How To Resolve Conflicts Without Punishment?

Parents are also overwhelmed with emotions, and in some tense moments they lose patience and end up punishing their children. They often do so without realizing that this reaction reinforces negative behaviors in children. In order to learn to resolve conflicts without punishment, the ideal is, as educators, to cultivate your emotional intelligence and learn strategies to change the game in aggressive and stressful situations that we sometimes have to deal with. Thus, you will be able to manage conflicts without punishment.

There is no longer any doubt that punishments are not meant to provide long-term learning. This happens because punishment does not change the causes that provoke inappropriate behavior and, far from improving the situation, it brings more negative emotions to the child in relation to whoever imposes it. That is why it is necessary to learn other ways to show children how to constructively deal with conflict situations.

How to manage to do this? That is the question. A good strategy is to work in two directions in parallel. One is reflection, and the other is intervention. But before that it is necessary to cultivate patience, empathy and creativity. Educating children requires reprogramming and learning to remain calm at all times. This will make a difference, because with peace of mind you will be able to act instead of reacting, imposing punishment on your children.

Defuse conflicts without punishment

To learn how to resolve conflicts without resorting to punishment, it is first necessary to reflect on whether your child is really misbehaving. It is appropriate to think about what criteria your behavior is inappropriate. If so, think about what caused that behavior, and what is behind the bad behavior.

Keep in mind that often, behind some of the children’s inappropriate behaviors, what prevails is the absence of tools and information that would have allowed the child to act otherwise.

It’s good to know that when we’re in the heat of a conflict that gives rise to anger or aggression, it’s best not to act under the influence of that emotional state. But instead, when it comes to an assault between siblings – a relatively frequent scene – the first thing you should do is separate them, and make sure the assaulted one is safe. However, the most important thing is not to put more fire on the conflict, and to avoid increasing the fight and aggression in the situation.

At this point, the best thing you can do is to stay by the child’s side in a quiet and peaceful way, until he calms down. You can hug her if she lets you. Try to calm the child down with a few words, without the intention of seeking guardians or answers about what happened. When the child is calm, start talking to him.

Then, quietly, you should ask your child to describe what happened. When he does, listen without correcting or judging. If your child is unable to do this because he is too young or because he lacks language resources, you can help him reconstruct the facts, but always in measured and conciliatory language.

The focus of this conversation is that the child is able to identify the emotion that caused him to behave inappropriately or violently, and what he felt after having behaved in this way. Recognizing the emotion is very important, as is not inhibiting it. The idea is that you teach your child to identify emotions and manage them appropriately. It’s okay to feel angry, but it’s not okay to react by hitting another child, for example.

Controlling emotions is a key point.

Teach your child to recognize and validate their emotions. All emotions are part of our human nature, so judging them as good or bad leads to guilt and prevents them from being properly channeled.

You can also explain to your child how you feel about his misbehavior. Use appropriate words and call each emotion by its name, for example: “I felt frustrated, upset and sad”. Avoid using phrases like “you made me feel…”. When you say “I felt frustrated”, it demonstrates that you assume your emotions and don’t transfer responsibility for them to the child.

You can help your child develop empathy through everyday examples that connect them with a similar emotion. To do this, you can rely on movies, drawings, stories, something happening at school… You need to remind the child of the issues you talked about and, if necessary, go back to talking about the same things as often as necessary. . By doing this, we avoid those annoying phrases, such as “how many times have I said that…”.

Children need less punishment and more words. Science has already demonstrated this, as it is common knowledge that our brain has a very difficult time processing the word “no”. Thus, you are much more likely to be heard when you structure your sentences positively than negatively.