(Original article written by Amelia Church for The Conversation.  She is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Melbourne.)

Parents may get tired of hearing childish voices raised as their pre-schoolers argue about various matters.  Try to ignore them as far as possible because they need to learn how to handle conflict and their siblings and peers provide opportunities for developing the social skills required.

You might have to step in and restore peace if the conflict becomes physical, if there is real distress or the argument regresses to an unproductive loop of complaints (‘I saw it first’).

Rather than providing the children with a solution to their problem, try to involve them in the process which can provide them with a learning opportunity. 

In their new book (Talking with children) Amelia Church and Amanda Bateman suggest the following four steps to help them solve arguments.

1. Remove the conflict object

If children are fighting about a toy, remove it momentarily so they can concentrate on finding a solution.  Preschool-aged children mostly argue about objects. That is, who can touch, move or play with the object, who was playing with it first, and how the object is supposed to be used. 

Intervention won’t work if children are locked in tug of war over who had the blocks or marbles first. By asking for the object and removing it from any child’s “ownership” (perhaps just temporarily), adults can redirect children’s attention to finding a solution. Trying saying something like: “Let’s put the marbles all together in the middle, and talk about it.”

2. Forget about blame

Children will be eager and able to explain what happened, who did what to whom, and how they have been offended. 

It can be useful to establish what happened to establish moral accountability (if, for example, one child has ignored another’s reasonable request) or to know more about how each child feels their rights have been infringed. Try to acknowledge, rather than ignore the position of each child. Children hold opposing views and alternate accounts – this is the reason for the conflict in the first place. But you don’t need to evaluate these accounts.

To move from conflict to cooperation, the focus needs to shift to talking about a solution. For example: “What can we do to make this fair?”

Young children have a strong sense of fairness, and are quick to identify when things are “not fair”. Encouraging children to consider what’s fair invites solutions that take into account other children’s perspectives.

3. Ask children for their ideas

Solutions imposed by adults don’t work well when children are then left to their own devices again.  For example, a teacher intervened when some children seemed to be excluding some children in a game on the playground.  The teacher suggests they explain they were using the area, and to invite the others to join their play rather than take over. This seems sensible advice. But as they walk away, one of the children says to her friend, “yeah, that’s not going to work”.  Children do have insight to what will work amongst their peers.  It might work better to invite ideas from children that may lead to solutions.

4. Seek consensus and then supervise

Moving to the next step, you could ask children, “What have we decided to do?”

Having asked each child to contribute their ideas means they have buy-in, even if their suggestion is not accepted by all. Contributing their own ideas means children have invested in the resolution. After brainstorming ideas, ask the children which solution they will choose or they could even “vote”. 

Rather than walking away once children have agreed on a compromise, it’s then a good idea to stay nearby to encourage children to stick to their agreement.

Meanwhile, children are learning

Modelling solutions, and enacting how to reach a compromise is part of children’s learning about how to be in the world. 

If we just tell children what to do all the time, it means they don’t learn how to compromise or negotiate with others. In fact, some research has shown educators can disrupt the peacemaking process that children might otherwise navigate by themselves.

Parents are knowledgeable about their own children’s lives, but in many ways, children understand their peers better than adults do. Understanding how children’s interactions actually work, helps us provide more useful advice. So the adult’s role in an argument is not to attribute blame or hand the marbles back to the kid who cries the loudest. Rather it is to help children to recognise the needs of others in finding a fair solution.

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