Helping Your Teen Manage Social Conflict
Your teenage daughter is scrolling through Instagram and discovers her friends all got together yesterday without inviting her. She comes to you upset for understandably good reasons. What do you say?
Your teenage son receives a text from a childhood friend that says he’s now dating your son’s ex-girlfriend. He gloomily slinks into the chair beside you and sits silently. How do you start the conversation? Situations like this are all too common but this doesn’t mean adults always know how to respond.
The social friction of adolescence can provide parents with many opportunities to teach valuable life skills. Grown-ups are most effective when we are able to take our children’s social friction in stride and have strategies ready to guide our children along as they develop some of their own solutions to life’s conflicts.
Teach Your Children What Healthy Conflict Looks Like
As children begin to leave childhood behind and enter into adolescence they become more devoted to their peers and also enter into more conflict with them.
Such conflict comes with the territory and at the risk of causing intense emotional distress for teens and parents alike. During high school conflict usually stems from a misinterpreted comment, a one-sided friendship, or a spilled secret. The variety of human responses to conflict is a complicated and much-debated topic. For the sake of brevity, I’ll offer the following three metaphors that I find helpful for thinking about how people respond to conflict in unhealthy ways.
The Bulldozer
These folks respond to conflict by doing what a bulldozer does. They run over everyone without much regard to what the impact on others will be. The goal is to flatten anything in the way.
The Doormat
The Doormat agrees to be run over. They strategically choose the path of least resistance when faced with the possibility of a confrontation. They’d rather shoulder the impact of the dispute than risk a dreaded confrontation.
The Doormat with Spikes
Somewhat similar to the Doormat, these folks allow themselves to be run over, but later make the aggressor pay a price through the use of passive-aggressive tactics. These tactics take the form of involving other parties in the dispute or using guilt as a weapon. Playing the part of the victim is also common.
So What Does Healthy Conflict Look Like?
Teaching your children to stand up for themselves while respecting others is no easy task but this alternative is a far healthier approach than training your children to become some variation of Bulldozers, Doormats, or Doormats with Spikes.
When kids wage war in an online group chat at 1 o’clock in the morning the possibility for a peaceful and healthy resolution is unlikely. Adults and teens alike all are prone to resorting to unhealthy instinctive responses. When working on conflict resolution with teens I find myself first teaching them about common reactions to conflict and then asking them to consider the likely outcomes of the plans they’ve dreamt up for responding to the situation.
Teens often find welcome pain relief in the visualization of their fantasized version of Doormat with Spikes revenge. For the girl who has just discovered on Instagram that her friends left her out of last night’s plans, she may benefit from imagining herself posting an unflattering image of a friend and the short-term gratification that follows. Through this exercise, the mental space needed to carefully consider the likely impact of one’s actions is made possible. She is now freed up to consider if it is reasonable for her to instead simply ask –politely and in-person--“Is there something I’ve done that offended you?”
The consequences of posting ill-advised, emotionally charged words online are real. Parents are wise to quickly point out that fights carried out via text or online are inevitably going to be of the Doormat with Spikes variety. Virtual exchanges leave out the tone and context that is otherwise made available in person. The giant audience of social media and the physical distance provided when posting online are also a recipe for passive-aggressive acts. Disputes that would have best been handled privately can be thrust into the public eye with the click of a button. In a more cool-headed space, your teen may soon come to regret having left behind a public record of their emotionally charged reaction.
Learning to Let Some Stuff Go
No adult I know responds to each and every perceived slight. All of us are constantly analyzing and strategizing about which ones to address and which to let drop. We all somehow know that attempting to manage every single conflict we encounter would be exhausting. Young teens need to learn to do the same.
Some questions to help guide a conversation include:
Do they care about the relationship enough to want to work it out?
Do they imagine the other party is just as concerned?
How do they imagine the other person may or may not respond?
Even when conflict is handled well it takes tremendous effort and mental energy. Making a decision to avoid a particular conflict does not make one a Doormat. A reassuring parent might say “A doormat would be begging her friend to invite her next time or would be crying to her friends about not having been invited.” A calculated non-response also opens up the possibility that a situation can unfold further or be taken up again at a later time. Parents are wise to teach that not every little thing needs or demands an immediate reaction. Some problems fade from view with the passage of time.
Despite what is commonly believed not all kids are looking to restore damaged relationships. Sometimes kids simply need permission to move on and some practical help creating a more distant relationship. A parent could say something like “I know you and David grew up together and it must be painful to have things between you playing out this way. While we don’t know what the future holds, it is totally acceptable to put some distance between the two of you right now.” In this way children learn the social savvy required to manage the barrage of social conflict waiting in the adult world.
Is It Really Bullying?
All too often ordinary social conflict is confused with bullying. Experts agree that the definition of bullying is best described as repeated, one-way aggression against someone who cannot defend himself or herself effectively. Everything else should be considered a part of the customary give and take of ordinary social discord.
If social friction can be compared to the common cold, readily transmitted wherever people come together, then bullying is akin to pneumonia. While it is important that each situation be accurately understood, bullying is comparatively rarer than ordinary social strife. Bullying is a serious situation and requires urgent expert evaluation and treatment.
Determining whether bullying or ordinary social friction is to blame requires seeking out the help of adults with an objective view of the situation such as a teacher, coach, or counselor. If your child is being bullied it is best to take a measured, evidenced-based approach to the problem. If instead, the teenager in your life is involved in a conflict it is best to help them by suggesting adaptive strategies for resolving the issue.