Are you tired of the fighting between your children? Do you deal with tantrums and yelling because they will not share or do not want to do help each other with chores? Conflict is a normal element of parenting and of life; however, conflict resolution does not just happen naturally. As parents, we must guide and coach our children to exhibit the behaviors to help them navigate relationship conflicts. There are three things you can do at home to help your children work better together and to help them navigate conflict.
- Respond do not react
- Instead of responding in anger or frustration when your children are fighting, take a deep breath and consider how you should respond. Model this by asking in a calm, quiet voice for everyone to take a time out.
- Promote Calm Conversation
- Once everyone has taken a few minutes to calm down, then come back together and ask that everyone take a long deep breath and let it out. Repeat 3-5 times.
- Provide a talking stick or item you can pass around to each member to answer questions about the conflict in a calm voice. The only person allowed to speak is the one with the talking stick. If you interrupt it means we are not ready to talk yet, and need to go back to time out or do more deep breathing and calming practices.
- Provide practice to use conflict resolution skills
- Ask questions and Model the answers:
- Explain that they are to use I Statements instead of You Statements
- Sample Questions and Answers:
- What are you feeling?
- An example would be: “I feel really sad when my children are being unkind to one another by not sharing their toys.”
- Why are you feeling this way?
- I feel this way because I know you love each other, but it seems like you are not caring for each other right now.
- What would be your suggestion to solve the conflict?
- I would suggest we put the toy you are fighting over in time out until we feel like it can be shared with kind words and actions
- What are you feeling?
- Ask questions and Model the answers:
