One of the life skills I try to teach my girls is how to resolve conflict peacefully. If you’re genuinely interested in helping your kids grow up to resolve all conflict that faces them calmly, then you’ll enjoy reading these tips on how to teach your kids to resolve conflict peacefully.
How To Teach Kids To Resolve Conflict Peacefully
Even as an adult, resolving conflicts is a necessary skill that we should master. Kids of all ages will face some strife in their lives, and learning how to solve it peacefully should be our primary concern as their parents.
As a toddler, it may be the concept of sharing with friends or siblings. As a teenager, it may be a difference in opinion or peer pressure situations.
Every child resolves conflict differently. If you want to help your child resolve disputes in more of a peaceful nature, then keep reading.
I say that with two pre-teen girls at home, I’m always finding new ways to resolve sibling conflicts. My goal is still to make sure that they end the dispute positively, even if they both don’t agree.
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Discuss Unconditional Love
Often kids get upset after an argument because they are still learning about their emotions and feelings. Kids think that conflict directly relates to how someone feels about them. Our kids can believe that it relates to them when a parent is angry, or a sibling gets upset.
Talk to your kids about what unconditional love is and how family provides them with unconditional love all the time. Not all emotions directed at them, is about them.
Kids who understand that a relationship isn’t due to a conflict will be more apt to learn peaceful ways to resolve disputes with someone close to them and be kinder about the situation.
Practice Effective Communication
My girls don’t shy away when it comes to telling us how they feel or how one of us has hurt their feelings. The reason is that both myself and my husband are the same way. We want to make sure that communication in our family is open and accepted.
Raising kids in a home that allows the kids to speak up anytime they feel differently, upset or need to express something will help give your kids the courage and communication skills necessary to resolve conflict peacefully in other areas of life.
The dinner table is a great place to discuss various subjects as a means of practicing effective communication and good debating skills so that your kids can strengthen the necessary skills for resolving conflict peacefully.
Instill a Sense of Community
Raise your kids in a way that instills a positive connection for community, such as being a good friend and family member as well as community member.
A great way to teach kids how to be apart of a community is through playgroups at a younger age, school sports, extracurricular activities, and volunteering.
Both of my girls participate in after school activities. While my oldest daughter loves being apart of her school, my younger daughter dances competitively with a team. Teaching them both to be apart of something bigger than themselves, while relying on their friends and team mates to get the job done.
Kids who are raised to have a solid sense of being part of something larger than themselves will be more apt to listen to others when conflict arises and work to resolve it without any harsh feelings.
Encourage Expression of Emotions
This goes back to practicing effective communication. At the end of the day, parents can agree that conflict often stems from the inability to express an emotion. Including a negative emotion such as anger or sadness as well as other emotions such as unhappiness or frustration.
When it comes to teaching kids to resolve conflict peacefully, they’ll need to have a good understanding of how to verbally express their emotions. While listening to others who are trying to explain their feelings as well.
You can quickly start by sharing your feelings and emotions. As parents, we tend to hold our opinions in because we don’t want to hurt our kids or spouse. In reality, we are just suppressing these emotions. Instead, practice using your words on how you feel when your kids don’t clean up their toys after playing. You’re not doing anything wrong. You are teaching them to do the same and without conflict.
Practicing this within the home environment is a fantastic start. Then work your way to encouraging emotional expression the older they get. When friends come over, and there’s a conflict during a sleepover or playdate.
Trust me when I say that you are going to have to let them handle their own conflicts. Keep encouraging your child to express themselves, whether it’s to you or that one friend who keeps taking their toys.
How do children resolve conflict?
Raising kids who can resolve conflict peacefully is more about teaching your kids to be in tune with how they’re feeling as well as how they’re friends or family members are feeling.
Kids who are taught to respect other peoples feelings and healthily express their own feelings are more apt to resolve conflict without altercation than kids who grew up not knowing how to properly express their feelings.
These tips above will help you move forward with your mission to teach kids to resolve conflict peacefully.
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How do you teach your kids to resolve conflict?
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