The Doug Noll Show

Fighting among children is not new. Nevertheless, there is a big difference between sibling spats and learning the skills of peacemaking. How do we teach children to resolve conflicts peacefully? How do we give them the values peace, collaboration, and cooperation? And how do we do this while empowering them to make good choices and judgments about their relationships with peers and adults? These are tough questions and Doug’s guest gives us some answers. Naomi Drew is recognized around the world for her work in conflict resolution and peacemaking. She is the author of six widely used books. Her landmark book, Learning the Skills of Peacemaking was one of the first to introduce peacemaking into public education. “Peaceful Parents,” Naomi’s on-line newsletter, has a broad international readership. The Kids' Guide to Working Out Conflicts, the latest of her six books, was honored with four national awards including the National Parenting Publications Gold Award for Children's Resources. Naomi talks about an epidemic of cruelty sweeping through the school systems. Recent surveys show that 80 percent of middle school and 75 percent of primary school kids say that kids are mean to each other on a consistent and persistent basis. This epidemic is relatively new and seems to be caused by chronic stress and fear and by media emphasis on violence, cruelty, meanness, and sarcasm as being cool ways of dealing with conflicts. To a kid, meanness and sarcasm look cool and hip.

Doug and Naomi talk about reactivity as a central cause of conflict. Naomi teaches a technique to kids she calls Stop, Breathe, and Chill. The idea is to rehearse situations where you might be put down, treated cruelly, or disrespected and practice being less reactive. Naomi teaches kids how to replace angry thoughts with calm thoughts. Doug and Naomi talk about how violence creates a perception of power, but has the opposite effect. Violence actually takes power away from the offender.

Doug asks Naomi about bullying. In the survey research, 40-50% of the kids said that bullying is a serious problem. Naomi tells Doug that bullying causes depression, is related to suicide, and has been linked to the school shootings of the past 10 years. Naomi believes that schools must adopt and enforce an anti-bullying culture. Essentially, kids have to be taught to be kind and compassionate with each other. Doug and Naomi talk about how important teachers are in modeling kindness, compassion, and non-bullying behaviors. Doug asks Naomi about cyber-bullying. Naomi says that this is hugh unintended consequence of instantaneous communication. Through cell phones, text messaging, social network sites, cell cameras and the like, kids can catch other kids in embarrassing or stupid moments and broadcast that to 50 or 100 or an entire school in seconds. All kids are now highly sensitive to the fact that anything they do or say can be turned against them. This is breeding a new form of fear and paranoia among kids. Naomi talks of as a Lord of the Flies mentality as kids armor themselves against bullying and embarrassment. The challenge is to teach kids not to respond tit for tat. Kids subject to cyber bullying have some options open to them.

Doug asks Naomi about the difference between a bystander and an upstander. Naomi teaches kids how to intervene in bullying and effective techniques for defusing difficult social encounters.