The average teenager has 4,200 fights with their parents before they turn 18. As you’ve gotten older, fights with your family have probably become more common: there are new arguments over rules and independence, debates about politics and relationships. Or you might find yourself in the middle of fights between your parents, dealing with family conflicts that you don’t know how to solve.
If you regularly get into arguments with your family, these fights may feel inevitable. And if your family tends to argue, you might be unsure how to resolve the situation. Both of these circumstances demonstrate the need for better conflict resolution in the family.
The causes and solutions to each family conflict are unique, but learning to use family conflict resolution strategies can help you navigate a tense household and reduce stress for everyone.
Causes of Family Conflict
The reasons for family conflict are practically endless. Between teens and their parents, common sources of conflict include:
- Rules: As you get older, you stop seeing your parents as the ultimate authority figure. You might fight about dating, curfews, and more.
- Chores: You and your parents might disagree about your responsibilities and privileges. They might get angry if you don’t do all your chores or meet their expectations.
- Relationships: You probably have a friend that your parents don’t like. You might have arguments about whether someone is a bad influence or who you can hang out with.
- School: Your parents might set high standards that you struggle to reach, leading to arguments over grades and homework.
- Political views and religion: As you get older, you might realize that you disagree with your parents’ beliefs and ideologies. This can lead to angry debates.
Conflict between other family members can also happen for a wide range of reasons:
- Finances: Especially when money is tight, your relatives might argue about each other’s spending habits and budgets.
- Stressful events: Family gatherings, vacations, and life transitions can increase stress in the household and cause fights to break out.
- Relationship problems: Sometimes, personality differences and breakdowns in communication can lead to arguments. Maybe your parents are divorced and fight regularly, or maybe they get into conflicts over seemingly small things.
Conflict in and of itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing. After all, conflict occurs whenever two people have different opinions: if you and your parents have different ideas about the right curfew, a conflict is necessary for you to reach an agreement. As you get older and develop greater maturity and critical thinking skills, it’s only natural that you and your family would start to have more substantial disagreements.
According to one study, though, about 20% of families regularly have “intense, prolonged, unhealthy conflict” between parents and their adolescent children. These “destructive conflicts” involve unhelpful strategies that only intensify the problem:
- Verbal aggression: insults, threats, name-calling
- Physical aggression: punching, hitting, pushing
- Silent tactics: sulking, walking out, giving the silent treatment
- Capitulation: giving in without reaching a workable solution
These destructive conflicts can harm overall mental health and create stress. Family conflict resolution activities can help your family avoid these destructive conflicts and work through disagreements constructively.
Steps to Resolve Family Conflict:
Every family and every conflict is unique. Your fights with your family probably look pretty different from your best friend’s fight with theirs. However, keeping a few basic family conflict resolution strategies in mind can help you resolve most fights with your relatives.
- Focus on problems, not people.
- Understand their perspective.
- Work on your communication skills.
- Be willing to apologize.
Focus on the Problem:
Most arguments have a specific cause. Focusing on that cause, rather than on the person behind it, can help you end arguments more quickly.
For example, imagine you’re mad at your family for banning you from going out with your friends on the weekend. You could make the argument about all of your problems with your family: how they never let you do what you want, how they think you’re so irresponsible, how you wish they weren’t so strict. But focusing on the situation at hand instead of attacking people for their feelings and behaviors can prevent people from getting upset.
It can be easy to move from specific conflicts to broader attacks, especially when you have a problem with a family member’s behaviors or habits. But trying to stay grounded in the moment can prevent the situation from spiraling.
Understand Their Perspective:
Understanding your parent’s or sibling’s perspective might seem impossible. After all, isn’t disagreeing with someone the whole point of having a conflict? But family conflict resolution often requires you to see things from someone else’s point of view.
It can be challenging to try to understand the perspective of someone you’re fighting with. But being understanding builds empathy and respect, two important qualities for healthy long-term relationships. Listening to others can also help you put the problem in perspective: maybe the conflict isn’t as significant as you thought it was, or maybe there are multiple sides to the issue.
If you’re struggling to identify how your family members are feeling, try using active listening strategies. Active listening requires you to not only hear but also engage with what the other person is saying. Strategies for active listening include:
- Being patient with the other person
- Asking questions
- Not interrupting
- Confirming that you understand
- Maintaining eye contact
- Having engaged body language
Although putting yourself in other people's shoes is important, sometimes it’s impossible. If your conflict is over something fundamental or deeply personal — for example, if you and your parents are in a conflict because of your sexuality or gender identity — then it might be tough to understand their perspective. Trying to understand other people shouldn’t mean harming yourself. But outside of that situation, mutual understanding is very important.
Simply asking “Why do you feel that way?” or “What makes you say that?” can put you on the way to understanding your parents and other relatives. Once you understand everyone's perceptions, you can find a satisfactory solution for both you and your family.
Communicate Effectively:
Family conflict resolution strategies often fail because people don’t know how to communicate clearly and effectively. If you want to explain your perspective or advocate for a certain outcome, then you need to know how to express yourself convincingly
There are three main ways of communicating:
- Passive: avoid expressing your feelings and desires
- Aggressive: expressing yourself in a threatening, mean, or ironic way
- Assertive: expressing yourself in a respectful, direct, and honest way
Assertive communication is usually the best for resolving conflict. Passive communication can lead to misunderstandings and unsatisfying outcomes, and aggressive communication can make people angry or scared. But how can you communicate assertively?
This guide to communicating your needs while social distancing provides some examples. Imagine you and your parents are fighting about your performance in school during online learning; they don’t understand that you’re feeling overwhelmed and need more assistance.
- Passive communication would be saying, “It’s not a big deal,” or avoiding the conversation entirely.
- Aggressive communication would be yelling, “You don’t get it!”
- Assertive communication would be explaining your problem clearly: “I’m having a difficult time. It would help if you could ___.”
Assertive communication often requires you to advocate for yourself and your needs: that is, to stand up for yourself and argue in support of your needs. There are four steps to advocating for yourself:
- Know your goal: Having a specific goal in mind can help you stay focused and communicate effectively. For example, instead of telling your family that you want more independence, consider specific rules you could change, like “I want to be allowed to spend the night at a friend’s house.”
- Build your facts: Understanding the arguments for and against your request is crucial. This is one reason why understanding other’s perspectives is helpful; knowing why your family members might say “no” can make it easier to convince them to say “yes.”
- Pick your process: Time and place are key. Identify who you want to talk to and when you want to talk to them — maybe one parent is more likely to agree than the other, and maybe they’re more likely to listen after dinner than right when they get home from work. Maybe it’s easier to avoid talking and instead communicate over a text or phone call.
- Make your case: Explain your goal, your reasons, and your responses to any of your relatives’ concerns. Think about ways you can compromise and what you’ll do if they don’t agree.
Following this four-step strategy is a good way to make your case and deal with family conflict. If you can clearly express your beliefs and plans, your family is more likely to agree with you. These tips for communicating effectively can also help you persuade others and avoid offending anyone.
Apologize:
Unfortunately, we all say and do hurtful things at some point in our lives. It’s also possible to have hurt someone who hurt you, and vice-versa. This means that even when you’re angry at someone or think they made a mistake, it’s often a good idea to apologize. If you’ve had a heated conversation and made someone upset, apologizing is the best way to make things right and deal with family conflict.
But there are many ways to apologize, and they’re not all equally good. Following these steps can make sure that you give a satisfying apology that the other person appreciates:
- Be explicit: Say “I’m sorry for ___.” Make sure the other person is aware that you know what you did wrong.
- Focus on yourself: Giving detail reinforces that you understand the problem and how to correct it. It’s crucial to focus on your own mistake rather than on the other person’s reaction: saying “I’m sorry I said that” is very different from “I’m sorry if I offended you” or “I’m sorry, but I didn’t think you’d care.” You don’t want an apology to sound like an excuse.
- Make a plan: Explain how you’ll change your behavior in the future. This is the most essential part of an apology, as it shows the other person that you won’t repeat your mistake.
What if You Can’t Resolve the Family Conflict?
Disappointing as it may be, you can’t solve all of your family’s problems by yourself. There are times when conflicts aren’t your fault and it’s not your place to resolve them:
- Conflicts between other members of your family aren’t your responsibility. If your parents are arguing about finances, for example, or if your mother is mad at your brother, you usually don’t need to get involved.
- Conflicts over your identity sometimes can’t be resolved. It’s deeply upsetting when your family is intolerant of your religious beliefs, LGBTQ+ identity, or some other element of your identity. There are strategies to deal with these family conflicts, but you can’t necessarily find a solution through a single conversation.
When dealing with these types of family conflicts, the first thing to remember is that it’s not your fault. You have no control over whether your parents have relationship problems with each other or whether they struggle to accept some part of who you are.
It’s also important to prioritize your own self-care. Family conflict resolution activities should never come at the expense of your own wellbeing. If you’re feeling upset or stressed out because of a seemingly unsolvable family conflict, you can use some of these resources to relax and reflect:
- Try journaling with these reflection prompts to support your mental health.
- Explore these stress management techniques for teens and these mental health activities for high school students.
- Learn more about teen stress and how to take care of yourself emotionally.
- Identify people you can rely on in different situations with this support-mapping activity.
- Look at this list of resources for teens, including resources for LGBTQ+ teens, teens in abusive relationships, and teens with mental health challenges.