Trusting your kids to solve their own problems
The other day my kids were fighting with each other over a Frisbee. One wanted to play with it, and the other had created a “game” in which he tried to throw it at the other’s head. They came to me crying and screaming.
This is a pattern they fall into about once or twice a day. They have learned to play nicely with each other, particularly when there is no chance of parental supervision (early in the morning, say). But conflict inevitably arises, and I fall back on a routine that I now initiate almost unconsciously.
In this case, the solution wasn’t one I expected. I thought it would be useful to write it down as an example of how conflict resolution works in our house, especially when we’re in such close proximity for so long. We do this multiple times a day; this example is illustrative, if typical. I’ll use D for Dad, L for little brother (3) and B for big brother (6).
D: “I can hear you’re [L] really upset. What happened?”
L: “He threw the Frisbee at me!”
D: “We say, ‘I’m feeling this because that.”
L: “I’m feeling really angry because he threw the Frisbee at my head!”
D: “Say it to him.”
L: “I’m feeling really angry because you threw the Frisbee at my head!”
B: “Well I’m feeling really frustrated because I was playing with the Frisbee first!”
D: “I hear that L is angry that B threw the Frisbee at him. And B is feeling frustrated, because he had the Frisbee first. Is that right?”
Both: “Yes.”
D: “So what are you guys going to do?”
L: “I’m going to play with the Frisbee first.”
B: “No I’m going to play with it first!”
D: “So it looks like that’s not going to work. What else could we do?”
L: “I think you should throw the Frisbee away forever.
B: “Yeah. You should just throw that Frisbee away.”
D: “I hear you really want me to throw the Frisbee away forever. We can’t throw it away, because we don’t throw away our toys. But I could throw it up onto the balcony, and if you’d like, you can just let it sit there forever. Would that work?”
Both: “Yes.”
This is a problem-solving model that I’ve adapted from two main sources. The first is Dr. Ross Greene, whose Lost at School was invaluable to me when I worked in an alternative high school setting. His model is called “collaborative problem-solving,” and it relies on a rigid, simple script for conflict resolution that does a few key, consistent things:
(1) Address the problem neutrally, using descriptive language, with the goal of understanding how each participant sees the problem. There’s a lot of “I hear you say this happened. Is that right? And that made you feel like this. Is that right?”
(2) Once everyone shares the language of the problem and the feelings associated with it (i.e., everyone is on the same page as to what the conflict actually is), empower the participants to come up with their own solutions, without any expectation of what the solution will be. Don’t suggest your own ideas or rely on precedent.
(3) Mediate the solution process within some firm boundaries (“this isn’t possible, but we could try that”) — but without guiding the process — until everyone is in agreement.
I only got a few chances to use the explicit script myself while I was teaching — I had lots of different problem-solving models and often didn’t experience the sort of acute conflicts that required immediate solutions. I did recommend it to other teachers when they were having difficult problems, and I introduced the book to our admin.
The other big inspiration for this routine is Siblings without Rivalry, a book recommended by some of the RIE (Resources for Infant Educators) educators I’ve learned from.
Siblings without Rivalry focuses on a few big ideas around common pitfalls of raising siblings. The biggest idea is simply to encourage siblings to work things out themselves with parents as a neutral moderator whenever possible. “Don’t tell me, tell him” is something I repeat upward of six times a day. “I’m feeling X because Y” is a phrase I got from the book. And the book is good on lots of other points that we haven’t quite gotten to developmentally, like using creative writing and art to express conflict and feelings to a sibling. (My wife remembers writing lots of letters to her sister growing up.)
What I’m always surprised by, both in education and home settings, is that I have a lot of unconscious internal resistance to the solutions that young people come up with for themselves. But resisting those ideas just causes more conflict. One of the appealing things about Lost at School was that it gave me a way to step out of an authoritarian or disciplinarian role that was ill-suited to me, and frankly usually made things worse. But it meant accepting ideas that just seemed odd to me, that I wouldn’t have thought of myself. “How about I can always leave in one earbud but I won’t play music from it while you’re talking?” (Worked.) “How about whenever I start to feel angry I can just take a lap around the school building?” (Didn’t work, but also wasn’t necessary to use for the rest of our semester).
When my sons tell me that the “solution” to their problem is to throw something away forever, my first impulse as a parent is to correct them — that’s not the way we solve problems; we don’t throw toys away. But the thing is, this is the way we solve problems, coming up with solutions that everyone agrees to. If I have a problem with throwing the toy away (which I do), I just need to reframe it, not reject it out of hand.
So what happened after the Frisbee landed on the balcony? They played something else for about two minutes. Then big brother told little brother he was going to go get the Frisbee and bring it back down. Little brother said “OK.” Big brother got the Frisbee, brought it down. Neither was interested in it, so they did something else. The conflict was resolved.
The people experiencing the conflict have the primary role in articulating the conflict and then finding its solution. Sometimes the conflict is surprising when you work out what the problem really is; more often the conflict is understandable but the solution is surprising. Either way, that agreement between the people experiencing conflict (teacher to student, parent to child, child to child) is the whole point. If both parties say throw the Frisbee away, you need to find a way to make it work. More often than not, it works.
