Negotiating Conflicts: A Developmental Overview · Resolving Conflicts With Children: Issues for Parents · Learning to Wait · Which Decisions Are Up For Grabs? · But He Won't Clean Up His Room · Strategies for Resolving Conflicts Between Parents and Children · Strategies in Action: The Art of Parent-Child Negotiation · Learning to Negotiate · Shopping With Maya: Janis's Story · Teaching Manners · Gracefully Bowing Out of a Conflict · "But I Want Chips!" · Wanting to Be Right · Why It's Important Not to Give In to Kids All the Time ·


Negotiating Conflicts: A Developmental Overview

      In the early days of the parenting relationship most conflicts involve balancing needs. While parents of babies do have to figure out creative ways to meet the needs of all the people in the family, they still have a certain illusion of control. For the most part, babies are portable, they stay where you put them, and you still get to choose what they eat and wear. While some babies are very demanding in terms of their needs for sleep, food and attention, parents still control most of the larger decisions.
      When children enter toddlerhood, all that changes. As toddlers discover their separateness, they are driven to challenge the control of their parents. Both verbally and physically, they branch out on their own, discovering areas of conflict with parents all along the way. Struggles arise over who gets to push the stroller, how many sticks to bring home from the park, how many bottles can be drunk in a day.
      In the preschool years, conflicts between parents and children take on new dimensions. As kids get older, parents' expectations increase, and conflicts may increase accordingly. Parents expect preschoolers to dress themselves, to get out of the house on time, to clean up their toys, and to help with chores. Children, on the other hand, only occasionally want to dress themselves, rarely get ready on your schedule, don't see clean-up as a necessary activity and only want to be helpful if it involves spray bottles, knives or hammers.
      At the same time, three to five-year-olds have learned to state their point of view, to come up with new ideas, to bargain and negotiate. And yet their ability to listen to someone else's point of view is still sketchy, at best. Because they are in love with their own ideas and have a limited ability to include anyone else's, preschoolers often don't take "losing" very gracefully.

Chapter 22: SUPPORTING CHILDREN'S PLAY ANDLEARNING

Learning Through Their Senses: Play and Development · Kids on the Go: Physical Play · "Me Do It": Emotional Learning Through Play · Children's Make-Believe: Creativity & Pretend Play · Understanding My World: Intellectual Learning and Play · Issues for Parents: What About Baby Flashcards? · Kids and Computers · What Is Our Role In Children's Play and Learning? · Homemade Toys · Supporting Children's Language Development · Children Have Their Own Styles of Learning Language · How Do Parents "Teach" Language? · Learning Two Languages · Sharing Books With Children · Selecting Books for Children · Tips for Reading With Children · Making Books For Your Kids ·


Making Books For Your Kids

      One of the most treasured gifts you can give your child is a handmade book. Parents have delighted their children with small, child-sized books about simple, everyday topics: "Maria Ventura is two years old!" "My kitty book," "A Day In the Life of Eric," "People I Love," or "Grandma's visit." (What better way to keep a far-away relative in a child's thoughts?)
      With simple, readily-available materials and a little time and creativity, you can make a book for your child that will quickly become a cherished possession. You don't have to be an artist, a photographer or a writer to make one. Here are some basic ideas for getting started:

. Keep it simple. Even a parent with very little time can put together something a child will love.
. Get some basic supplies. A drug store, stationery store, office supply store or art store can provide you with poster board, magic markers, individual loose-leaf binder rings and glue. Parents have also made books using small photo albums or have used single sheets of plastic to encase some special pictures.
. Take some pictures. You can use single photos or cut them up for a collage. You can have the pictures speak for themselves or you can generate a simple story line. When taking pictures, get close to your subject. You can fill the whole frame with the kitty rather than having a tiny cat on a big rug.
. Protect your original photos. It's a good idea not to use your only copy of a precious photo for your child's book. You can make an extra copy from the negative or try color xeroxing.
. Make it child-friendly. A sturdy book that fits easily in a child's hands, that has pages that are easy to turn, makes your books something a child can 'read' on his own. Laminating pages or covering them with plastic or clear contact paper can protect photos from spills, drool and tooth marks. If you're binding your book, use notebook rings or another method that can't hurt children. If you staple your book together, cover the sharp staple ends with tape.
. Make special books to help children deal with new or scary situations. Parents have made special-interest books: "Jasper Duggan goes to the Westside Child care Center," for a child starting daycare, "Bik's Visit to the Dentist," for a child who feared the dentist, and "When I Had to Get Stitches," which retroactively documented a trip to the hospital. Such books help children work through those experiences.
. Consider giving books as gifts. Grandparents and other relatives love these books. They're a wonderful way to keep family members who are far away in touch with your family. And what better way to chronicle a special visit?

Chapter 23: CHILDREN'S FRIENDSHIPS: COOPERATION & CONFLICTS

Making Friends: An Overview of Social Development · The Evolution of Social Play · Making Friends: How Does It Happen? · Temperament and Friendship: A Wide Range · Helping Children Make Friends: Issues for Parents · Dealing with Children's Conflicts · Assumptions for Successful Conflict Resolution · The Basics of Conflict Resolution · Conflict Resolution in Action: Toddlers · Why It Doesn't Work to Make Kids Say They're Sorry · "I Want the Wagon! I Had It First!" Preschoolers and Conflict Resolution · "You Can't Play With Us": Exclusionary Play · Why Exclusionary Play? A Developmental Look · Responding to Exclusionary Play ·


Assumptions for Successful Conflict Resolution

      We make five basic assumptions about people in conflicts that are at the root of our model for successful intervention in children's conflicts:

. Behind every behavior is an impulse or an attempt to communicate that can be supported. Even "hostile" gestures can come from a basic desire to communicate.
. People hurt others only as much as they themselves are hurting. When children hurt other children, it is often because they are feeling hurt, mad, or scared themselves. A child who pushes another child out of the toy car may be feeling crowded and scared. A child who walks up and hits another child may have just been called a "dummy" by somebody else.
      When a child is hurting other children, it can be hard to remember that he's feeling vulnerable or scared himself. But if you merely punish him, you load more hurt on to the existing hurt, and in the long run, perpetuate the cycle of hurtful behavior. If instead, you take into account his circumstances and motivation, you can approach conflict resolution from a less punitive perspective than, "Let's punish the wrongdoer."
. People in a conflict are best served by a mutual solution. When conflicts are resolved in such that way that somebody "wins" and somebody "loses," there are always scores to be settled later on. Mutual solutions are far more satisfying to everyone in the long run.
. Everyone deserves to be listened to. Really listening to another person's point of view, while being able to clearly state your own, is at the core of effective problem-solving. Listening helps people grow. Even when people's opposing desires, needs and wants make it impossible to come up with a mutual solution, people who feel their ideas have been heard and valued, experience a lot less disappointment and anger when they don't get what they want.
. Conflicts are only resolved when each person involved in the conflict is finished with the interaction. As long as someone in the conflict still has unresolved feelings or ideas about the conflict, the conflict isn't over. All parties need to participate in the resolution of the conflict until it's resolved from everyone's point of view. Some children will need a break before they're ready to talk, but coming back and discussing what happened is important for a sense of real resolution.

For more on helping children work through conflict, see "Helping Children Work Through Conflict."

Chapter 24: WHAT ENABLES CHILDREN TO SHARE?

Issues for Parents: A Culture of Sharing? · How Does My Family Feel About Sharing? · Developmental Readiness: Issues for Toddlers · Do Eight-Month-Old Babies Really Share? · Understanding the Concept of Mine · Developing A Concept of Time · Understanding That There's Enough · Experimenting With Social Interactions · Developing Empathy · Preschoolers and Sharing: Have We Arrived Yet? · The Importance of Modeling · Strategies for Success · What About Taking Turns? · In Time It Will Happen ·


The Importance of Modeling

      Modeling is one way parents can help children learn to share. Let's say your neighbor, Martha, and her four-year-old, Katie, come over to visit. When it's time to go, Katie doesn't want to leave. You try to help by offering her a toy that belongs to Rita, your two-year-old. Rita grabs the toy and starts screaming, "No! Mine!" Now, both kids are holding on and crying. You realize you probably made a mistake. What else could you have done?
      You could have said to Rita, "Katie's having a hard time leaving. Do you have something you can send home with her so that she could feel better?" When Rita answered, "No," you could have replied, "Well, I think I'll look in my things and see if there's something I have that we can send home with Katie." Then you could take Rita with you to find something interesting — a spool of thread or an old magazine — so she could witness the interaction and see first-hand the pleasure it brings Katie. Observing this, Rita might think, 'This is an exciting interaction to be involved in. I want to be part of it, too!' If we take the pressure off children, they're freer to discover the power of generosity.
      When you think in terms of modeling, it's also important to remember that sharing "things" is not the only way to teach kids about generosity. It's also useful for kids to see people sharing of themselves. You can give generously of your time, your listening, your concern. When kids are around people who are generous in spirit, they learn to share more readily."

For more on sharing, see "Two Year Old Grabs All the Toys."

Excerpted from Becoming the Parent You Want to Be: A Sourcebook of Strategies for the First Five Years by Laura Davis and Janis Keyser.
Copyright © 1997 by Laura Davis and Janis Keyser. Excerpted by permission of Broadway Books, a division of the Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.