CONFLICT, AVOID OR RESOLVED

Does your child know how to be in conflict and resolve it? And you? I'm still learning.

Avoiding conflicts is a very common pattern. “Share your toy, otherwise the boy will be offended”, “No, I won’t go to the neighbors, so let the music blare, we’ll tolerate it”, “Don’t prove your opinion to the teacher, otherwise she’ll get nervous and give you another bad grade”, etc.

I do not call for provoking quarrels and swearing. I want to talk about how important it is to be able to be in a conflict and resolve it. About how important it is to understand - to leave a conflict, because "my life is at stake" or "now I need to express and defend my opinion." And you need to learn this from childhood.

Conflicts happen every now and then between people who are in family, work, or other relationships - this is normal. Today I am talking about parent-child relationships, in which it is very important not to be afraid to get into an argument.

Many people perceive conflict as something bad and unacceptable, even if no one is shouting or fighting.
But if a parent teaches a child self-regulation skills and has them themselves, then the confrontation can take place without violence.

Before I talk about how to be in conflict and resolve it, here are some important thoughts that need to be understood, otherwise all techniques are meaningless:

Accept the fact that a child should not be convenient for parents, teachers, grandparents, neighbors, the state, etc., who agrees with everyone, obeys, and does not act up
Accept that the child has the right to his own opinion, which may be radically different from yours. The child is not you in childhood, not your continuation in the future. He is a separate person.
Accept that conflict is not bad, but normal. If it is not life-threatening, of course. Clashes of opinions always happen and the child needs to have different templates for constructive ways out of conflict.


Conflict is communication.
Family is a safe space where a child learns this type of communication. In it, he gains experience of clashes of opinions, helping him understand where he needs to defend his point of view and where to compromise.
He will apply the experience he has gained with friends, classmates, fellow students, colleagues, and even within his own family. This is work for the future.

Often, a conflict is not a constructive resolution of a controversial situation, but a long-awaited opportunity to let off steam. This option in parent-child relationships harms, first of all, the child. This is very simple logic for a child - he said something, and the adult "lost it". He considers himself guilty that he made mom or dad so angry/upset and takes on NOT HIS responsibility.
What is missing here? Emotional intelligence skills that an adult first learns and then teaches to a child by example.

I share several self-regulation techniques:

Find the emotion in your body. Understand where it is tense and try to relax there.
Breathe. For example, the breathing technique “Square” - inhale for 4 counts, hold your breath for 4 counts, exhale for 4 counts, hold your breath for 4 counts.
Or when the child is overexcited and you have no way to calm him down verbally, start to gradually slow down your breathing. Unconsciously, the child will begin to adjust to you and slow down his own breathing as well. This works with adults too.
Develop empathy. Empathy is understanding the feelings of another person. To develop this skill, it is very helpful to mentally put yourself in the child's place during a conversation and try to understand what he or she might be feeling now. This shift to another position should be done not only in conflicts. Train empathy in different situations. A child is able to put himself or herself in someone else's place as early as 6-7 years old.



In some families, the child is regularly not allowed to speak out, they become angry and indignant (“but you weren’t asked!”), their opinion is devalued (“he’s too young to decide”), and they are suppressed with their authority (“because I said so”).
In such cases, the child has every chance of growing up either as a follower, unable to defend his point of view, or as an authoritarian, bending only his own line, unable to compromise.