It seemed so obvious. To me, a preschool teacher and mediator, it seemed perfectly obvious that conflict isn’t necessarily misbehavior. In fact, I began one of the chapters in my book with the sentence, “Conflict in and of itself is not misbehavior” - as if that were a truth universally acknowledged!
In conversations with many, many parents and preschool teachers, it’s become obvious to me that not everyone agrees. I get it. How could something so annoying, noisy, relentless and untimely as children’s conflicts not be out-of-bounds?
Perhaps it helps to stand back and think about adult conflicts. For example, you and your spouse are trying to figure out how to spend the family vacation. You probably both have pretty clear preferences and priorities involving many factors - finances, the desire to please in-laws, and creating a vacation that will be fun for children of different developmental stages, to name a few. As you discuss and plan, passions may run high. Stubbornness may kick in: my way or the highway. If both of you listen carefully and show a willingness to compromise, you will hash out a plan that is acceptable to both of you.
Another example is from the workplace. You and a colleague have strong, competing feelings about how to address a problem. After a lot of back-and-forth, you are both seething. You go to your corners and calm down enough to work things out, or maybe you call in a neutral colleague or supervisor to mediate.
In both of these examples, despite very strong feelings - and perhaps raised voices - no one is misbehaving. We can be passionate about our beliefs and preferences without damaging relationships. It’s the same with children’s conflicts.
What’s confusing is that kids’ disputes (unlike disputes involving adults, who usually have better self-control) can move from conflict to misbehavior in the blink of an eye. Two children are arguing over a truck and one of them “loses it” and pushes the other one. The pushing become the star of the show. What usually gets lost in the shuffle is the conflict itself. Of course we must intervene when a child breaks a law of the land (“we don’t hurt each other”) but the truly important work comes next.
Returning to the issue over the truck is key. With care, empathy and attention, you can help the children arrive at a win-win solution. This puts discipline (“we don’t hurt each other”) on the back burner and spotlights their conflict over the truck as a legitimate challenge to be solved. They are just two people whose wants, needs and wishes don’t align. Through mediation, you help bring the two children into alignment. This buttresses their relationship while teaching them that talking, not pushing, is a better way to problem-solve.