Family Conflict

Conflict can happen when family members have different views or beliefs that clash. Sometimes conflict can occur when people misunderstand each other and jump to the wrong conclusion. Issues of conflict that are not resolved peacefully can lead to arguments and resentment. It is normal to disagree with each other from time to time. Occasional conflict is part of family life. However, ongoing conflict can be stressful and damaging to relationships. Some people find it difficult to manage their feelings and become intentionally hurtful, aggressive, or even violent.

Communicating positively can help reduce conflict so that family members can reach a peaceful resolution. This usually means that everyone agrees to a compromise or agrees to disagree. Families are surprisingly resilient, usually able to withstand and recover from severe conflict between family members, and quickly return to familiar interactive patterns (Goldenberg, 2017).

It is perhaps unrealistic to expect that relationships remain harmonious all the time; occasional disconnections and disagreements are a fact of life that can help a family grow and move forward, accommodating change (Divecha, 2020).

Repeating patterns of conflict, however, can be damaging for family members, especially children, negatively affecting mental and physical well-being (Sori, Hecker, & Bachenberg, 2016).

This article explores how to resolve conflict in family relationships and introduces strategies and activities that can help.

Common causes of family conflict

It is well recognized that some of the stages a family goes through can cause conflict. These may include:

  • Learning to live as a new couple
  • Birth of a baby
  • Birth of other children
  • A child going to school
  • A child becoming a young person
  • A young person becoming an adult.

Each of these stages can create new and different stresses and potential conflict.

Changes in the family situation can also take a toll on the family and contribute to conflict. This may include events such as:

  • Separation or divorce
  • Moving to a new house or country
  • Traveling long distances to work
  • Commuting interstate for work.
  • Change in financial circumstances.

The opinions, values, and needs of each parent can also change and they may find they are no longer compatible.

Agreeing to negotiate

Usually, our first angry impulse is to push the point that we are right and win the argument at any cost. Finding a peaceful resolution can be difficult, if not impossible when both parties stubbornly stick to their guns. It helps if everyone decides as a family to try listening to each other and negotiating instead.

Suggestions include:

  • Work out if the issue is worth fighting over.
  • Try to separate the problem from the person.
  • Try to cool off first if you feel too angry to talk calmly.
  • Keep in mind that the idea is to resolve the conflict, not win the argument.
  • Remember that the other party isn’t obliged to always agree with you on everything.
  • Define the problem and stick to the topic.
  • Respect the other person’s point of view by paying attention and listening.
  • Talk clearly and reasonably.
  • Try to find points of common ground.
  • Agree to disagree.

Try to listen

Conflict can escalate when the people involved are too angry to listen to each other. Misunderstandings fuel arguments. Suggestions include:

  • Try to stay calm.
  • Try to put emotions aside.
  • Don’t interrupt the other person while they are speaking.
  • Actively listen to what they are saying and what they mean.
  • Check that you understand them by asking questions.
  • Communicate your side of the story clearly and honestly.
  • Resist the urge to bring up other unresolved but unrelated issues.

Work as a team

Once both parties understand the views and feelings of the other, you can work out a solution together. Suggestions include:

  • Come up with as many possible solutions as you can.
  • Be willing to compromise.
  • Make sure everyone clearly understands the chosen solution.
  • Once the solution is decided on, stick to it.
  • Write it down as a ‘contract’, if necessary.

How to Resolve Conflict in Family Relationships

“Families typically develop certain basic structural characteristics and interactive patterns that they utilize to respond to internal and external stressors.”

Goldenberg, 2017, p. 4

Built on shared assumptions and narratives that exist within the family structure, family members support the group as it adapts and copes with shifting environments and life events.

Such structures, at times, may support and even promote conflict that occurs within families. Indeed, rifts, clashes, and disagreements within the family can take many forms, including physical, verbal, financial, psychological, and sexual (Marta & Alfieri, 2014).

Therapy has the potential to help a family understand how it organizes itself and maintains cohesion while improving how it communicates and overcomes problems that lead to conflict (Goldenberg, 2017).

As psychologist Rick Hanson writes, “a bid for repair is one of the sweetest and most vulnerable and important kinds of communication that humans offer to each other” (cited in Divecha, 2020).

Crucially, families can learn to navigate the inevitable tension and disconnection that arise from falling out of sync with one another (Divecha, 2020).

Repairing ruptures resulting from miscommunication, mismatches, and failing to attune to one another is vital for parenting and maintaining the family union. But how?

While there are many ways to recover from and resolve conflict, the following four steps are invaluable for authentic repair (modified from Divecha, 2020):

  1. Acknowledge the offense
    Try to identify and understand the hurt you’ve caused. Whether intended and with apparent good reason or not, this is a valuable opportunity to dial down your defenses and focus on how the other person is feeling.

Acknowledging the hurt without adding caveats is a powerful way to show humanity.

It can help to check your understanding, “Did I upset you? Help me understand how.” Your approach must be open and authentic; unless heartfelt, it risks escalating emotions.

  1. Express remorse
    Sometimes, simply saying, “I’m sorry,” is enough, or at least an excellent place to start.

Take care though. Adding a comment, such as, “Well, you shouldn’t have done X,” weakens your expression of remorse, especially when dealing with children. They are learning from what you do – right and wrong.

Also, don’t go overboard. Being too quick to say sorry or going over the top with an apology can make it more about yourself than the person hurt.

  1. Offer a simple explanation
    If the other person is ready to listen (neither too upset nor too angry), a brief explanation can clarify the thinking behind your actions.

Remember to focus on the other person’s experience rather than a litany of excuses for poor behavior. And avoid using this as an opportunity to add grievances or assign blame for issues that have arisen recently.

  1. Learn and practice expressing your intentions to fix the situation and stop it from happening again.
    Be sincere. Say that you are sorry and mean it.
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There is little point in apologizing and recovering from conflict if you intend to repeat the behavior.

Conflict is often avoidable. But if it isn’t, then it is possible to recover and maintain family relationships through authentic activities that repair damage (Divecha, 2020).

2 Examples of Conflict Scenarios

Recognizing another family member’s hurt and finding compassion and understanding to resolve the conflict is an essential element of family therapy (Goldenberg, 2017).

Family therapy can help resolve conflicts within the family unit through multiple routes, including:

  • Exploring various relationships that make up the family.
  • Bringing couples and families together to resolve interpersonal conflicts rather than treating them separately.
  • Focusing on interventions with entire families rather than individuals.
  • Establishing the role of dysfunctional families in individual mental health problems.

Family conflict can appear in all shapes and sizes. While minor disagreements between siblings may be resolved quickly, major rifts can form between child and parent, damaging previously strong bonds.

All relationships within a family can at one time or another descend into conflict. Two such examples include (modified from Goldenberg, 2017):

  • Conflict over money
    Bob and Tess are married with two children. In therapy, Tess claims that Bob is mean with his money: checking grocery bills and yelling at the cost of their children’s birthday presents. Along with other relationship issues, the conflict led them to sleep in separate rooms.

Bob argues he works hard for his money and gives her a generous amount each month, but Tess spends beyond their means.

During therapy, it became clear that Bob comes from a working-class family and was taught from an early age to live frugally. His long-standing beliefs underpin (but do not excuse) his outbursts.

In time, therapy helps them become more supportive of one another, giving up their underlying power struggles and successfully moving away from stereotypical gender roles.

  • Cultural and intergenerational conflict
    Despite Indira and Sanjay Singh moving to the United States while they were still at preschool age, they have retained the cultural and moral values of their place of birth: India. When their two children were born, they were also taught to be compliant and respect their parents, while friends from school were discouraged.

As the children grew older, it became clear that the conflict between the old and new cultures was causing a rift, dividing children and parents. Despite reluctance from the parents, in time, all four attended family therapy and began to deal with cultural differences and expectations arising from multiculturalism.

Family therapy helped the clients recover from existing conflict in both cases while strengthening family bonds to reduce future tension.

3 Strategies for Family Counseling Sessions

Conflict in family situations can be “chronic and unresolved,” cycling through “periods of emotional distance and closeness with intense negative feelings” (Metcalf, 2011, p. 45).

In family therapy, the many theories offer different lenses through which to view the world and, most importantly, help families manage and resolve conflict (Metcalf, 2011).

The following strategies can help protect the family from or cope with conflict in its many forms.

Build an environment of connection and understanding

Divecha (2020) suggests that by building an environment of connection and understanding, you can “create a family culture where rifts are expected and repairs are welcomed.”

Encourage clients to make small but vital changes to the family setting (modified from Divecha, 2020):

  • Watch out for the easily missed signs that indicate a child, young adult, or partner wishes to find a way to reconnect and recover from conflict.
  • Normalize requests, such as, “I need a repair” and “Can we have a redo?” that tell us a family member is ready to fix a damaged relationship.
  • Maintain awareness. If we think we may have caused upset or harm, circle back and check in with the other person.

Building a better environment through frequent repairs can catch problems early and reduce the likelihood of escalation.

Use “I” statements

How we say something can have a significant impact on what others hear. Encourage family members to express how they feel without blaming others, such as (modified from Goldenberg, 2017):

“I am hurt by what you said last night” rather than accusations, such as, “You were out of order last night.”

Speak directly to the therapist

There may be times during a therapy session when tension between family members heightens and the emotional intensity needs to be de-escalated (Goldenberg, 2017).

A helpful communication technique is to ask the family member talking to address the therapist directly. This refocus encourages the speaker to express themselves more calmly and allows the other person time and space to listen and respond under less pressure.

6 Activities and Worksheets to Try

Interventions in family therapy exist to help the individual by improving family engagement and effectiveness and reducing the adverse outcomes of caregiving (American Psychological Association, 2011).

The following activities focus on exploring family structures, beliefs, and problem-solving behavior to avoid or resolve conflict within the group.

Recognizing Family Narratives

Family narratives provide support for coping with upsetting events and recovering from conflict (Goldenberg, 2017).

Use the Recognizing Family Narratives worksheet to identify narratives that explain and justify the structure and interactive patterns that exist within the family.

The constructs we form can enable or inhibit how we cope with conflict and other life events within the family (Goldenberg, 2017).

Parenting With Purpose

Parenting can be difficult; it is easy to lose sight of what is important. Defining meaning and purpose for ourselves as parents and our children can offer a valuable compass for day-to-day decision-making (Hart, 2006).

The Parenting With Purpose worksheet is a helpful reminder of your values and purpose as a parent.

The answers to the questions can help you understand what kind of relationship you would like with your children and why.

What Is Working Within the Family?

While it is essential to identify and fix what is causing conflict within a family, it is equally valuable to recognize what is working.

Once we recognize where we are successful in a relationship, it can remind us that not everything is terrible. We are doing some things right, and we have something upon which we can build.

The What Is Working worksheet helps identify and share the positives in the relationships within the family.

Recognize that conflict doesn’t occur in the family all the time and encourage the activities that unite you as a group.

Meeting Our Family’s Needs

Sura Hart (2006, p. 175), former teacher and education project director for the Center for Nonviolent Communication, says that “you can find conflict in every human story, and in the conflict situation you can find the needs people are wanting to meet.”

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Use the Meeting Our Family’s Needs worksheet to help each family member have their needs heard, understood, and, ultimately, accepted.

Consider Your Intentions

Words have the power to share love and anger. Without clear and conscious intention, it is possible to communicate unhelpful and even harmful messages (Hart, 2006).

Use the Consider Your Intentions worksheet to identify and understand your intentions and help you respect and care for other family members’ needs.

Perform an early check on your intentions before you engage with the other family member, especially if it has the potential to turn into conflict.

Using the answers, consider how you can show positive intentions and steer clear of harmful intentions, such as proving yourself right.

Seeing Family Conflict as a Problem to Solve

Conflict isn’t always to be avoided; clashes can be productive, stimulating learning, fostering understanding, and moving a relationship forward (Hart, 2006).

However, some conflict is unnecessary and avoidable, especially regarding daily tasks, such as tidying the house, going to bed, and completing chores.

Use the Seeing Family Conflict as a Problem to Solve worksheet to help recognize everyday actions as problems to overcome rather than points of contention.

A Note on Conflict Resolution for Kids

“Life is a series of mismatches, miscommunications, and misattunements that are quickly repaired,” says family researcher Ed Tronick (cited in Divecha, 2020).

Children can learn from the family environment that conflict need not be out of proportion to the situation and may, ultimately, lead to positive change.

It helps when family relationships are overwhelmingly positive. Make sure to make “special time” available for each child, where they have control over what you do and for how long, writes Divecha (2020). Learn to show gratitude and appreciation for what the child does more readily without it becoming predictable and unthinking.

3 Best Games and Activities for Kids

Engaging in play can help us become more comfortable in the world of childhood, breaking down barriers between parents and children and offering safe opportunities to talk without descending into conflict (Sori et al., 2016).

Board games such as Monopoly, Checkers, and Life can be played as a pair or as a family. The children see that it’s okay to make mistakes and learn from their parents’ reactions to losing.

More physical, active games such as Tag or Hide and Seek allow the whole family to have fun, while, importantly, seeing each other having fun. Children need to experience their parents as humans with a wish to enjoy themselves. Parents benefit from experiencing their family laughing – a reminder that life is not all about duty and rules.

Quieter pastimes, including art and craft, can be a time to build and use mindfulness practices, considering colors, textures, and smells. Interactive activities such as making funny characters out of play dough or houses out of Lego are fun and beyond rules or feelings of failure.

Strengthening the family fabric

In a small Canadian study, researchers examined how parents of four- to seven-year-old children strengthened, harmed, or repaired their relationships with their children. Parents said their relationships with their children were strengthened by “horizontal” or egalitarian exchanges like playing together, negotiating, taking turns, compromising, having fun, or sharing psychological intimacy—in other words, respecting and enjoying one another. Their relationships were harmed by an over-reliance on power and authority, and especially by stonewalling tactics like the “silent treatment.” When missteps happened, parents repaired and restored intimacy by expressing warmth and affection, talking about what happened, and apologizing.

This model of strengthening, harming, and repairing can help you think about your interactions. When a family relationship is already positive, there is a foundation of trust and a belief in the other’s good intentions, which helps everyone restore more easily from minor ruptures. For this reason, it helps to proactively tend the fabric of family relationships.

That can begin with simply building up an investment of positive interactions:

  • Spend “special time” with each child individually to create more space to deepen your one-to-one relationship. Let them control the agenda and decide how long you spend together.
  • Appreciate out loud, share gratitude reflections, and notice the good in your children intermittently throughout the day or week.

You also want to watch out for ways you might harm the relationship. If you’re ever unsure about a child’s motives, check the intentions behind their behaviors, and don’t assume they were ill-intentioned. Language like, “I noticed that…” or “Tell me what happened…” or “And then what happened?” can help you begin to understand an experience from the child’s point of view.

A Loving Space for Kids’ Emotions

Show love to your children by helping them process emotions

When speaking to a child, consider how they might receive what you’re saying. Remember that words and silence have weight; children are “emotional Geiger counters” and read your feelings much more than they process your words. If you are working through feelings or traumas that have nothing to do with them, take care to be responsible for your feelings and take a moment to calm yourself before speaking.

In this context of connection and understanding, you can then create a family culture where rifts are expected and repairs are welcomed:

  • Watch for tiny bids for repairs. Sometimes we have so much on our minds that we miss the look, gesture, or expression in a child that shows that what they want is to reconnect.
  • Normalize requests like “I need a repair” or “Can we have a redo?” We need to be able to let others know when the relationship has been harmed.
  • Likewise, if you think you might have stepped on someone’s toes, circle back to check. Catching a misstep early can help.

When you’re annoyed by a family member’s behavior, try to frame your request for change in positive language; that is, say what you want them to do rather than what you don’t. Language like, “I have a request…” or “Would you be willing to…?” keeps the exchange more neutral and helps the recipient stay engaged rather than getting defensive.

You can also model healthy repairs with people around you, so they are normalized and children see their usefulness in real-time. Children benefit when they watch adults resolve conflict constructively.

Four steps to an authentic repair

There are infinite varieties of repairs, and they can vary in several ways, depending on your child’s age and temperament, and how serious the rift was.

Infants need physical contact and the restoration of love and security. Older children need affection and more words. Teenagers may need more complex conversations. Individual children vary in their styles—some need more words than others, and what is hurtful to one child may not faze another child. Also, your style might not match the child’s, requiring you to stretch further.

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Some glitches are little and may just need a check-in, but deeper wounds need more attention. Keep the apology in proportion to the hurt. What’s important is not your judgment of how hurt someone should be, but the actual felt experience of the child’s hurt. A one-time apology may suffice, but some repairs need to be acknowledged frequently over time to stitch that fabric back together. It’s often helpful to check in later to see if the amends are working.

While each repair is unique, authentic repairs typically involve the same steps.

1. Acknowledge the offense. First, try to understand the hurt you caused. It doesn’t matter if it was unintentional or what your reasons were. This is the time to turn off your defense system and focus on understanding and naming the other person’s pain or anger.

Sometimes you need to check your understanding. Begin slowly: “Did I hurt you? Help me understand how.” This can be humbling and requires that we listen with an open heart as we take in the other person’s perspective.

Try not to undermine the apology by adding on any caveats, like blaming the child for being sensitive or ill-behaved or deserving of what happened. Any attempt to gloss over, minimize, or dilute the wound is not an authentic repair. Children have a keen sense of authenticity. Faking it or overwhelming them will not work.

A spiritual teacher reminded me of an old saying, “It is acknowledging the wound that gets the thorn out.” It’s what reconnects our humanity.

Making an Effective Apology

A good apology involves more than saying “sorry”

2. Express remorse. Here, a sincere “I’m sorry” is sufficient.

Don’t add anything to it. One of the mistakes adults often make, according to therapist and author Harriet Lerner, is to tack on a discipline component: “Don’t let it happen again,” or “Next time, you’re really going to get it.” This, says Lerner, is what prevents children from learning to use apologies themselves.

Apologizing can be tricky for adults. It might feel beneath us, or we may fear that we’re giving away our power. We shouldn’t have to apologize to a child, because as adults we are always right, right? Of course not. But it’s easy to get stuck in a vertical power relationship with our child which makes backtracking hard.

On the other hand, some adults—especially women, says Rick Hanson—can go overboard and be too effusive, too obsequious, or even too quick in their efforts to apologize. This can make the apology more about yourself than the person who was hurt. Or it could be a symptom of a need for one’s boundary work.

There is no perfect formula for an apology except that it be delivered in a way that acknowledges the wound and makes amends. And there can be different paths to that. Our family sometimes uses a jokey, “You were right, I was wrong, you were right, I was wrong, you were right, I was wrong,” to playfully acknowledge light transgressions. Some apologies are nonverbal: My father atoned for missing all of my childhood birthdays when he traveled 2,000 miles to surprise me at my doorstep for an adult birthday. Words are not his strong suit, but his planning, effort, and showing up was the repair. Apologies can take on all kinds of tones and qualities.

3. Consider offering a brief explanation. If you sense that the other person is open to listening, you can provide a brief explanation of your point of view, but use caution, as this can be a slippery slope. Feel into how much is enough. The focus of the apology is on the wounded person’s experience. If an explanation helps, fine, but it shouldn’t derail the intent. This is not the time to add in your grievances—that’s a conversation for a different time.

4. Express your sincere intention to fix the situation and prevent it from happening again. With a child, especially, try to be concrete and actionable about how the same mistake can be prevented in the future. “I’m going to try really hard to…” and “Let’s check back in to see how it’s feeling…” can be a start.

Remember to forgive yourself, too. This is a tender process, we are all works in progress, and adults are still developing. I know I am.

Before our visit, my daughter and I had a phone conversation. We shared our excitement about the rare chance to spend so much time together. Then we gingerly expressed our concerns.

A Take-Home Message

It is vital that families learn to survive – and even grow – under adverse conditions. The family unit faces daily challenges from outside and conflict from within that can upset the internal stability that rests upon existing narratives, shared beliefs, and sometimes mistaken assumptions (Goldenberg, 2017).

It can become less about preventing all conflict, which is impossible, and more about creating a family environment that reduces unnecessary friction, repairs rifts, and misunderstandings, o ws a,nd moves forward.

Our communication – what we say and how we say it – remains crucial and can improve over time with practice and improved awareness of one another’s needs. Family members can also learn skills and techniques to improve self-regulation, resilience, and coping that strengthen internal structures.

This article introduces tools and worksheets that help remove avoidable conflict and manage and resolve it within the family unit, where disagreement is inevitable. Try them out with your clients or within your own family to improve engagement, strengthen relationships, and build a more supportive and resilient family structure.

REFERENCES

  • American Psychological Association. (2011). Family interventions. Retrieved October 6, 2021, from https://www.apa.org/pi/about/publications/caregivers/practice-settings/intervention/family
  • Divecha, D. (2020, October 27). Family conflict is normal; it’s the repair that matters. Greater Good. Retrieved October 4, 2021, from https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/family_conflict_is_normal_its_the_repair_that_matters
  • Goldenberg, I. (2017). Family therapy: An overview. Cengage Learning.
  • Hart, S. (2006). Respectful parents, respectful kids: 7 Keys to turn family conflict into co-operation. PuddleDancer Press.
  • Marta, E., & Alfieri, S. (2014). Family conflicts. In A. C. Michalos (Ed.), Encyclopedia of quality of life and well-being research. Springer.
  • Metcalf, L. (2011). Marriage and family therapy: A practice-oriented approach. Springer.
  • Sori, C. F., Hecker, L., & Bachenberg, M. E. (2016). The therapist’s notebook for children and adolescents: Homework, handouts, and activities for use in psychotherapy. Routledge/Taylor & Francis.