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It's War!
Helping Your Preteen Survive Friendship Fights
By Kelly Burgess
"Helping your child in this way helps him develop emotional intelligence," Sagarese says. "We're just really beginning to recognize that this type of intelligence may be even more important than IQ in raising successful adults."
One thing that parents should avoid is either taking sides or coming down to your children's level. Unfortunately, it's easy to become so emotionally invested in our children that we want to help them "fight" back. This is not really positive modeling and simply makes the adult seem no more mature than the child.
"It's not unusual for a fight to go on to the next generation and result in mothers fighting with other mothers and fathers with other fathers," Sagarese says. "This can cause problems in an entire community and is not the way these types of issues should be handled at all. It's never necessary to take it to the next level."
The best approach the parent can take is to listen, support your child, give suggestions for dealing with the problem in a positive way and, says Sagarese, keep one very important thing in mind: This too shall pass.