TIPS
Teach Your Children
To Resolve Sibling Conflicts
Jeanette Friesen, Extension Educator
University of Nebraska Cooperative Extension
"I was playing here!" "That's my toy!" Ever hear those statements from your children? Any time there is more than one child, there is going to be conflict over personal space and property. How can you teach your children to resolve their own conflicts, so you do not need to be the 'referee' each time?
There are several problem-solving steps you can teach your children.
Get the facts and the feelings. Ask for the details of what happened from each child's perspective. Then talk about how the other person feels about it, too. They need to see that the same event feels different from the other person's point of view.
Help your children see the goal. State the problem in ways that will resolve it for each one. For example, "What can you do so both Johnny and Bill can play with the truck?"
Generate alternatives. Ask the children to come up with as many alternatives to the problem as they can. Parents can help with this by repeating back what they have said, helping them stay on the problem (and not bringing in other issues) and asking them for more ideas. Encouraging the children to come up with the ideas shows them that their solutions are important.
Evaluate consequences. Now, for each proposed solution, help them evaluate how each one would work. "What might happen if...." "How do you think Johnny might feel?"
Ask for a decision. When all the ideas have been evaluated, you can restate the problem, review the solutions and ask the children to decide which solution they will try. Even if you disagree with their solution, don't make the decision for them. Instead, ask them what they might do next if the first idea doesn't work.
As parents, it sometimes is easier to just tell our children what to do rather than taking the time to work through problem-solving steps with them. But in the long run, everyone will be better off if the children can learn to resolve problems on their own.
Once you begin teaching your children problem solving, go to unlforfamilies.unl.edu and click on TIPS to let us know how your children are doing resolving their own sibling conflicts.
Source: Teaching Children to Resolve Conflict, Ohio State University Extension Fact Sheet HYG-5195-98. Written by Jeanette Friesen, UN Extension Educator.
