it at this point and attacked Emily and that's when the no-holds-barred fighting started.
so you could argue it was self-defense, but emily did walk away afterwards. I think Britney made it worse by hitting back even if it were clearly provoked. to be honest though, at her age, i may have done something similar. so I guess I feel a little bit better about the whole thing, although it was still a serious matter.
Another problem though is why none of the other children came upstairs to get an adult before the fight got out of control. there was plenty of opportunity, but it may have something to do with emily and britney being the ones in charge down there, being the "most mature" of the bunch. a bit of irony.
