impaired weekend: Conflict Coaching and Management For Today's Youth

Our children are our future. Stop and think about children over the last several decades and how their roles have changed and evolved over the years. How did a child in the 60s or 70s differ from a child in the 80s or 90s? Here we are today, almost 10 years into the new millennium, an era of incredible technology advances, strong competition for achievement and material gain, changes in gender roles and most importantly, changes in family dynamics. Life is continuously changing and this is expected. We are an ever growing, ever changing society. But with such dramatic shifts in social norms and behaviors over the last 30 years or so, can we still expect to raise and teach our children as we were taught when we were young, which was predominately in authoritarian households? We will look at three individual scenarios which have been taken from a recent family dynamics study. All three cases are families in the new millennium brought up in the United States.

Three Family Dynamic Case Studies

Sheila is an 18 year old teenage girl beginning her freshman year of college. She has two younger siblings and lives in a middle class home with both her parents. Sheila?s father is an insurance adjuster and her mother works as a secretary. Growing up, Sheila was predominately a straight A student, with a limited social group of friends. From the family perspective she would appear to be a child product from the typical middle class family. Sheila is also a drug addict.

Mark is a 20 year old young man and a sophomore in college. He has a younger brother and is a product of a broken home. His mother divorced his father when he was three years old. She was the primary sole provider for her family and attended school in the evenings. Mark was an average student during high school, was active in sports and had a wide variety of friends. He is active in local Christian youth programs and is majoring in elementary education.

Maria, 16, and Luis, 17, are brother and sister and live in the Bronx. Their mother is on welfare and their father left them when they were toddlers. They attend the local high school which is patrolled by security and covered in iron bars. Drugs and violence are rampant. Maria is a good student and finds protection in solitude, while Luis has been arrested on numerous occasions for drugs and theft and will barely graduate high school.

These are just a sampling of the differences in children, their family dynamics and how they deal with conflict. Of course, every child has their own story, their own accounts of their failures and their successes. Every child is a product of our family values and our society. We are now almost ten years into the millennium and as we review the past several decades we see how society has changed and how it has affected the family unit. One aspect of life that has never changed is conflict. Conflict is and always will be a part of life. However, how we handle conflict has changed and conflict awareness and education is at the forefront of this modern age.

Conflict Defined

In her article, Conflict?A New Perspective, Julie Fauimano, MBA, BSN, RN, Success Coach, defined conflict as ?two or more people seeing things from different perspectives, given their education, background, upbringing, knowledge of the issue, beliefs, time of day, mood, etc??. Simply put conflict is diversity of thought. From this brief definition we see that conflict is more than just a disagreement, but rather a combination of sources ranging from our education to our mood. Most hear the term conflict and automatically associate it as a negative behavior. Many times when someone disagrees with our position we take it as a personal attack and we jump to the defense. However, conflict can be positive if we allow ourselves to be open to new ideas and different perspectives to an issue.

History has shown that we often don?t think about conflict until we need third party assistance to help us sort out our issues. Counseling, mediation and litigation are all methods of conflict resolution. However, in the past decade, more attention is being put on the psychology aspect conflict by studying family dynamics, parenting styles, social interactions and conflict resolution education. In the past, we have always associated disputes with litigation, or in the judicial sense. Now, we are looking at conflict and conflict management proactively by attempting to understand what drives individuals personally, and how we can educate society, beginning with our children in addressing issues in a positive, productive manner.

Parental Influence and Behavior

As we think about our three cases at the introduction of this paper. All of these children are teenagers struggling to survive and find their way in today?s world. Each child is from a different ethnic and religious background, each representative of a unique family unit. Add to this the varying parenting styles, social influences, their predetermined personality traits, personal goals and life experiences and you can understand how each individual approaches conflict in a different way.

With all the various influences on our children today, parents are the #1 influence. We are our children?s role models. Parenting styles and their effects on children have been studied over the years and have been broken down into three categories: Authoritarian, Permissive and Authoritative. Understanding the three styles of parenting in relation to conflict resolution is the first step in understanding how children think, behave and react within their environment.

The Authoritarian Parent. Authoritarian parents expect their children to obey their rules exactly and often use reward and punishment to keep their children in line. With authoritarian style parenting, some children strive to please their parents to avoid punishment and do not feel comfortable communicating with the parent their feelings for fear of disappointing their parent or punishment. Some children may resent their parents or even rebel against their strict rules.

The Permissive Parent. This is a permissive form of parenting which provides little or no structure to the children. The no limits and guidelines are often few or fuzzy. Without limits, children are likely to have a difficult time getting along with peers and learning how to behave in society. Permissive parenting is a very free and open form of parenting, one that is typical of a single parent home or a home where both parents work and do not make family time a priority.

The Authoritative Parent. Authoritative is a democratic style of parenting which balances rights with responsibilities. This form of parenting allows limits to be set for children while providing them with choices within those limits. By giving choices to your children you are expressing to them that their opinions are important and their choices may carry an undesired outcome and consequence. Authoritative parenting better prepares the child for independence in society. It provides teaches them compromise and instills the understanding that we learn by our choices and consequences of those choices.

Family Dynamics

Back in the 50?s and 60?s the family unit typically consisted of the Father/Provider and Mother/Caregiver. The father was the decision maker and provided financially for the family while the mother took care of the home and the children. This is also referred as the ?nuclear family?. Through the years the changes in our society with gender roles changing, women desiring careers outside the home, pushing for equality with men, desiring their own financial independence, the family unit has changed drastically. Children of divorce are more prevalent than ever before with the divorce rate being at 50% as compared to 22% back in 1960. (DivorceRate.com, 2008). Now we have a more diverse family unit made up of single parent homes, children being raised by grandparents and blended families resulting from remarriage. Vast changes in the family core have opened the door to many other life challenges within the family unit, especially pertaining to the children.

Divorce not only affects the parent but the child as well. Studies have shown that children demonstrate their anxiety over the divorce of their parents in varying ways many times dependent upon the age at which the divorce occurs. The pain children experience from divorce can consist of vulnerability, insecurity, grief, loss, anger and powerlessness. Additionally, the relationship between the parent and child changes as the custodial parent may experience disorganization, anger, decreased expectations of their children for appropriate social behavior or aka, diminished parenting. Furthermore, studies have shown that a child?s post-divorce quality of life can have a major impact on their long term adjustment outcomes. Most frequent concerns of children are that of repeating the cycle of a broken marriage.

For many parents, life continues after divorce and they move onto new relationships which leads them to re-marriage and blended families. Today?s typical family unit consists of step-parents, step children and step-siblings. Our children are thrown into ?instant? families which have already begun to establish their own set of beliefs, standards, ethnic backgrounds, religious beliefs and parenting styles. New personalities, customs, and memories are all added to the blended family household. However, a child is still the child; and the adult is still the adult and we must still remember that even through the tumultuous changes in the family dynamics, we must remember that children still need a balance of love, attention and discipline.

Social Influences

As children grow and attend school, they are highly influenced by their peers. They will become leaders or followers. They will find a specific peer group with which they can identify and form friendships. Peer groups offer children the opportunity to develop various social skills, such as leadership, sharing or teamwork, and empathy. Peer groups also offer the opportunity to experiment with new roles and interactions which is typically the reason that adolescents drift from one group to another as they are in search to ?find themselves,? or work toward the formation of their identity.

Children need acceptance and they are also highly influenced by their peers. Peer groups can have either a negative or a positive influence over a child. When a child is lacks self confidence or self-worth, they will turn to whatever groups that are most accepting, regardless of the groups social and ethical behaviors. However, peer groups can also provide a very positive outlet for a child that can promote positive behaviors and promote academic excellence along with healthy emotional support.

A teen that has been taught appropriate conflict management skills will have an easier time when it comes to peer pressure and social acceptance by learning to balance the value of going along with the crowd against the importance of making their own decisions.

Conflict Management & Resolution Styles of Teenagers

There are three basic approaches by which teenagers handle conflict: the passive approach, the aggressive approach and the assertive approach. The approach the child takes can have a huge impact on the outcome of the disagreement. The Passive Approach. The passive approach is associated with lack of communication, low self worth and fear of confrontation. Passive children are likely to be pushed around with little to no repercussion. Additionally, these children may have a hard time forming friendships and often find friendships are unfulfilling due to the fact that these children are easily taken advantage of.

The Aggressive Approach. This approach uses intimidation and confrontation as its primary source resolving conflict. These children will do whatever necessary to reach their desired outcome, not matter the consequences. They look at conflict as a win/lose situation and take criticisms personally, instead of looking at it as a way to learn and grow. Aggressive children are often labeled as bullies and are either avoided or make friends with other similarly behaved children.

The Assertive Approach. A democratic style of conflict resolution, children take an approach which combines respect with cooperation and compromise. These children have learned how to effectively communicate to convey their opinions while taking into consideration the needs of others. The assertive approach is the most successful approach as it can typically result in a win-win solution for all parties involved. It minimizes the negative feelings of anger and resentment as with the passive and aggressive approaches and replaces it with positive feelings of self-fulfillment. (Carney, 2008).

Teaching Life Skills

Teaching our children important life skills is essential in assisting them with handling conflicts as children and carrying these skills into their adult years. Up until the past decade or so, most of our focus has been on conflict resolution for adults. However, with the increase of disruptive behaviors by adolescents, increased divorce rate and the communication breakdown between parent and child, practitioners are now looking at assisting children in finding a more productive way to handle conflict. In a recent study, 6th and 7th grade children were examined as to how each gender handled conflict. Girls were found to typically rely on verbal assertion where boys showed more aggressive tendencies. Self-efficacy and self-control were found to be significant predictors of conflict resolution styles. Additionally, it is found that by promoting social competencies in our youth, psychosocial problems such as delinquency and drug abuse is reduced and academic achievement increased. (Vera, et. al. 2004)

In recent years, schools, churches and youth programs are implementing conflict resolution programs such as conflict coaching, conflict management workshops, peace building workshops and mediation programs. Evidence is showing that by providing our youth with the appropriate skills early on, we will be teaching them habits they can take with them for a lifetime. Teaching the appropriate social and conflict management behaviors has become just as essential as teaching our children skills in math, science, social studies and english. We can no longer wait until we are adults to begin to figure out how to manage conflict. Children will deal with conflict from their infancy, so why not begin developing the appropriate skills early on.

In sports and athletic events, we have coaches and these coaches support, implement athletic skills for the game, promote team play, character and team unity. In life, we need coaches on a daily basis to keep us on track, accountable, to promote teamwork, family unity, and teach life skills. Life coaches are just as valuable for guiding our youth, as coaches are in guiding our team sports. Counselors or counseling is implemented to fix something that is wrong, but we need to be looking at behavior from the prospective of facilitating and implementing the appropriate skills in our youth for managing their daily conflicts and social issues.

A valuable tool we have is the internet. The birth of the internet has opened a door to endless resources at a touch of a finger tip. Teenagers are one of the most proficient at using the internet, with 55% of all online teens belonging to some sort of social networking site (Lynch 2007). A good outlet for any teen who is facing an issue and wants to communicate their feelings confidentially is by creating an online avenue for teenagers to post their concerns and receive feedback, without revealing their identities. A good example may be a child being pushed around by a bully. Children do not like to appear ?weak? or ?afraid? so they do not report or communicate when another is harassing them. By having an outlet to discuss and seek help anonymously keeps the child feeling empowered, and reduces any possibility of retaliation by the bully.

Our youth need outlets for conflict resolution and education and coaching for conflict management. We are seeing a growth and slow acknowledgment of this in society, but we most become more proactive and start focusing on providing and offering programs to our youth now. We are seeing more and more problems in our society and we have to stop looking at just a fix to the problem, but rather we have to look at proactive ways to educate and communicate with our youth. It is like our health. We can go to the doctor and get a prescription to control high blood pressure, or we can implement a healthy diet and exercise in an effort to keep our blood pressure within normal limits and remain healthy.

Conclusion

Addressing conflict with our children has become a major concern due to our societal changes over the past couple decades. As we have seen there are a variety of factors that contribute to how our children handle conflict, parental influence and social influences being strong factor in a child?s perception of conflict and how to form a resolution. In conclusion, let?s briefly look at our three cases and see if we can determine the factors that contribute to how these children deal with conflict.

First, there was Sheila who was the straight A student, product of what was once considered a ?nuclear? family unit. In Sheila?s situation we can gather that her parent?s had an authoritarian style of parenting, strict rules with no input from their children. Sheila had a small social network and probably had a hard time making friends, so she many times settled for those who would accept her for who she was regardless what the peer group?s beliefs were. As a result, Sheila was not strong enough to weigh the difference between doing her own thing and doing the wrong thing, i.e. drugs, and she found herself lost and unable to appropriately function in society. Sheila?s conflict resolution style would probably be the passive approach as her self-confidence and self esteem levels are probably low and because of the attitudes at home, she may try to avoid confrontation. If Sheila had an outlet, she may have found support and directives that could have lead her to understand why she struggled to fit in and how she could practice confidence building techniques that would help her to walk on her own, instead with individuals who would lead her in the wrong direction.

Next we had Mark, the 20 year old college sophomore. He was the product of divorced parents and his mother worked and attended school. It would appear her time with her children was limited. Although, Mark?s high school grades were not always up to par, he did manage to have a strong social network and was active in school sport activities. From this situation we may observe that Mark?s mother chose the authoritarian style of parenting. She allowed input from her children and gave them choices. For example, Mark?s grades, if he chose not to take his studies seriously he had to deal with the consequences such as not getting to play in the basketball game. His type of conflict resolution style would appear to be that of the assertive approach. He appeared confident enough to know that his needs were just as important as the next person?s and looked for a win-win solution for everyone. Even though his mother was a single parent, she was able to instill the skills necessary for him to cope socially and carry those habits onward into college and beyond. While Mark?s mother, being single mother, was notably busy with work and school, she was still able to teach Mark some important life skills. Mark however, could still have benefitted from a form of life coaching that may have better directed him with his education and life goals.

Finally, we have Maria and Luis. It would appear that Maria has taken over the role of her mother and Luis has decided to rebel. From this situation, it would appear that Maria and Luis? mother uses the permissive parenting style with her children. She is divorced and living on limited means and probably was never taught the social skills while growing up to help her own children. As a result, Maria keeps to herself and does not associate with others at school as a means of protecting herself from what she perceives as a socially diverse and unsafe atmosphere. She probably feels very insecure and unsure of herself and her role amongst her peers. Maria?s conflict resolution style would be similar to that of Sheila?s, passive. Luis on the other hand, being male and more prone to aggression has taken the aggressive route. He is angry with his social and economic situation. He does not have the guidance from home and he is rebelling. He has not been taught the social skills and therefore cannot handle conflict in a productive manner. His style of conflict resolution is easily diagnosed as aggressive. This entire family would benefit from conflict resolution skills training or coaching ? the mother to develop her skills in raising and communicating with her children and the children with developing the positive social skills and conflict resolution skills necessary to carry them throughout the remainder of their lives.

As we can see conflict is a part of life. Whether young or old, there will be issues that need addressing in our marriages, families, businesses, churches, schools and communities. Understanding the psychology of conflict will assist us in being able to better assist our children in developing the skills necessary to successfully manage conflict in their lives. Think about how much the world has changed over the past 30 years or so. Now try to imagine how much more it will change in the next 30 or more years. Investing in conflict resolution coaching and training now with our children will help them to develop the skills that will lead to a more productive, confident individual in the future.

Conflict Coaching and Management For Today's Youth