Parenting can take a whole new turn when children start to socialise or when a sibling arrives. All the usual parenting challenges are suddenly eclipsed by socialisation, conflicts, sharing, and sometimes hitting, biting and pushing. It can prove to be very stressful for our children and for us as parents.
One of the challenges for young children is that they don’t yet have the ability to take other people’s perspective. This makes playtime very challenging at times because they are focused on their own needs and perspective. They genuinely can’t put themselves in someone else's shoes. They are also hugely motivated to keep pushing themselves forward in their own development, and sometimes that means going all out to get what they want and need!
Conflict resolution can be complicated when it comes to siblings because we feel protective of both children, and possibly more protective of one over the other perhaps because one always tends to get hurt, or one is still very young.
When it comes to social situations with friends, this can be challenging in a different way because we are also working with other parents' preferences when it comes to supporting a child’s behaviour, and other parents' expectations around how things are handled and resolved.
One of the things that can be incredibly empowering is to know that we can help our children to develop the tools to learn how to solve conflicts. This is a skill to be learned, just like anything else that children need to learn.
Here are some tips for supporting conflict resolution in young children:
Bring both children together - rather than separating them or isolating one - this gives the message that the conflict is resolved through connection and communication.
Take time to give both children the chance to say what has happened and how they feel. It is important not to assume we know what has happened because we may just have missed something right before the incident we saw. Giving children the chance to share their view is also empowering for them and the first step to practising saying how they feel (which is what we want them to do in the future rather than hitting / pushing etc.) If one child isn’t verbal, you can wonder out loud how they might feel and try to put their perspective across, so you are helping to give them a voice in that situation.
Listen to both ‘sides’ without judgement. Part of the role of conflict resolution is to hear both sides with openness and to facilitate a resolution. If we take sides we will immediately lose one of the children involved and the resolution won't take place.
Thank each child for sharing their view, and validate how they feel.
Ask how they think we can resolve this. They may need some suggestions from the adult to help the process along. Avoid resolutions based around who was right or wrong, and focus instead on helping the children to come up with a plan they are happy with.
Support them in putting the plan into action so it is effective and works - this is important so they learn the conflict resolution does actually work.
Avoid blame, judgement or telling off; instead focus on solving the problem together because this will teach valuable skills for the future.
If you are with other children and parents, and you feel they are expecting an apology for your child’s actions, rather than forcing your child to apologise, you could go and apologise to the other child, role modelling this to your child and respecting the other parents' needs at the same time.
Telling children off, assigning blame and isolating them may be a reactive strategy in the moment but it rarely leads to lasting change. Children of this age struggle with social situations because their brain isn’t yet able to manage their emotions or manage the complexity of the communications involved. It is helpful for the future to model to them what conflict resolution looks like through a proactive and collaborative approach. When we de-escalate the stress through a considered and grounded response we are teaching them how to do the same in the future.