The Lost Art of Conflict Resolution

"Miss Hawks, he messed up our pool game" was said to me during lunch duty.

My school is fortunate enough to have a basketball cage, foosball table, and pool table in the cafeteria for students to use as energy release after they have eaten.  When this 8th-grade child reported that someone messed up the game, I didn't realize he was asking me to intervene.  I said, "okay" and began to walk away.  He said, "Aren't you going to talk to him?"  I can't remember if I said it out loud or not, but my thoughts were, "Seriously?  You want adult intervention because someone is playing pool wrong?"  He was absolutely horrified when I told him they had to work that out amongst themselves.  "I told him I didn't like it.  Aren't you going to do something?"  I said, "Work it out."

A week later, the topic of our weekly homeroom was "sort of bullying."  The reason I say "sort of" is that my school is mostly made up of kids that have been in the same class since elementary school.  That leads them to often behave like brothers and sisters.  While that may sometimes lead to actual bullying, more often than not it leads to sibling style teasing that just goes to far.  In homeroom, we were discussing ways a person might go about addressing that.  Juniors and seniors said, "First tell them you don't like it.  If that doesn't work, go to the principal."  Another option they presented was to hit them really hard if telling them you didn't like it hadn't worked.  I was flabbergasted that they went straight to the most extreme solutions.  Does a principal really need to get involved if someone who likes you teases you more than they should?  Actual bullying is different.  That may require adult intervention, but that wasn't the discussion we were having.  Is there really not an intermediate step between saying, "I don't like what you are doing" and hitting someone?

These two events made me realize that millennial kids and those who come after them have no concept of conflict resolution.  This comes from the fact that they were never alone.  There is no time in a child's life when an adult isn't within earshot. When I was a kid in the 80's, my friends and I spent a fair amount of time alone.  We played in someone's backyard or the creek near Shelley Lake or in the street until the street lights came on.  If someone messed up a game, we either worked it out or we didn't, but there wasn't adult intervention because there wasn't an adult nearby.  Now, because parents are afraid to let their children be alone, they are rarely out of your eye line, much less out of tattling range.  As soon as the slightest disagreement arises, there's an adult jumping in to say, "You guys need to share." or "If you fight over it, I am going to take it away." or "Be nice." or "He didn't mean to."  Conflicts are never resolved because the adult just puts a stop to whatever is happening.

I've spent a lot of time since those events thinking about what it means that I have juniors and seniors and 8th graders with no conflict resolution skills.  Those seniors will soon be living in the dorm.  There is no time in my life that I needed conflict resolution more than that.  They WILL have conflicts with their roommates, and the problems they have with them will have to be resolved because they live in a tiny room together.  They will be married and have no idea how to end a fight with their spouse.  I am actually concerned that the divorce rate will soar even higher than it already has.  If we send out into the world a generation of adults who believe that there are no steps between telling someone to stop and hitting them, what is going to happen to the crime rate?

Teachers, parents, grandparents, and anyone else who spends time with children, may I have your attention.  I beg of you, stop stepping into every disagreement.  Allow kids to argue and work things out among themselves.  An insincere apology doesn't mean anything.  One of them may need to apologize, but it shouldn't be because their mom made them when they weren't really sorry.  If we don't allow them to learn conflict resolution even when it is messy to do so, we will have a generation of adults who are always in conflict with no idea how to get out.