andling Conflict 
Children want advice on how to
handle street conflicts. The old advice to 'never start a fight but always
finish it' is now poor advice in an age when some very young kids carry
weapons.
In order to keep your child from
becoming a victim they need a new set of street skills. It means that your child
has to learn how to assess and deal with a potentially violent conflict without
resorting to violence themselves. Like anything complex it will take time to
teach all the steps. Fortunately these are similar to the steps most adults
would take in the work place.
teps for Handling a
Conflict
1. Don’t lose your temper
2. Understand triggers that tell you
someone might want to fight you—standing and looking at you a certain way,
making fun of you, talking about your family, racial slurs,
swearing.
3. Understand that the other person is upset and trying to
use fighting to feel better. Know that the angry person is basically a decent human being.
4.
Don’t crowd the person—don’t get closer than arm’s length
5.
Talk to the decent side to
the aggressor—ask what
they are upset about, explain your side of conflict. Offer to talk about the problem when both are
calmed down but say you don’t want to
fight about it.
6. If the other
person or you yourself cannot calm down or if you
feel fear, walk away. It is easy to fight. It
takes a lot of courage to walk away from a fight.
Go to Next page: handling depression and frustration.
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