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Prevent

Words to help children avoid conflicts on their own

Fights and tantrums can often arise when children play together. Children may struggle to manage emotions and lack the ability to communicate effectively with other children. Not having the skills to navigate the complex world of social interactions leaves children with few tools to manage them. As a result, children may resort to physical responses such as screaming, pushing, or fighting. Naturally, this escalates conflicts and can result in full-blown fights, leaving parents perplexed as to how to help children through these conflicts.

Learning to avoid these conflicts in a peaceful way through calm communication is an important life skill that can be learned early. Parents can proactively teach their children to avoid conflicts on their own by using simple words or sentences such as “Please give my body space” or “Can I play with this toy?”. By learning to use these simple words in common challenging situations, children may be able to avoid fights or tantrums on their own without parental intervention. Teaching and modeling these behaviors requires parents to be patient and persistent. However, these efforts will ultimately pay off with children developing improved conflict resolution and social development skills.

Cartoon 12 presents four examples of simple words that parents can teach their children to avoid common conflicts.

Categories
Prevent

Prevent tantrums before they even start

Unfortunately, most parents follow a reactionary approach and try to find solutions only after a challenging situation has started. This results in parents constantly trying to resolve conflicts as they happen, multiple times per day. Because of this reactionary approach, these challenging situations keep happening again and again, pushing parents to the brink of mental exhaustion (“You can share, it’s not that complicated!!”).

Parents can work proactively to prevent some tantrums from happening altogether. Cartoons 10 and 11 present an easy step-by-step method to proactively identify and reduce tantrums and challenging situations. We will take the example of a family experiencing frequent fights between siblings over toys (cartoon 10) and challenging car rides (cartoon 11). Cartoon 12 gives simple examples of words you can teach children to help them prevent conflicts on their own.

Cartoons for this Magic Way:

Cartoon 10: Proactively prevent tantrums (fights over toys).

Cartoon 11: Proactively prevent tantrums (road rage).

Cartoon 12: Words to help children prevent conflicts on their own.