1

Demonstrate ways of encouraging and supporting children

and young people to deal with conflict for themselves

There are so many wonderful ways to help children learn the skills they need to

resolve conflict in their everyday lives, you are bound to know more than those listed

below. Asking children to resolve conflict and 'sort themselves out' has its merits, but

only if they already have the skills. The strategies below are designed to build the

skillset within the children so that they can be more prepared when they are a little

older. Conflict resolution for kids General conflict management strategies

Much of the work you do around feelings and empathy will feed very well into conflict

resolution. Children need to be able to communicate with each other effectively, and

this means empowering them so that they have adequate vocabularies that enable

them to express themselves.

Reminding them that they need to listen carefully to what others say is another theme

that runs throughout many areas of child development, and the ways in which you

can foster this include simple listening comprehension exercises in pairs, reading

stories out loud, and doing other question and answer activities.

You should always, of course, ensure that you model the behaviour exactly as you

would have them do it, so that they have a physical basis they can refer to when they

need.

The more consistent you are when you help children manage conflicts, the more solid

their learning around this aspect of life. You can't help two friends manage a fall out

over the use of the playground equipment one day, and the next day when they fall

out because they both wanted to use the same colour paint, tell them to 'just try to get

along'.

2

Managing conflict effectively.

It's all about win-win

During a conflict, an adult can initially act as a mediator, asking the children for all their

points of view. This helps the children involved see that other people's feelings and

miscommunication can sometimes lead to misunderstandings and that ultimately there

is nothing to get upset about. Ground rules should be set in these circumstances, where everyone knows that they

will all get a chance to speak, that they should not try to interrupt or speak until it is

their turn, and they should all be made aware of what the problem is.

Ask children to contribute

After you all know what everyone's motivations and understandings were in a

situation, you can select a couple of different options that they can choose from. It

has even more value if you ask everyone involved to come up with a solution to

contribute. Ask them to choose the fairest option for everyone. Their selection

process and the way they choose will teach them a lot and the result will often be

that they will share the object that was the focus of the argument, or that they will

even let someone else have it before them.

Restorative justice

Restorative justice is a school-wide strategy that has been implemented in many UK

schools in recent years. We discussed it in Unit 8, because it has been found to be

an effective way to resolve conflict in bullying situations. The idea is that the victim

and the bully are brought together to talk about what happened and how they might

go forward peaceably. With its emphasis on the way that others feel when we behave

in certain ways, and its strategies around good and better communication, it is a

facilitating strategy that repairs the injustices and ideally improves relationships

between children and young people.