Resolving Interpersonal Conflict

Human beings live together in society and, despite community, it is possible people have differences, which is sometimes a source of conflict. Conflict is “a serious disagreement” ^[1] and interpersonal conflict is “an expressed struggle between at least two interdependent parties who receive incompatible goals, scarce resources, and interference from others in achieving their goals.”^[2] No person can avoid conflict. This post illustrates my interpersonal conflict concerning my family and a gang of youths in my neighborhood.

My house is located in a commercial area where teenagers always hang out after school. Next to my house is a narrow street which was a clean and quiet place until it became a meeting place for young gangsters. Now they come here, hang out every day, strew the floor with rubbish, deface the wall, take a leak on the wall, and sometimes even defecate on the floor. These actions result in a dirty environment. They also make my plants die by throwing trash into my flowerpots. They completely change our peaceful and beautiful morning with green plants and clean surroundings into disgusting mornings with trash and unpleasant smells.

These kids study at one of the most famous private schools in my neighborhood. Generally, those studying at private schools are from a good and rich family. Therefore, they should be able to find a more suitable place for meeting and should not act like mentioned above. One of the assumptions is that they may want to meet without wasting money on renting a place (so that they can spend more money buying liquor, cigarettes, cool skull sweaters, and so on.) 

All my family wants is the area to be clean. Were they not to dirty the place, we would be fine with them coming here. Therefore, we decided to turn conflict into collaboration by letting them use this space and asking them to keep it clean. My mother talked with them politely, explaining what we expected from them. They nodded; however, until now everything is still the same.

After finding out collaboration would not work, we decided to use harsher methods. My brother yelled at them, which put oil to the fire. They left more rubbish intentionally. We told their school but the school ignored the issue. Then, we created an online forum concerning this problem with the hope that someone in the community might see this problem and try to solve it. Again, nothing happened. We also thought of telling the police. However, after thinking of the consequences that the gangsters may hold a grudge against us and, in the end, hurt us, we did not tell the police. We have tried a lot of methods to solve this conflict between the gangsters and ourselves so that we can live happily together in this community. Now we have been enduring this for more than two years.

How can we get back those clean and beautiful mornings and be on good terms with those boys again? Moreover, it is not just about the environment but it is about their future as well…

References

[1]Conflict,http://oxforddictionaries.com[Internet].Available at http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/conflict [Accessed 6^th September 2012]

[2] Wilmot & Hocker (2010), Interpersonal Conflict, p.11