Nonviolent Communication and Conflict Management

 

O'Hair and Wiemann (2012) say conflict is "inevitable" (p. 220). Conflicts are something that happens in every communication, sometimes easily overcome or sometimes not resolved. The less fight in human life, the more peaceful it will be. Of course, it is almost impossible to avoid this.

A conflict I have encountered recently may have some communication problems in my family with my teenage son. My 14-year-old son's school offers them virtual or in-person education. My son wants to participate in virtual learning activities from home some days. Some days, under our forcing, he goes to school and gets training face to face. We support him in getting an education by going to school so he can socialize at school. He has recently been volunteering to participate in virtual education because he can play online games during training breaks (lunch, physical education, recess). He cannot manage his time at all when he played computer games.

I tried to explain this situation by saying that I did not want to solve it by taking his gaming computer from his room and hiding it. I followed him when he stayed at home for a few weeks trying to understand what he was doing. In the meantime, late homework and falling grades were the last things straw that broke. As far as I followed, when I saw that he could not provide self-control, I took his phone and computer away from him and left him in the room with his Chromebook (he can only attend class with that) to concentrate on the lesson. After his school success dropped, we decided that he would go to school continuously. This situation turned into a conflict between us.

It is necessary to use different strategies to handle the conflict and solve the problem. I hope we can achieve some positive results after the disagreement with an appropriate communication strategy.

Willingly, continually exchanging negative opinions require giving "five positive statements for every one negative" (O'Hair & Wiemann, 2012, p. 232). According to the Non-Violent Communication Center (NVC) (nd), the experience of awareness, empathy, and understanding its vulnerability will encourage compassion and support productive conflict (O'Hair et al., 2018). We emphasized to my son that, as his parents, our focus is on his development. Rather than focusing on negativities, we try to focus on the positive and build family foundations on trust. I can understand how he feels playing games with his friends. However, after the school hour is over and the homework is delivered, I explained that it is necessary to accept the periodic gameplay. I stated that if there are no complaints and his grades rise, and he maintains his self-control, we can trust him again.

In our frequent conversations with him, we listened to him very carefully to keep our conflicts under control and clearly show a sensitive attitude (Chesire, 2007). When we struggle to reach a consensus, we will take mutual steps to resolve our conflicts. It was difficult for him to understand this and think he wasn't depriving himself. We felt that we had success in this subject when he asked his father for help for the evening algebra lesson.

 

When my son said at first that his friends and some other children were able to play online at that time and that his deprivation made him angry, we thought we should understand him "without judgment, criticism or blame/punishment" (Nonviolent Communication Center, nd). Honestly, when I thought he was telling the truth, it saddened me that he was deprived of him while his friends played.

This process, in which we decided to play games for certain hours outside of school hours, continues. I hope my son will gain the necessary behavior to be aware of his responsibilities.

 

 

 

 

References:

Cheshire, N. (2007). The 3 R's: Gateway to Infant-Toddler Learning. The dimension of Early Childhood. Volume 35, No. 3.

O'Hair, D., Wieman, M., Mullin, D. I., & Teven, J. (2018). Real communication: An introduction (4th. ed). New York: Bedford/St. Martin's

 The Center for Nonviolent Communication. (2007). An introduction to nonviolent communication. Retrieved from: http://www.schooltransformation.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Kendrick_NVC_Materials.pdf