How to Help Your Child Handle a Fight With Friends

Why Children Fight With Their Friends
Children fight with their friends for many reasons, from misunderstandings to arguing over a toy to feeling left out to instances of bullying. These fights can be short-lived, episodic, big blowouts, or even end a friendship.
Emotions can run high and their reactions can be big. Or some children will keep their feelings inside and/or have trouble establishing healthy boundaries in their relationships. Parents are often left wondering how to help—and may worry about why their child is fighting with their friends.
It is absolutely normal and common for kids to experience peer conflict. In fact, these fights can actually be beneficial for your child by giving them a chance to practice their social skills. Additionally, disagreements can be opportunities for your child to recognize their feelings, accurately communicate them, and express what they need. Still, these fights can cause a lot of emotional distress for the individuals involved and are not always handled in a manner that gracefully resolves the conflict. This is where parents can offer guidance and step in, as needed.
General Guidelines for Offering Help

• It's important to strike the right balance of helping and letting kids sort things out on their own. Your approach will change as your child grows up. Still, just because your child may be older does not necessarily mean they won't need help. The challenge is often figuring out when to step in, what level of support to offer, and when to stay out of it altogether. If you jump in to resolve every conflict, then your child may not learn how to do this on their own. 
• Keep an eye on your child's social relationships. Then, if and when blow-ups happen, you'll be there to provide the appropriate level of support. Aim to be your child's emotions coach by acknowledging feelings, modeling calm, caring, listening behavior, reflecting together, and then working on finding solutions. 
• In more serious  cases, it will usually be obvious when you need to get involved. Clearly, if a fight is physical or cruel, such as in the case of bullying, you'll want to intervene to ensure the emotional and physical safety of your child. This is true whether your child is the aggressor or the recipient of the harmful behavior. 
• Sometimes both children are engaging in unkind words or actions. After the behavior has been safely stopped, it's important to get to the bottom of what is happening and why—and to look for solutions to prevent it from occurring again. This is a good time to use the BLUEPRINT.
• When an incident is mild or seems to be on track for a positive resolution, your intervention will likely be unneeded. However, other times, you may need to trust your gut and/or go on your child's preferences to know how much help to offer. 
• It's often helpful simply to provide a sounding board, a listening ear, a hug, or other gentle support for your child. They may want to talk out what happened, brainstorm solutions, need a distraction, or simply need to vent. Most importantly, let them know you're in their corner.
• Parents can help by modeling effective language to use when resolving conflicts (such as "I feel" statements, rather than "you did" statements that may be heard as accusatory). Using the MOOD METER might be helpful. Taking deep breaths and walking away if necessary to calm down are also good techniques to impart to your child. This is where the META MOMENT. is useful. Using the RULER Tools are  also helpful to continue to practice naming emotions, modeling empathy, and brainstorming solutions at an age-appropriate level.

​Additionally, introducing the fundamental steps of problem-solving, known as ABCD:

• A: Ask, "What is the problem?"
• B: Brainstorm solutions
• C: Choose a solution to try
• D: Do it! 

Adapted from: Vanbuskirk, S. (2021). How to Help Your Child Handle a Fight With Friends. Verywell Family. https://www.verywellfamily.com/how-to-help-your-child-handle-a-fight-with-friends-5198377

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