When fighting is a pediatric complaint, you have a great opportunity to educate families in evidence-based ways that can both prevent and reduce their child’s use of aggression.
In one effective 90-minute training program, parents were taught basic mediation principles: to give ground rules and ask their children to agree to them, to ask each child to describe what happened and identify their disagreements and common ground, to encourage the children to discuss their goals in the fight and feelings about the issues, and to encourage the children to come up with suggestions to resolve their disputes and help them assess the practical aspects of their ideas. Praise should be used each time a child uses even some of these skills. Parents in this program also were given communication strategies, such as active listening, reflecting, and reframing, to help children learn to take the others’ perspective. In a follow up survey a month later, children of parents in the intervention group were seen to use these skills in real situations that might otherwise have been fights.
Dr. Barbara J. Howard
When aggression persists, mindfulness training, cognitive-behavioral techniques, social-emotional approaches, or peer mentoring programs delivered through individual counseling or school programs are all ways of teaching kids important interaction skills to reduce peer aggression. Remember, 40% of severe adult aggression begins before age 8 years, so preventive education or early referral to mental health services is key.
Dr. Howard is assistant professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and creator of CHADIS (www.CHADIS.com). She had no other relevant disclosures. Dr. Howard’s contribution to this publication was as a paid expert to Frontline Medical News. E-mail her at pdnews@frontlinemedcom.com.