Drs. Rebecca Hines and Lisa Dieker, UCF faculty, share their thoughts on helping children with disabilities resolve conflicts This episode provides ways to help children with disabilities confront problems with peers or siblings and reminds parents or teachers how to help teach these skills. We look forward to receiving your questions @accesspratical
Lisa Dieker:
Welcome to practical access. I'm Lisa Dieker.
Rebecca Hines:
And I'm Rebecca Hines. And Lisa, what's what's on the agenda for this episode?
Lisa Dieker:
Well, I think we'll title it Let's fight. No, I'm sorry, let's not, let's call it conflict resolution. So someone asked how do we help kids who maybe don't have social cues, like we just talked about in our last episode, have some conflict and come out not swinging. So where would we start there? Becky, what do you think?
Rebecca Hines:
Well, it is a great question. And I think is one that you know, bears thinking about whether you're a school aged child or an adult, because certainly conflicts arise at every at every age and every developmental level. The the key to remembering conflicts and how to resolve them is that it takes two people to have a conflict. So I think that's the first thing that I always try to
Lisa Dieker:
I would say 20. Okay.
Rebecca Hines:
But understanding what the conflict is in the first place, is the key and taking a beat and instead of getting on that person's level, mirror mirroring, not mirroring that, but going the opposite direction. So if you yell at me, I'm getting softer. The other thing, and I know Lisa, many of us, all of us in education, have learned about active listening, and repeating questions,
Lisa Dieker:
Yeah, I know, that doesn't make sense to me. And I, you know, I like your reptile brain. Thought, because I do think that sometimes, you know, when we don't stop, breathe, and literally count to 20, or get again, if you're going to count to 10, you got a referee count, which is completely different than what he revises me. And I said, Becky, I don't agree with you, okay, that tends arguing with us, and yet what we often find is if you don't engage in it, you really do win.
Rebecca Hines:
Right? Well, and that it lets us say that I'm not sorry, because I didn't believe in what I did or said etc. I think the you know, the counterpart of that is when somebody comes when I can't believe that you did XYZ. you apologize specifically for you know how you've made that person. Feel And say, you know, I'm sorry that you don't agree with my assessment, I made the best decision said, it doesn't even matter. Just make something up. I just need to model conflict resolution. I walked in the next day, and I kind of had forgotten that. I told Ryan that. And I walked in the door in front of all the kids, Brad said, besides, I can't believe you parked in my parking space this morning. And I looked at him for a moment because of course, we didn't have assigned parking spaces.
Lisa Dieker:
Yeah. And I'm going to go to my one of my weird jobs in conflict resolution and give a little advice. So I had the privilege of being a sorority house mother, at a very young age, when people were not sure I wasn't a member. And then I married my husband. And as newlyweds, we moved into a sorority house with 28 women, I'll just let that simmer for a moment. Probably the only woman as you're helping your kids learn to resolve conflict, that you don't let them have kerosene and gasoline to ignite that fire even greater.
Rebecca Hines:
Yeah, that's a great, that's a great tip. And I think I would my final thought on this particular topic, is to remind people of the body language of conflict. So anyone who has done any kind of crisis, you know, training, or learned about how to manage aggressive physical interactions, I think some of the same things we learned about body language and, you know, if one person
Lisa Dieker:
Well, and I'll just end with, you know, I like to end any conflict I have by reaffirming what I like about the person. So think about that when your kids are having conflict, if you as a teacher, are having a conflict with a student, if two students are having conflict, see if you can end the resolution by put is there one thing you can tell me that you value about like, and it really