Learning to keep peace in a family

By DITA DE BONI education reporter

Parents are going back to school for anti-bullying lessons in an effort to reduce violence in homes.

With new research showing half of all secondary students have experienced bullying and most schools running anti-bullying classes, experts' eyes are now turning to parents.

In 2000 school staffrooms across the country, parents have been learning how to peacefully mediate everyday squabbles over issues such as bedtime and junk food.

Recent school statistics, including some that show almost 500 students disciplined last year for attacking teachers, and bullying such as Napier's broomstick attack, highlight a need to start early to create a more positive environment, says the New Zealand Peace Foundation's co-ordinator of parent programmes, Louise Belcher.

The Cool Schools Parents' Programme, run by the Foundation, has grown out of the success of its Cool Schools programme, now in more than half the country's primary schools.

Both programmes - which are funded by the ministries of Education and Health and private interests - work by teaching first children, and then parents, how to mediate disputes calmly and how to give voice to feelings without resorting to aggression.

And a new programme, Healthy Families, which is being trialled in South Auckland, goes one step further by helping develop a written "vision" for each family.

Ms Belcher, who now runs several classes each week for parents, says the skills learned by children at school needed to be enforced in homes as well.

Parents learn what their children learn at school about conflict, then get a chance to role-play typical situations they encounter at home which can wreck the peace.

They also learn how to mediate as senior students do when helping youngsters settle squabbles in the Cool Schools programme. Mediators have to listen to both sides of the argument before helping squabblers come to a mutually acceptable resolution. Parents are encouraged to express how their children's constant fighting makes them feel.

"I also give practical advice to the parents, such as being organised the night before a school morning to minimise stress, and to really listen to their children whenever possible," Ms Belcher says.

Recently, parents at Ellerslie School who met to complete the parents' programme said they felt it taught excellent skills.

Shona Hoggins said it made her recognise that she was often solving her two children's disputes, whereas "with mediation, they come up with their own solutions and I think it's got more chance of success".

Ellerslie School principal Jo Wilson, who sat in on the parents' course, says both programmes were appreciated by the community.

"Just in terms of the mediation we teach within the school, we've noticed the duty teachers are less busy because small squabbles are first referred to the peer mediators."