Training parents to mediate sibling disputes affects children's negotiation and conflict understanding.
The effects of training parents to use formal mediation procedures in sibling disputes were examined in 48 families with 5- to 10-years-old children, randomly assigned to mediation and control conditions. Children whose parents were trained in mediation were compared with those whose parents intervened normally. Parents reported that children used more constructive conflict resolution strategies, compromised more often, and controlled the outcomes of conflicts more often in mediation families than in control families. Observations indicated less negativity in children's independent negotiations of recurrent conflicts, better understanding of the role of interpretation in assessing blame, and better knowledge of their siblings' perspectives in the mediation group. Thus, both social and social-cognitive gains resulted from experience with constructive conflict resolution.
Smith
Julie
J
University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada.
Ross
Hildy
H
D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003071:Cognition; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D017008:Negotiating; D010290:Parents / Q000193:education*; D012801:Sibling Relations; D012938:Social Perception; D013663:Teaching / Q000379:methods*