Conflict is a fact of life. As much as we hope for peace and tranquility and smooth human relations, the fact is that it takes work. This doesn’t mean that peace and positive relationships shouldn’t be our goal, but children do need to learn and develop good conflict resolution skills. The only way to learn how to resolve and cope with conflict is through experience.
While we want to set an example for our children when it comes to conflict resolution, and we will definitely need to intervene as parents from time to time—we really need to allow our child the opportunity to resolve and manage his own conflicts as much as possible. This goes for conflicts between siblings, with the other parent, with peers, etc. Of course if danger or violence is inevitability or a consideration, we parents need to intervene—but if it is a verbal conflict, our child can learn from attempting to work things out on her own.
Children who are allowed to learn to resolve their own conflicts develop stronger social skills, better resiliency, higher self-esteem and confidence, and are often seen as being leaders or those who are valuable to a group. Other people respect individuals who are able to address and handle conflict, and this is a sought-after job skill as well. Of course, kids will make mistakes and won’t always handle things the way we would. This gives us an opportunity to have some discussions about what their other choices might have been, how the conflict could have been avoided, etc. Again, this just adds to the learning experience and the next time, the child will have even more personal experience in conflict management and resolution to build upon. Giving our children the opportunity to handle conflict and resolve difficulties on their own will make them more socially competent individuals.
See Also: Resolving Conflict