Steps to Teach a Child Positive Conflict Resolution

All of a sudden you hear one of your younger children screaming from their room, “Mom, she hit me!” You run to check on her and you ask your oldest, “Why did you hit your little sister?” Rather than appropriate conflict resolution, a similar excuse as last time strikes back in your face, “Because she called me ‘stupid’!”

The blaming rumbles forward. You want to fix this situation fast and go back to the chore you were doing before, so you command each of your children to say “sorry” and ask them to play nicely.
As a therapist, several questions run through my mind regarding this scenario:

• How often does this type of conflict arise in your home?
• Was your child sincere in saying “sorry”?
• Did your child learn a lesson?
• Did you discipline them afterwards? If yes, did the discipline teach them anything?
• How many times will you have to break up a fight or disagreement?
• What would be a better solution?

Welcome to the world of multiple siblings. Families with a single child experience conflict as well. Similar scenarios of relationship issues could arise between a child and a friend, or a child and an adult. Our daily lives are full of conflicts. The question is, “What could be a better way to resolve each conflict in a positive way that would touch the depth of the heart where the issue starts?”

It is very important to start early in teaching your child a healthy way to resolve fights. It is a very important life skill to learn positive conflict resolution. The problems will get bigger, and you could find yourself in a situation when you realize that the problem became bigger than you thought or you could handle.

As a parent, you have to remember that your child’s brain is still developing, and if you will leave it up to them to resolve their own issues, they will never learn the healthy way of dealing with problems. When you leave your children to figure it all out on their own, then there is a higher risk for someone among them to dominate and/or show physical power, and someone to be a victim.

An abuse cycle could develop to the level that it could become uncontrollable. Children need an adult who is mature and nurturing to guide the kids to express their feelings and thoughts with respect and no name calling – an adult who will listen to both sides and guide them in the right direction.

It is highly recommendable for each household to have family rules, to go over those rules often, to adapt them accordingly to developmental stages, and to have them either printed visibly or discuss them on regular basis verbally. A great exercise is to invite children to tell the family’s rules; what do they think they are?

Children learn fast, they learn from parent’s behavior more than words they hear. Getting their feedback would be helpful to understand how well your children comprehend and understand the family’s rules. Some common rules are to obey, to show respect, and to be kind. Your family has to choose what you value the most.

When a child misbehaves or siblings get into a fight, we as parents naturally want them to stop and end with the magical healing statement, “I’m sorry.” This statement is great, but it could be very primitive risks losing the meaning of the change of heart.

In their book and teaching series Parenting is Heart Work, authors Scott Turansky and Joanne Miller developed three steps regarding how the expression “sorry” could work better and have a more fundamental impact in the development of conflict resolutions skills.

The first question you should ask each child when they get into trouble is, “What did you do wrong?” No matter if one child carries a bigger portion of the fault and another child is less guilty, still you should ask each child individually, “What did you do wrong?” This addresses each child’s sinfulness. This question brings humility and personal responsibility for their own action.

If a child doesn’t have any answer to that question, that means she or he is not ready to admit their part, not ready to take any responsibility. In this case, send the child to sit and think about it, and ask the child to return when they will have an answer to the first question, “What did you do wrong?”

There are children who have a tendency to blame others no matter what. They shift responsibility onto others. These children will need more time and repetitive exercises to learn how to answer the question, “What did you do wrong?”

The second question that should be asked is, “Why was that wrong?” This question brings a child back to the family’s value system, to determine which rule was broken by their action. They might answer, “It was wrong because I wasn’t kind to my sister,” or they might realize, “This was wrong because I didn’t obey my parent.”

Initially, you as a parent might need to remind your child of the family’s rules before the child will understand how to answer. This question, “Why was that wrong?” encourages the child to think about what is right and what is wrong, to take their own behavior to their heart and understand the reason why their action is not acceptable.

The third question is geared towards the change of behavior: “What are you going to do differently next time?” This question forces the child to prepare for the next situation to behave in a more helpful, God-honoring way. It’s easy for us as parents get mad and frustrated when we don’t see a result right away.

We find ourselves disciplining our children for the same things over and over again. It is very important to remind yourself that the change will not happen instantly after one try. It will not be that once a child answers all three questions at once at that particular behavior will never repeat again. That’s not how it works.

Parenting is a hard job because it takes years to see the fruit, and it requires consistence and repetition over and over again thousands of times until the lesson clicks in. Learning new patterns is a long path of daily practice. It takes healthy patterns to change bad patterns.

We need to repeat it over and over until the concept will sink in from the child’s mind to their heart. A thumbs up approach is “Let’s go and try again.” Positive affirmations are very powerful, like “I believe in you,” and “You can do this.”

These three questions could be asked in a rush once a child has learned the concept of this pattern for conflict resolution. For example, if you are at a pool talking to another adult and you see your little son running barefoot on a wet surface next to water, you can excuse yourself for a minute from your conversation, invite for your child to come, and ask, “What did you do wrong?”

The son’s answer hopefully would be, “I was running.” His answer to the second question, “Why was it wrong?” would be follow instantly with, “Because I was not obeying the rule not to run by the pool.” And the third question, “What are you going to do differently next time?” would bring a quick and simple answer, “I will not run; I will walk instead.”

After this quick intervention, you could be back to your conversation with your friend. Once you and your children master this pattern, you can follow those steps quickly and still get the results of consistency repeating the positive conflict resolution skills.

Christian counseling for conflict resolution.

If you’re looking for additional support regarding parenting, conflict resolution skills, or other issues, I invite you to contact me or one of the other counselors in the online counselor directory to schedule an appointment. We would be happy to meet with you.