How to Help Tweens and Teens Manage Social Conflict

I thought this was a great article, and I truly believe that we need to give our teens the space to work through conflict, but when do we step in. Our teen daughter is being taunted during school breaks to fight with a school mate. Do we let it run it’s course? Do we step in and risk making it worse for her at school? What do we do when we’ve given them the tools, but they don’t work?

Bullying is rare? Not in my experience. NYC recently released an online school-based mental health guide, with bullying as one of the targets.

I know better than to get involved in their "dramas". But better advice is to not to frame bullying as drama. When your is child being singled out or bullied-they need to be heard- not told that it is just drama.

This is one of the best pieces of parenting advice I've seen: "While there are times when adults should step in," according to Blake Revelle, principal of Indian Hills Middle School, a public school in Prairie Village, Kan., “our job as parents and educators is to set up some bumpers on the bowling alley, not to dictate the exact way the ball goes down the lane.” A couple of bumper-type suggestions from trial and error: Drama seems to decrease as physical activity/sports increase Volunteering with kids or the elderly from families helps to minimize mean drama and superficial bragging drama When my son was small and someone was mean to him out to someone else - we would say "oh, that boy doesn't have that manner yet, so why don't you stay out of their way until they get that manner." Making it temporary made it less of an emergency. Last, frowning on kids' social media use as a low class thing is the big thing in Silicon Valley these days - that's a rich people's habit we all should adopt!

Great article. I’d add that one of the most important things we can teach our children is that for any given event we rarely have all the facts, but that doesn’t stop our minds from creating stories about those events that are as inaccurate as they are painful. To be able to see reality stripped of interpretation, coupled with the ability to accurately identify and articulate what one is actually feeling inside rather than what one thinks or believes about the outside, is a life skill that pays dividends in every conceivable aspect of our time on earth. So the conflict-oriented and speculative “She’s not the best friend I thought she was because I didn’t get invited to the party” becomes the indisputable truth of “I didn’t get invited to the party and that makes me feel sad/lonely/angry/hopeless/etc.” Only when we have that kind of unvarnished vulnerability and honesty can we truly assess what, if anything, we need to do in order to act with integrity, compassion, and empathy for both ourselves and the other people involved.

Very nice article. I am a father of 3 girls just entering the teen/tween years (13, 11, 10) and phones along with social media are a daily battle. I allow them to be on several social media apps and I also have an unashamed cynical view of it all. We talk about it and I know I don't get the whole picture but my only hope is that at the end of the day I can offer them strength and support while they sift through adolescence as we have all done before them.

As a mom of two, I'd say, don't assume your kid is telling the absolute truth, (I know, I know! blasphemy!) every time, in these situations. Don't over react, don't run down to the school and say you'll sue everyone in sight..... Don't try to "take care of" all their problems for them....

I wish I read this when I was in middle school.

We'd settle it on the playground. Snowflakes can't handle it.

Adolescence can be so fraught. Thank goodness 1980s "social media" was in the form of burn books and an occasional naughty phrase or image scrawled in a public space by an especially daring student. One of my friends was declared to [perform sex acts] in vulgar terms on the bathroom wall. The magic marker disappeared by the end of the day and was forgotten by the end of the week. One of the toughest things I've seen in the past five years is watching a close friend spend thousands of dollars on "stuff" (iPhone; clothing; hair products) for her 12-year-old daughter, who was being ostracized by her former friends once they hit middle school. My friend said her daughter was missing group texts because suddenly her whole crew had iPhones and she didn't. Then the phone wasn't enough so she got $300 hair treatments in hopes of being Insta-worthy. No. Her "friends" continued to take group selfies of their pretty hair at parties without this girl. Utterly heartbreaking. I wish my friend hadn't rushed to furnish the phone, the Brazilian blowout, etc., but I was not in her shoes so I can't criticize. The good news is the girl survived the pain and has new friends and plays a new sport, leaving the "mean girls" behind. I never prohibited my kids from participating in social media, but I have been frank about my cynical view of it. And I think it is life-enhancing that, of my three kids, one is an occasional Instagram user and the other two don't participate at all.

If it were so easy to reassure a child, there wouldn’t be so many self-help programs aimed at tweenagers and teenagers (and adults!) reassuring them that you’re awesome/magical/perfect just as your are/who you need to be right now—in the face of contraindications.