Lesson Idea | Relationship Skills – Dealing With Disagreements

Building strong friendships is a process, and children will face many trials along the way. In order to solve conflicts with peers, kids will need to build their social awareness and discover that not everyone responds to conflict in the same way. Most of us (adults included) have our “go-to” defense mechanisms that we revert to in stressful social situations. Here are four different ways people can respond to a challenging situation:

- Fight is when someone tries to take control when faced with conflict.

- Flight looks like running away or avoiding a conflict.

- Freeze results when someone freezes up during a conflict, unable to talk, listen or learn.

- Fawn is when someone caves in and does whatever the other person wants, in order to keep the peace.

This week the Puppet Kids are involved in a variety of social disagreements and demonstrate one of these responses. They then learn how to move from a threat-based mindset to a learning mindset with a problem-solving strategy called Listen, Speak, Learn and Do.

As your children watch the videos, they can recognize some of these familiar Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn coping strategies in either themselves or others. They can then work through a healthier conflict resolution strategy, where they listen to their friend, speak their truth, learn from each other and do something that will hopefully lead to more effective solutions.

For further information, please visit A Little SEL website.