Student Support

Friendships & Conflict

Adapted from georgina@wellbeingforkids.com.au | Jan 17, 2018 |

During primary school children go through many stages of making friends and along the way will experience conflict at some stage. This is how they develop their social and emotional skills. Here are some helpful hints:

It is very normal for children to experience conflict from time to time. It is their way of discovering what works with friends and what doesn’t. 

Some children may get confused when they have a disagreement or conflict with another person and may call this bullying. 

There is a great difference between conflict and bullying. Here is a simple way to differentiate between them:  

Misunderstanding – usually problems around communication.  

Disagreement – do not agree on something and both want their own way. 

Conflict – people usually want to solve the problem. Can be over a period of time if not sorted properly.  

Bullying – threatening, repetitive, targeted, deliberately wanting to harm, abusive, no attempt to resolve the issue. 

Children can resolve conflict themselves - when they have the skills to do so (usually as they grow into the upper years of primary). 

If your child does experience conflict, this is a wonderful teaching moment. 

They may need guidance, and most importantly emotional support. 

The best way to give emotional support is to use ‘reflective listening’. This is:

listening to the content of what your child is saying and listening for the emotion and then reflecting back what they are saying e.g. “it sounds as though that really frustrated you when you did not get to play your game”. 

We can then try to help them problem solve the situation by giving them lots of opportunities to brainstorm a solution without stepping in too early to solve it for them. It’s good to role play these solutions so your child feels more confident in trying them.

Conflict teaches kids:  

How to give and take  

How to come to an agreement  

How to compromise  

How to solve problems  

To build empathy  

To understand others and their needs  

How to get along in a group  

How to develop successful, loving and healthy relationships as adults.

And don’t forget Maggie Dent’s podcast, Parental As Anything! Lots of practical solutions to the challenges every parent is facing today.