Restorative Justice for your Home
Two best friends came to camp together looking forward to an awesome week. All went well until one of the girls began spending time with other campers in the cabin, leaving her best friend feeling left out. Conflict ensued that left both the counselor and girl’s director unsure how to solve it. That’s how the two girls ended up talking with me. After hearing about the situation, I decided to use the principles of restorative justice to solve the problem.
I met with the two girls at a picnic table by the lake. “This is going to be a very different kind of conversation than you may be used to having,” I said at the start of our meeting. “Normally when campers meet with the director someone is in trouble and we have to figure out who is to blame. But today no one is in trouble. So, we aren’t trying to figure out who is a fault. We don’t have to blame each other and we don’t have to get defensive. Instead, what we are going to do is listen to each other and see if we can understand each other’s feelings better.” I asked the girls three questions:
1. What Happened?
2. How did it make you feel?
3. What do you need from the other person to move forward?
I gave the first girl my radio and said, “this is the talking stick. Whoever has the stick can talk and the other person will listen. And after the first person shares, the other person can have the radio and do the talking.”
Both girls shared what happened from their perspective. And then we got the second question. The girl who was feeling left out got the radio first. She immediately teared up and blurted out, “I just feel like I’m losing my best friend.” Without any prompting, her friend reached over and embraced her. “You aren’t going to lose me,” she said. That was the real issue. With that on the table it was easy to find a path forward and the two girls finished strong and went home, still best friends.
We live in a world frozen in perpetual conflict. Too often conflict resolution is about winners and losers. It is about who can shout the loudest and who can tear down the other person first. But what if there was a better way?
The principles of restorative justice provide a powerful way to deal with conflict without blame, shame, and canceling the other person. This type of conflict resolution requires radical empathy, active peacemaking, thoughtful listening, and direct, respectful, and creative communication. This can be hard – not all conflicts are as easy to solve as the example shared here. Bottom line: we aren’t perfect, but we should all strive to embrace difficult conversations and not run from them. The practice of restorative justice has three goals.
1. Heal the immediate harm.
2. Mitigate future harm.
3. Restore community.
Well before any conflict is on horizon talk with your kids about restorative justice and the process you will use to solve the next conflict. It would help if you role play a few times with a made up conflict. This will help your kids get used to the process and know what to expect when conflict does arise. Don’t spring this on them in the middle of a crisis.
When conflict does occur, invite your kids to “circle up.” That is the cue that the process of restorative justice is about to take place. Work through the three discussion questions allowing each person to share before the other person speaks. As the moderator, you can interject thoughts and ideas to facilitate better understanding. Listen for moments when the conversation touches on real, core issues and point them out.
Once the key issues have been identified and you have discussed what each party needs to move forward, help your children develop a strategy for resolving the conflict and restoring the relationship. Ask your children how you can help them live up to what they have agreed on.
This process is not a silver bullet. Some conversations will go better than others. But over time, as your family increases your skill at understanding each other, the solutions will come easer.
There will still be times when someone is at fault. And at times there may need to be greater accountability applied, but learning how to constructively navigate conflict while maintaining community is one of the greatest skills your children can learn.
