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A surprisingly high number of police interventions arise as a result of two sets of parents becoming involved in a serious dispute relating to their respective children.

Parental Disputes

This is usually completely avoidable and needs to be understood in the context of children’s typical development paths.

Parents’ protective feelings for their children

It is perfectly natural and desirable for parents to feel very protective towards their offspring.

Not all parents will necessarily have the same levels of such inclinations, with some perhaps being over-protective. This is entirely normal and part of the human condition.

These instincts though can be surprisingly easily triggered by external events and that can sometimes happen when another child or other children are involved.

Children’s relationships with other children

The dynamics of children’s interactions with each other can be almost incomprehensibly complex to observing adults. The politics of the playground or classroom, even at younger ages, can be a nightmare to try and understand.

While experienced preschool and daycare centre providers will have vast experience in this area, not every single interaction between children can be seen, heard or fully understood if considered in isolation.

That’s why it’s far from unusual to find two children that, to adults, seem charming but who for some reason or another dislike each other intensely. Sometimes these dislikes are very short-term though at other times, they may be longer-lasting.

Add to that complicated backdrop highly fertile younger imaginations and it explains why it’s not unusual to hear children accusing each other of many different things, most of which probably have no foundation in fact or which, at best, are trivial in their origin.

Children’s stories

This can be difficult for parents when their child returns home from school or playing with friends with stories such as “he/she”:

• “keeps hitting me…”;
• “stole my pencils..”;
• “ripped my coat..”
• “threw poo at me….”;
• “said they’re going to beat me up…” etc.

Those protective parental instincts may kick in, resulting in angry accusations with the other parents involved. However, it is worth keeping in mind that children under the age of around 5-6 may have difficulties sometimes in understanding the difference between the reality of events and stories they’ve heard or made up themselves.

That does not make your child a liar or suggest that you need to discount everything they’re saying. You should always show support for your child when they are reporting things to you, even if you have some doubts as to the veracity of the story involved. It simply recognises the complex state a child’s perception processes may be in at these early ages and illustrates the need for a degree of caution and a measured response.

Top tips

Assuming your child’s stories do not involve serious physical injury or assault, where contact with the authorities may be required, should they comment along some of the lines illustrated above:

• avoid getting angry. Take no action at all for an hour or so, until you’ve had a chance to talk further to your child and to consider calmly an appropriately managed reaction;
• show interest in the story and ask some gently supportive questions seeking more details. Many parents can sense if their child is using some ‘literary licence’ to embellish a story;
• try taking a break and then coming back slightly later and asking your child to tell you the story again. Sometimes children’s stories of events can vary considerably within as little as 30 minutes of a first telling;
• weigh up everything you’ve heard to try and get a realistic picture of what happened and its seriousness;
• if you can, postpone any actions until you’ve had a chance to discuss the matter with your child’s teachers or care providers – assuming the incident happened in their institutions. They may sometimes have a very different interpretation of what happened and might not have even regarded it as being serious enough to bring to your attention. They might also have related facts and histories that you’re unaware of;
• never suggest to your child that they’re lying or being babyish to raise their concerns to you.

Having gone through this process, you may feel you do need to speak to the other parents involved. If so:

• NEVER directly confront the other child or children concerned;
• NEVER rush around to the other child’s house for a confrontation with their parents;
• don’t dash off furious texts, emails or letters or make angry accusative phone calls. Such actions only invite a response in kind and the building of defensive walls;
• even if you know the parents well and are on good terms, ask them for a calm chat on neutral territory. Ideally, get an unbiased person to help – some schools may be willing to arrange a discussion after school between parents even if the incident(s) happened outside of the school environment;
• remember to give the other parents your child’s version of events and allow them time to discuss the matter with their child to get the other side of the story before responding to you. Remember that initially, your comments are likely to trigger the same protective response in them that you had when your child spoke to you. Make allowances for that;
• if the other parents accept the validity of your child’s story, ask them politely what steps they plan to take with their child to avoid a recurrence;
• where they refute your child’s accusations, you may have to ask your school or a social care expert for further advice on your next steps.

In the vast majority of cases, calm measured discussion between the sets of parents quickly and quietly resolves disputes and related issues between their children.