 Three-year-old Sarah has just taken five-year-old Jack’s favorite toy and has run to her room to play with it alone. You’ve heard Sarah complain to you that she never gets to play with Jack’s remote control car, but she’s taken the toy without permission. You find Jack screaming and Sarah refusing to open her bedroom door for you or her brother. You understand Sarah’s feelings, but you also want to teach her respect for other people’s property. Here is a situation that demands teaching not only property rights, but also emotional understanding, perspective taking, empathy, and self-control. You will probably not choose to teach all of the skills at once, but instead of just focusing on property rights, you might want to consider teaching fundamental social and emotional skills, too.
In this post, we will focus on the developmental possibilities for preschool aged children (3-5 years old) to learn four identified social and emotional skills that undergird constructive conflict management. To better understand what and how to teach preschoolers, we continue investigating insights from Dr. Sandra V. Sandy's article entitled, “The Development of Conflict Resolution Skills: Preschool to Adulthood.” Sandy, Sandra V. 2014. “The Development of Conflict Resolution Skills: Preschool to Adulthood.” In Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice, edited by Coleman, Peter T., Morton Deutsch, and Eric C. Marcus, 430-463. San Francisco: John Wiley and Sons, Inc. Social-Emotional Pillars for Effective Conflict Resolution From Sandy’s article, we focus on just four essential social-emotional skills that serve as anchors for our children’s behavior in conflict situations. Parents can begin cultivating these essential skills in their children from a very young age. These four skills include: Emotional Understanding
Central Task for Social Learning Among Preschoolers: Emotional Maturation Sandy identifies emotional maturation as the most important task of early childhood. Additionally, Sandy says that “although children appear to have some level of innate capacity for certain social-emotional responses, such as empathy and perspective taking, these are frequently hit-or-miss skills unless the child is effectively tutored by an adult. Since interpersonal understanding is influenced more by experience than by age, a three-year old can be at a higher development level than a six-year old.” Parents and caregivers play a critical role in helping preschoolers develop these four essential skills. Before exploring developmental milestones related to each of these skills, we will briefly discuss keys to teaching preschoolers and present a few main reasons why children’s early learning years between 0-5 years old is so important in the grand scheme of social and emotional development. Keys to Teaching Preschoolers Conflict Resolution Skills
Why Focus on Teaching Constructive Communication Skills During Early Childhood (0 to 5 years old)?
Emotional Understanding As parents, we often demand that our children understand and respect other people’s feelings (including our own), but first our children need to be able to appropriately express and understand their own feelings. To develop the more sophisticated traits of perspective taking and empathy, we must first help our children understand and express their own emotions in constructive ways. This is the basis of all further emotional understanding and maturity. In terms of developing emotional understanding, Sandy identifies the following constraints in development:
Each of these points emphasize the need for specific, targeted teaching to our young children. We can help coach our children in the right direction while not expecting too much too soon from our young, developing people. Perspective Taking and Empathy In the past, child development theorists did not believe little children capable of empathy largely because they believed that children younger than six or seven are unable to see more than one side to a conflict. Theorists believed that without the ability to see beyond their own viewpoint, children could not take the perspective of another person or understand the feelings of another person. Yet, more modern research has suggested that young children are not only capable of perspective taking and empathy, but develop these abilities alongside a development trajectory. Yet, this trajectory is significantly associated with parent tutoring and child experience. As suggested previously, a young child of 3 may have developed greater empathy than a 6-year old based on parent involvement and constructive experience with empathy. In short, nurture significantly influences a child in this area of emotional development.
In terms of parenting per our children’s development, we should consider the following about general perspective taking abilities:
Rather than accuse our children of selfishness or egocentrism, we can gently, but deliberately, nurture the idea of diverse perspectives and feelings. In the meantime, while preschoolers’ brains needs time to mature, young children are very capable of imitating empathetic behavior. See Siddiqui and Ross (2004), Smith and Ross (2007), Ross and Lazinski (2014) for research on the potential for young children to take the perspective of another and to empathize through imitation of constructive parent and sibling conflict behavior. Self-Control Naturally, with surging emotions and expanding autonomy, preschoolers are in the thick of learning how to regulate their thoughts, emotions, and behavior. To better understand developmental constraints or milestones surrounding self-control, Sandy directly quotes Maccoby (1980) who identified four forms of self-control or inhibition milestones in childhood: Movement: Prior to age six or seven, children have difficulty in stopping an action already in progress. (Think calling a child to dinner during a favorite show on Netflix). Emotions: Before age four, young children have little control over the intensity of their emotions. (Think throwing a tantrum over burnt toast in the same manner as when the dog just died yesterday). Reflection: Before age six or so, children commonly fail to engage in the reflection necessary to perform well. (Think a negative sharing episode or a failed first bike ride). Gratification: Children under 12 often have difficulty in refusing immediate gratification to wait for a better choice later. (Think gorging on Halloween candy all at once rather than eating just one piece a day). As you can see, preschoolers are often not capable of self-regulating in the ways we desire for them. When we ask our preschooler to switch gears in the middle of a task, or stop crying over something small, we need to recognize that our children may not yet be developmentally capable of what we are asking of them. In patience, we can remind ourselves that our children may be trying the best they can so we need to take incremental steps to help them towards the overall goal of emotional maturity. As parents, we can certainly do our part and carefully consider the fact that these skills are often more influenced by experience rather than age. In short, we can step up and tutor our children in these most fundamental conflict resolution skills of emotional understanding, perspective taking, empathy, and self-control to help our children develop up to their full potential.
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 The Tendency to Focus Mostly on Academic Developmental Milestones
My six-year-old daughter, Lucie, is considered a “young” first grader because she was born in July 2010. While she enjoys many aspects of attending elementary school, she still struggles with learning to read and write; much more so than any of my other four children. When recently meeting with her teacher and her school’s reading specialist, I learned that while Lucie is now minimally proficient considering national averages, she will need extra work to get up to speed in reading. To facilitate Lucie’s reading development, each night, we pull out her special purple reading bag to review a few books along with various sight words she is required to memorize. The teachers assure me that memorizing sight words will help anchor her reading in greater comprehension without having to sound out each word one by one. During our nearly 30 minutes of reading together each night, I am spending direct energy in trying to help Lucie learn how to read and understand what she reads. At times, I must painfully wait as she sounds out a word during a space of 30-60 seconds, which feels like an eternity during a short story. She is making progress, but it is sometimes slow. Throughout her childhood, I know that Lucie will continue to be measured, graded, and monitored for her reading and writing skills. At school, teachers and specialists will make sure that she is moving along a steady development trajectory appropriate to her age and per national averages. At home, I will continue to take specific steps to help her meet her academic goals. In short, both at home and at school, important adults in Lucie’s life will be working to make sure that Lucie stays on track to reach important academic development milestones. The Need to Cultivate More Areas of Social, Emotional, and Cognitive Development As a society, we put a lot of effort into, and tend to be knowledgeable about, how to help our children keep up with cognitive developmental milestones in academic areas like reading or math. Yet, we are often much less informed and less knowledgeable about our children’s mental, emotional, and social development milestones related to conflict resolution. While we intuitively know these “soft” skills heavily influence our children and families’ well-being, we often do not directly teach them to our children at home or at school. Knowing these two facts that (1) we often lack adequate knowledge about our children’s important social, emotional, and cognitive milestones related to conflict resolution AND (2) we do not often teach these skills enough directly at home or at school, I have chosen to investigate the following two fundamental questions:
Sandy, Sandra V. 2014. “The Development of Conflict Resolution Skills: Preschool to Adulthood.” In Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice, edited by Coleman, Peter T., Morton Deutsch, and Eric C. Marcus, 430-463. San Francisco: John Wiley and Sons, Inc. This one article is packed with insights about preschool, middle childhood aged, and teenage children’s development related to conflict resolution. Given the amount of valuable parenting information in Sandy’s article, I will be writing several successive blog posts based on this one article. In today’s post, we will investigate the first question about what social, emotional, and cognitive skills serve as foundational skills for constructive conflict resolution. “Sight” Skills for Effective Conflict Resolution Like Lucie’s sight words which anchor her reading abilities, there are “sight” skills for resolving conflict, which will anchor our children’s behavior in conflict situations. Sandy identifies five essential skills that parents can begin cultivating in their children from a very young age:
Making these social and emotional skills solid, natural, and even automatic through habit, will definitely positively influence our children’s relationships throughout a lifetime. With these strong interpersonal skills, our children will be able to better handle the more complicated and stressful life experiences they will naturally encounter as they mature into adulthood. Alternatively, without reaching these important emotional milestones, our children “are at risk of retaining negative traits [such] as impulsivity, emotional functioning, behavioral problems, and even a propensity to violence.” All around us, and perhaps in our own homes, we are witnessing the need for helping our children develop their social and emotional abilities to effectively resolve differences with others. Often, we attribute our children’s emotional understanding, empathy, perspective taking, self-control, and relationship building skills primarily to temperament or personality. But, we need to consider these skills more in terms of developmental skills rather than personality attributes because they can be learned (or relearned) and are heavily influenced by our teaching. Children—especially young children—are extremely flexible in terms of social learning. The patterns we set early in our children’s lives lay the foundation for more complicated and sophisticated social behaviors that will evolve as our children mature. The Role of Nurture in Developing Children’s Mental, Emotional, and Social Skills and Abilities Considering the importance of conflict resolution skills over a person’s lifetime, we should carefully consider the fact that these skills are often more influenced by experience rather than age. Specifically, Sandy says that “although children appear to have some level of innate capacity for certain social-emotional responses, such as empathy and perspective taking, these are frequently hit-or-miss skills unless the child is effectively tutored by an adult. Since interpersonal understanding is influenced more by experience than by age, a three-year old can be at a higher development level than a six-year old.” While genetics has a role in our children’s development, Sandy affirms that nurture has a strong influence in any child’s life. In terms of social, emotional, and social development, experience often has a stronger influence than age in promoting child well-being and successful relationship building. This means that your parenting can make an enormous difference in how effectively your child develops these key skills related to conflict resolution. In the past child development experts, such as Piaget and Erickson, have talked about child development in terms of distinct phases that children pass through. In more recent years, child development specialists, consider children’s development more in terms of a spectrum that is heavily influenced by role models not only demonstrating skills, but also directly teaching interpersonal skills to even very young children. Why does understanding child development milestones matter to my parenting? We tend to parent differently when we understand important cognitive, emotional, and physical capabilities that differentiate preschoolers, elementary school-aged children, and teenagers. Rather than demand that our children immediately meet adult standards of behavior and thought, we can pace out our expectations for our children’s mastery of emotional understanding, empathy, perspective taking, self-control, and relationship building. As we better understand our children’s actual developmental possibilities, we will take the time and put the energy into cultivating our children’s development like my nightly reading with Lucie. With greater knowledge, we can teach age-appropriate skills and exercise more patience knowing that our children are still maturing cognitively, socially, and emotionally. With solid social and emotional skills, our children will eventually be able to deal with conflict in more sophisticated ways. Breaking down these skills into smaller pieces may help us not only model, but also directly teach how to empathize, regulate emotion, take the perspective of another person, exercise self-control, and build positive relationships with others. Upcoming Blog Post: Understanding Preschooler’s Developmental Abilities with Conflict Resolution Next week, we will continue exploring insights from Sandy's article and focus on the developmental possibilities for preschool aged children (3-5 years old) to learn the five-identified social and emotional skills that undergird constructive conflict management. |
Emily de Schweinitz Taylor
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