Playing Now:

01 Teaching Kids to be Peacemakers - Naomi Drew
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.