PLAYING WITH CONFLICT - A LONGITUDINAL-STUDY OF VARIETIES OF SPONTANEOUS VERBAL CONFLICT DURING MOTHER-CHILD INTERACTION AT HOME

Although conflict is central to major developmental theories, relative ly little is known about the ways in which young children and caregive rs argue at home. The existing psychological research focuses narrowly on serious, 'problem-solving' conflicts. In contrast, this in-depth l ongitudinal study, describes varieties of spontaneous conflict talk oc curring at home between nine middle-class Caucasian American mothers a nd their 2- to 4-year-old children, All dyads produced conflicts with nonserious, imaginary and/or ritual markings for a mean of 31% (+/- 2. 8%) of all mother-child conflicts. Overall, most mother-child marked c onflicts were nonserious, but the percentage of marked conflicts that were imaginary increased with age. Mothers used marked conflicts to ma nage ongoing problematic interactions,vith their children, while child ren apparently introduced marked conflicts primarily during play. Avai lable data on child-child conflicts showed that some of these conflict s also were marked and were introduced primarily during play. Implicat ions for how varieties of conflict ma), contribute to social competenc e within the family and peer group are discussed.