It happened again today. An article in a popular women’s magazine was counseling parents about how to manage sibling conflict. What was the number one suggestion? Let them figure it out on their own without intervening. Are you kidding me?!
It never ceases to amaze me the same people who have us baby proofing everything within five miles of our kids and spending hours with them driving in circles around a parking lot, also tell us to allow children to teach themselves conflict resolution. No wonder our world is filled with people who yell, scream and hit when they are angry. They are using the same conflict resolution skills they “figured out for themselves” at age four or five!
Suddenly when people join the business world or marry as adults, they are expected to have the conflict resolution skills of a top attorney. If they are Christian, people expect them to resolve conflict with the same skills Jesus possessed. Adults who were told to figure things out on their own for the previous couple of decades and now have to learn actual conflict management skills have made a lot of people who write books and conduct seminars very wealthy.
Please don’t put your children in a position to ruin relationships, careers and even tear apart churches because you never taught them how to resolve conflict in godly ways. Teach them how God wants us to resolve conflict. If you struggle with handling conflict yourself, here are some basic tips to begin teaching your kids whenever a conflict arises:
This summer I spent a lot of time doing empathy workshops with teens and adults. Every group I work with lists empathy workshops as their number one need in training volunteers. I thought it had to do with empathy issues, but it turns out one of the main problems people who serve others have is the words that volunteers say to the people they are supposed to be serving.
If you read many business, parenting or leadership books, you will eventually encounter several authors who suggest you can’t really achieve your goals without a mission statement. Now I’m not one for all that formality, but the principle is not bad. If you don’t know where you are headed with your parenting, how will you know how to get there?
Children rarely hear about leadership in their Bible classes. Teens may hear the words occasionally in youth group, but usually it’s more about getting the other teens to behave than anything else. Even adults rarely get teaching on leadership. The church is suffering because we aren’t preparing people to be godly leaders. (I’m sure all of us have horror stories about a Church leader or two with the leadership skills of a not so benevolent dictator.)