Raising Mediators

Parents accessing powerful research and ideas to strengthen family relationships.

Emily's new book: Conflict Fluent is now available on Amazon.

For her book launch, Emily interviewed on the Lisa Valentine Clark Show on BYU Radio specifically about parent-led mediation.

When we set appropriate expectations, we will find ourselves more patient and able to truly teach and appreciate the stages of our children's development.
Listen hear for my recent BYU Radio segment.

Emily's first book called Raising Mediators is available through Ingram Spark and on Amazon . This book explores how parents can implement mediation principles to teach their children collaborative problem solving, perspective taking, and empathy skills.

For more general articles on conflict resolution for all ages and situations, visit Emily's web site at www.conflictfluent.com.

In April 2019, Emily interviewed with Lisa Valentine Clark about the power of sibling relationships. Eighty percent of people in the western world grow up with at least one sibling and usually sibling relationships are our longest family relationships in our lives. Click here for the full interview.

Click to listen to Emily's interview with Julie Rose of BYU Radio's Top of Mind program. Learn more about Emily's recent book entitled Raising Mediators: How Smart Parents Use Mediation to Transform Sibling Conflict and Empower Their Children. This interview from 2017 features in depth questions and explanations.

In June 2018, Emily presented a webinar with Family Matters, a parent information network based in Illinois. The webinar topic: how parents can work collaboratively with teachers and school administrators.

In the Winter 2018 Issue, BYU Magazine featured a full-page article on Raising Mediators and Emily de Schweinitz Taylor as a mediating mom. Click here to read the full article.

Introduction

You might ask yourself, why would I want to raise mediators? Or, what is a mediator anyway? First off, a mediator is a communications facilitator who helps disputing parties work out their own agreements with each other. Mediators help people see both sides, share perspectives, and resolve conflicts collaboratively.

In the home, a parent-mediator controls a communication process between two or more fighting children that involves sharing, listening, reframing, brainstorming, and collaborative decision-making. In theory and practice, parent-led mediation preserves a parents’ natural desire for oversight while allowing children the autonomy of crafting their own solutions to conflicts with their siblings.

Rather than assume our children will learn collaborative problem-solving, perspective taking, and empathy in a vacuum, as parent mediators, we take an active stance in teaching our children how to work out their more intense, recurring conflicts with each other. Over time, our children gain the ability to collaboratively problem solve without our oversight. In short, our input of direct communications training during our children’s younger years will help us raise a generation of mediators prepared to handle the conflicts our children will naturally encounter throughout their lives.

Sibling Conflict

With the average preschooler conflicting with a sibling up to eight times per hour, most parents report that sibling conflict presents an important, ongoing home management issue. While our children typically develop greater verbal expression as they mature, sibling conflict may continue at similar rates with greater aggression on into adolescence. Naturally, as parents, many of us are quite interested in decreasing these conflict patterns between our children without becoming overly aggressive ourselves.

Academic researchers have begun studying the influence of both positive and negative sibling relationships on an individual child's social development and adjustment over time. As a child's first "near peer" relationship, sibling relationship quality does heavily influence a child's development for good or ill. As parents, we are in an excellent position to help our children learn to problem solve, empathize, and perspective take with each other. Research confirms that, as parents, we should teach these socio-cognitive skills both by example and direct instruction, especially with our young children.

Child Development Research

As a graduate student in a master's program focused on conflict resolution, I noticed that the academic child development research I accessed is very hard to find outside of the university setting. Unless an academic chooses to write a book, very few parents would know about important, ongoing family research studies that could benefit our children, spouses, friends, and extended family.

My book, Raising Mediators, draws largely from current family conflict management studies to explore how parents can access and apply mediation principles in the home with their children.

Mediation

During the past ten to fifteen years, Canadian child development researchers have explored the effectiveness of parent-led mediation to resolve sibling conflict.

Results of parent-led mediation in controlled academic studies demonstrate very positive results for both parents and children. Not only do children and parents express greater satisfaction with the mediation process, but younger siblings are empowered, older children take younger siblings thoughts and feelings into account, and children (from 2.6 to 11 years old) succeed in collaboratively problem solving with each other.

In addition to resolving sibling conflict, parent-led mediation assists children in developing the key social skills of empathy and perspective taking. Developing these essential social skills during childhood may naturally lead to greater social stability and more successful relationships over time.

Basic Steps of Parent-led Mediation

Using the acronym TEACH ME, we follow the subsequent seven basic steps or phases for successful parent-led mediation:

T ake the time to assess conflict intensity, constancy, and current communication skills and abilities
E stablish rules and roles for the interaction
A cknowledge alternate views and give time for each person to share without interruption
C larify through questions and reflection of each other’s emotions to make sure that true interests and goals are unearthed and understood
H ear all ideas before reframing conflict as a joint problem
M ake a choice together that includes the primary interests of all involved parties
E xpect modifications to chosen solutions because conflict is a dynamic process requiring change

Nonviolent Communication

Through the course of my conflict resolution studies, I discovered a very powerful method of communication for any human relationship. Developed by the late Dr. Marshall Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication outlines four essential steps for individuals to take when asking others to make changes to enrich their lives.
These four essential steps include:

Making a direct, concrete observation of a behavior without adding an evaluation.
Expressing a true personal feeling related to the observation shared.
Attaching a personal need with the feeling expressed.
Making a request for a concrete action based on the expressed feelings and need in the previous steps.