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Is it even possible to peacefully navigate conflicts?
Most of us grew up in families where conflicts were not managed so well. And when that’s the case, we not only don’t learn conflict resolution skills, we can bring some really unhelpful habits into our adult lives. There’s a good reason the famous quote by Ram Dass is so popular; “If you think you’re enlightened go spend a week with your family!”
We cringe to imagine that our children would grow up to feel uncomfortable to be themselves with us. Instead, we want to break the generations-old patterns of dysfunctional relating. We want to model good communication and conflict resolution skills for our children that will benefit them endlessly throughout their lives.
We want our children to truly feel confident to be themselves and speak their minds and hearts. We want them to feel secure that we care about their feelings and their opinions even when we disagree.
We want them to continue to share the tough stuff with us through their teens and into adulthood with the trust that we will slow down, become present and engage at that heart-to-heart level.
The good news is that these skills really can be learned.
Aspiring to navigate conflicts more skilfully is admirable and worthy of our commitment. Improving communication needs to be an ongoing journey of change and growth that. Love alone isn’t enough to ensure every family member feels truly seen, heard and cared for. For family members to feel truly seen and heard, we parents need to improve our active listening skills. In practicing active, reflective listening, we show our child that we are working to really hear and get them, and we model the same.
Over time as parents learn and master healthy communication skills, they create the culture in the family where conflicts of wants and needs provide teachable moments for everyone to practice active listening, empathy and problem solving skills.
For the dream of increased harmony to become a reality, we need to figure out how to;
1. Reduce the frequency of ruptures,
2. Respond positively and constructively when ruptures happen,
3. Minimise the hurts when tensions rise and
4. Repair ruptures after conflicts.
Healing our hearts
Very few parents grew up in a family where their parents modelled healthy emotional conversations. So, if this is new and daunting as a parent, know that you’re not alone! Healing our hearts and maintaining heart-to-heart conversations is not just an intellectual journey, it’s a journey of healing old wounds and learning to keep an open heart and an open mind despite the deeply programmed urges to shut down and cling to old beliefs.
Wishing to do better than your parents is just the beginning. There’s a lot to learn and indeed unlearn! Childhood patterns and hurts can live on and can be hard to overcome!
Differences of wants and needs are unavoidable, misunderstandings will inevitably happen. But parents CAN learn how to maintain warm connections. It’s the parent’s job to ensure that everyone’s voice is heard. It’s the parent’s job to ensure that conflicts get genuinely resolved and not just silenced or buried.
To shift out of the default patterns of blaming and defending, we need to learn to truly listen and create patient space for our child to express themselves. When we practice this focusing on consciously opening our mind and heart, this process always brings more information to the table. This process of truly listening creates a bridge back to connection.
Fight, flight, freeze or please
It’s normal to believe that the conflict is caused by the other, be it one’s partner or child. And when our version of what has happened differs so dramatically from theirs, it can be very confusing. Attempting to make your child understand you instead of seeking to first understand them often leads to defensiveness and upset. When we’re unable to create space for our child to express themselves, this tends to result in more confusion, distress, and overwhelm.
Our stress response gets triggered quickly and easily when disagreements happen with our child. Being able to consciously identify that this is what’s happening is essential if we’re to break the cycles of stress-passing. Most parents bring from their childhood deeply ingrained reactions to either fight, flight, freeze or please. And as much as these reactions may have been all we could do as children, they rarely lead to satisfying outcomes in our present family dynamics!
Let’s break down the messy dynamics a little to gain more clarity. If we’re to change generations of old patterns, we need to be pretty clear about what the healthier approach to conflicts looks like. And to this end, understanding the different approaches to conflicts can help you find your way back to a more productive approach when you get derailed.
There are three dominant approaches to conflict that we need to be able to identify.
One approach is avoidant and relates to the flight or freeze stress response. The second is the fight stress response and the third healthier approach is to mindfully manage one’s stress response and bring connection into the interaction.
The flight or freeze approach is to try and avoid conflict, the fight stress response is a confrontational approach and the third option is to diffuse and resolve conflict through connection and calm, clear communication.
What are the pitfalls of attempting to avoid conflicts in the family?
Avoidance, the approach for those whose stress response tends to be flight or freeze, tends to have many unforeseen consequences. This is an attachment style that was developed in childhood and may have helped you as a child to better manage your relationship with an emotionally reactive or unavailable parent.
However, as a parent, aiming to simply avoid and discourage conflicts generally results in family members feeling shut down, emotionally suppressed, resentful and misunderstood, and often shamed. And these are the very feelings which lead to increased conflicts in the family!
“Avoidance is the best short-term strategy to escape conflict, and the best long-term strategy to ensure suffering.” Brendon Burchard.
Instead of simply avoiding and discouraging disharmony, which puts the focus on what should not happen, a much healthier approach is to actively work towards resolving conflicts as they arise. This is more of a “ok let’s talk this through” response, instead of “why must you always complain!”
People who persistently try to avoid conflict tend to put the focus on wishing others didn’t disagree or get upset. This is both unrealistic and indeed tends to increase tensions when the inevitable and unavoidable disagreements or upsets happen. Those whose voice is silenced in childhood can struggle to speak up for themselves or others when facing injustices. Or struggle to cope with their child’s upsets.
The fight response results in being directly confrontational or aggressive
This response is quite similar to the flight or freeze response in that the main message the child receives is that their disagreements or upsets are not tolerated. It can include raising one’s voice or yelling to overpower the child. Or the overpowering can happen when the parent is overly analytic resulting in a power struggle type debate. It’s understandable for parents to feel defensive, misunderstood and unappreciated. Yet it’s our role as a parent to show our child again and again that our care for their feelings is stronger than our need to be right.
The more aggressive, forceful or defensive approaches tend to make the child feel that not just their actions, but also their feelings are not tolerated. As well as very tense communication, it can manifest as enforcing punishments. Punishments can include sending a child to their room (separation-based punishment), labelling, shaming, storming around, banging items or slamming doors. These actions are very intense for children and sadly also impact a parent’s trust in themselves, their own self-confidence and their dignity.
You might like to also read: Why children lash out and how to prevent it and for parental anger Why we explode and how to prevent it.
We need to own and manage our emotions to avoid deflecting.
Whether reacting from the fight or the flight/ freeze stress responses, many adults sadly resort to unhealthy tactics learned in childhood. Tactics such as denial, deflecting, being defensive, gaslighting, guilt tripping, stonewalling and even lying or distorting what has happened when conflicts arise. These deflections are the opposite of being honest and transparent about one’s true feelings and tend to cause the other to feel confused and blamed.
Deflective and defensive tactics may be all someone can draw on if they weren’t taught how to skilfully and respectfully navigate conflicts during childhood. A bit like young adults who leave home having not gained good domestic skills might overly rely on convenience and fast foods. Change can only start when, as a parent, we become committed to identifying and taking responsibility for enacting unhealthy patterns that create disconnection in the family.
Check out our Peaceful Parent Suite which provides invaluable help for families dealing with overwhelm!
There are lots of Peaceful Parent resources for families dealing with anger, overwhelm, yelling or aggression who are craving more peace and harmony. Our Overcoming Overwhelm eCourse is a great step by step process for parents wishing to reduce their own frustrations and overwhelm and put an end to yelling or stonewalling their child.
Other great courses include: The Mindful Parenting eCourse, the Meeting Aggression With Connection eCourse, our Peaceful Parenting Step by Step eCourse which simplifies the PP skills that invite more cooperation, the Self-Healing Group and the Peaceful Partnering Group and more.
So much of the focus in my eCourses are on helping parents learn to better manage this stress response. Most people need specific guidance such that these courses provide or counselling or both to help them change their pre-programmed responses. Changing deeply programmed responses involves creating a disciplined routines that prioritise improved self-care, self-healing and emotional regulation. Like any skills, they can be mastered through continued learning and practice until they become internalised. ~ Genevieve
People who develop the skills to manage the emotions that conflicts bring, plus skills to communicate effectively and fairly will naturally teach their children healthy conflict resolution skills. These skills bring huge advantages in life.
How can we best maintain peace and harmony in the family
In any one day, there can be a multitude of conflicting wants, needs, preferences and opinions. The parent needs their child to get dressed and ready to go out the door, the child passionately wants to play with their toys and stay in their PJs.
When parents are overly focused on avoiding conflict at all costs, this can in fact result in denying and hence not addressing important emotions and issues. Kids become very aware of their parent’s negative reaction to (the inevitable) conflicts in the family and can consequently contain and suppress the feelings and needs that they sense will cause their parent stress.
Yet when children suppress their emotions, they disconnect from their emotions. And when they disconnected from their emotions, they also tend to disconnect from their parent.
When the child isn’t warmly connected to their parent, they tend to be dramatically less interested in or motivated by what their parent has to say. Or the child might go in the opposite direction and loudly protest and demand knowing their parent always buckles and gives in to even unreasonable demands.
The child who isn’t listening is usually feeling unheard and misunderstood.
Skilfully working with conflicts teaches our children to do the same
A much healthier and balanced approach focuses on the importance of becoming present, truly listening and aiming for each person to fee heard and understood. The healthier approach always requires bringing in some connection to dissipate the distress of disconnection.
Connection tends to dissolve power struggles, making it easier to make a plan or problem solve. Connection can be expressed through empathy, affection or humour. You may need to truly validate your child’s feelings, aiming to show them that their feelings make sense even if we disagree. We might create some common ground “this is hard for everyone”. When everyone involved feels seen, heard and understood, it’s much easier to negotiate and problem-solve to find the best solutions that meet as many needs as possible.
Connection before correction
It’s easy for a parent to think they have to either submit to their child’s wishes at the expense of other needs (like getting out the door) or become forceful. Yet connecting before correcting tends to work so much better. The parent might come down to the child’s level, or otherwise become truly present, tune in to their child’s world and make a connection before tackling what needs to happen. A parent’s calm presence is inviting, whereas impatience is emotionally stressful and threatening.
Kids are much more cooperative in carrying out a plan they had a part in making
When a parent slows down, makes a genuine warm connection, this can create a bridge that makes it easier for the child to express their needs and they’ll be more likely to present a solution; “how about I just do one more circuit on the track with my cars and then I’ll get dressed?”
