Peer Conflicts In Early Childhood

Peer conflict is when there is mutual disagreement or hostility that occurs between peers. Conflict is a common, inevitable daily occurrence among children. It is part of human nature. Children’s peer conflicts in early childhood is important in that it helps children to develop many important life skills. Without conflict, children would not have the opportunity to learn conflict resolution skills, judge emotional interactions with other children and deal with problems in the future. Kalyva (2011) proposed that children may plan their response more efficiency to interpersonal conflicts after meta-cognitive strategies are applied. They end up choosing better beneficial resolution strategies only with the proper adult guidance who teach them to evaluate a conflict situation. Therefore, teachers and adults must teach children effective resolution skills so they can develop ways to resolve their own conflicts now and later in life.
Parents and teachers can help children create an amicable environment if they are able to comprehend children’s earliest peer conflicts. Recent research shows us that young children have the capability of being loving, caring, and prosocial with the support of adults to maximize these competencies (Wittmer, 2012). …show more content…
They are beginning to take responsibility for their own action and beginning to learn to share and demonstrate improvement in turn taking. Children who are close in age can use these relationships as training for how to learn to relate with others. According to Raikes, Virmani, Thompson and Hatton (2012), the quality of interactions in the early school years has lasting implications for social and emotional development as well as school achievement. So understanding children’s peer interactions and growth patterns as they move from preschool to school is of the utmost