Children look to their parents for guidance on how to find the most rewarding way through a world that is increasingly inundated with conflict. Childhood is the ideal training ground for equipping children with the negotiation insights and skills they will need to discover and successfully navigate their way within their families, communities and schools. From these social experiences, children develop and reinforce the skills they will need in adulthood.
Parents face the difficult, but not insurmountable challenge, of understanding the conflicts their children are likely to face, teaching them how to communicate their needs and desires, and how to deal with the conflicts they will inevitably experience with siblings, other members of family, friends, and at school. This requires parents to display calm understanding, and the development of practical strategies.
Conflict defined
Conflict arises due to differences between people, and is influenced by their response and the interaction of the conflicting parties.
Conflict in its simplest manifestation arises when two or more people have a difference of opinion, behave in opposing ways, or hold divergent views. It can, however, be of a more complex nature than a mere argument.
The perceptions of those involved in conflict – their needs, desires, wishes, ideas, and values – determines how they respond by becoming angry, being upset, or experiencing hurt. Conflict could be either escalated or deescalated by the degree to which parties are willing to empathically listen and speak calmly, or to withdraw, raise their voices, and resort to physical aggression.
Conflict manifestations
Children experience a variety of social interactions during their life journey, which requires them to manage a multitude of relationships involving many different people, ranging from their parents, siblings, friends, teachers, class mates, and others. This inevitably results in some form of conflict in their daily lives.
Disputes may arise when opinions, needs and desires differ from those of a sibling, parent or friend. This leads to an emotional reaction that may cause anger, discontent, fear, or hurt, which could lead to attitudes and behaviours that manifest in bouts of shouting, name calling, or even physical aggression that could give rise to a serious argument.
When children do not possess good conflict resolution skills, there is a strong likelihood that they may experience:
- spiraling aggression;
- social rejection;
- depression;
- loneliness; and
- anxiety and panic attacks.
Children who possess positive conflict resolution skills are far better able to gain and maintain the respect and acceptance of their peers, but those who have not been taught how to deal with conflict inevitably respond in ways that exacerbate the conflict and ultimately feel rejected by their peers.
Parental responses
The most successful strategy involves a two pronged approach in which parental intervention and the involvement of children in resolving the conflict is cognizant of a child’s need for autonomy, inspires the reasoning that will in future be required, and accentuates the benefits of cooperation over competition. Given the fact that children become involved in disagreements for a variety of reasons, parents are confronted with the difficult challenge of knowing when they should stand aside to allow a dispute run its course, provide the space for children to solve the dispute themselves, directly intervene, or adopt the role of a mediator. Although parents may have compelling reasons why they believe children should be left to their own devices to resolve their own battles, as they are likely to then acquire important social skills, there are cases where such a hands-off approach would be counterproductive and seriously damaging.
Although there will always be times when parents should become involved in disputes to protect and ensure the safety of their children by preventing an escalating situation, interventions should not be parents taking over or imposing their views. If parental intervention is to succeed, parents should rather adopt the role of a mediator, helping their children to take an active role in managing their emotions, communicating their needs and desires, and empower them to develop their own solutions.
Parents should at all times remain cognizant of the fact that the way they resolve their own conflict, provides a role model their children emulate. When they resort to yelling, threats, name calling, and violence in response to a dispute, their children receive the message such behaviour is the most appropriate form of responding to disagreements, consequently modeling such behaviour. If they wish to see their children model a positive conflict resolution approach, it is crucially important that their behavior reflects empathy, creative problem solving, impulse and emotion control, and good communication skills. Parents have the responsibility of coaching, encouraging and modeling positive conflict resolution approaches that could see that the needs of their children are best met, and they are able to engage in mutually beneficial relationships.
Parents also need to be aware of the inevitable emotions they experience when witnessing their children in distress. The challenge parents face is to create a safe environment in which their children feel confident to share why they are feeling distressed, ensuring that their own emotions do not crowd out the emotions of their children. They need to stay calm and listen attentively and with understanding, empathy and loving support to what their children communicate. Children must feel safe and comfortable to express themselves honestly and openly without the fear that their parents will respond emotionally or negatively, knowing their parents care and are approachable.
Possible ways parents could assist their children deal with conflict
- Even if children are not experiencing conflict, parents would be well served by teaching their children conflict resolution skills, as these skills will help them develop and internalize positive social and emotional attitudes and bahaviours. In the event that they then do experience conflict, they will feel confident and empowered not to respond by mirroring the behaviour of others, but rather seek to negotiate a positive resolution.
- Talk to children in a non-judgmental way and listen attentively to them, as this helps them to calm down, and focus on identifying their feelings, defining the problem, and exploring solutions.
- Ask open-ended questions that permit them to identify and unpack their feelings – anger, sadness, frustration, worries, embarrassment, or fear.
- Share strategies that could help them cool down and release their pent up emotions, e.g. employing deep breathing and relaxation, engaging in physical exercise, writing down what they feel, or making a drawing or painting of their emotions.
- Cultivate their understanding of what they and the other party truly want, including the motivations that underpin these needs.
Practical ways parents could assist their children to positively respond to conflict
Ensure that children start to appreciate that real communication does not merely involve words, but is also heavily premised on their tone of voice and body language. To this effect, it may be very helpful to set up role play situations involving different conflict resolution approaches, and thereafter having them share the lesson they have learnt with regard to the effectiveness of the different approaches. This could allow them to experience the distinct benefits of:
- being kind, as those on moral high ground cannot easily be attacked;
- not resorting to name calling and hurtful insults, as this exacerbates conflict;
- openly and directly talking to the other party involved in conflict to ensure that all views are shared;
- correcting misunderstanding by listening carefully to others in order to be able to repeat what they heard them saying;
- employing ‘I’ statements to prevent the implication of blame, e.g. ‘I feel hurt when you pass me over when picking team members for a game’ instead of ‘You always ignore me when we are playing’;
- inspiring them to independently develop solutions by way of problem solving, only providing coaching if this is necessary;
- non-judgmentally recording possible brainstormed solutions as they are generated;
- displaying the mental flexibility that is needed to develop win more-win more solutions;
- exploring the consequences of different solutions; and
- agreeing to and affording the ‘best’ solution to opportunity to succeed.
Although parents sadly receive practically no training to nurture their children in these increasingly challenging times, help is thankfully at hand by virtue of numerous civil society organizations that specialize in supporting parents in a variety of ways. Fortunately, good parenting is possible by adhering to a number of simple principles that manifest in children modelling the attitudes and behaviours of their parents.
When parents walk their talk when aspiring to empower their children to positively deal with conflict, their endeavours invariably bear fruit. They are key to breaking the horrific cycle of conflict that threatens to tear down every aspect of the societies we painstakingly built since the end of World War II. This will, however, require them to take back many of the responsibilities they abrogated to those in formal education.
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