Transcript for Teaching Preschool Children Conflict Resolution Skills
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Dr. Carlo ta Schechter, Expert: When you first see children involved in a conflict, I think it’s important to step back and think about what your primary goal is. Your goal is to make this a learning opportunity for the children. So, the goal is not to end the conflict immediately. The goal is not to stop conflicts from happening. But the goal is, when the children are in a conflict situation, to try and help them learn the skills they need to be able to resolve a conflict independently.
It’s winter now in our school, so a big learning goal for us is helping children get their snow pant and their boots on when they’re getting ready to go outside. It would be a lot quicker for us if we as the adults put their boots on for them. But then we wouldn’t be teaching them anything. It wouldn’t be a learning opportunity. The same thing’s true with conflicts. If children are struggling over a marker, it would be a lot easier for us to hand them another marker, so they’d have two markers. Or to separate the children, or to intervene in some way. But that would not be a learning opportunity. As children begin to learn to use this conflict resolution procedure, they will begin to find non-aggressive ways to resolve conflicts, and aggression will begin to decrease in a classroom. So it’s really important to institute that procedure.
The children who learn those conflict resolution strategies are likely to be less aggressive as they get to be older children. They’re less likely to be the children who bully other children. They’re also more likely to stand up for their own rights, and not be bullied as they get older.
© 2007 Center for Early Childhood Education at Eastern Connecticut State University
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