The kids are pretty good about picking up the entire negotiation culture.
It begins as a teacher mediated thing. I can recall it arising in Sarah's
2-3 year old groups a couple of years ago. There'd be some offense or other
and some child would start screaming. The teacher would draw the two
parties together and mediate some talk about turn taking or throwing sand
and would invoke "use your words."
It does sound rather adult, but then, that's sort of the point. The kids
are comfortable using it. I've seen kids mediate other kids with it at
Sarah's school. I've also seen school districts spend a lot of money on
"conflict resolution" and "teach peace" activities in middle school and
high school.
Btw, a doctoral student of mine just did a very interesting study in which
she had middle school kids use a MOO to roll play and discuss conflict
resolution scenarios. They were "mentored" by high school kids 1,000 miles
away who had been somewhat instructed on conflict resolution and mediation.
I, for one, was rather skeptical of the likelihood of achieving any
measurable results in the time frame she had...I was wrong. THe key seems
to have been the language... the students comment quite a bit about the
acquisition of a vocabularly for talking with other people about problems.
I used to mock the "use your words" stuff cause it sounded so Mr.
Rogers...but now that I'm a mommy and I've seen it really work for kids, I
have to eat humble pie.
Linda