Guiding children in finding social acceptance is on of the most important parts of the early childhood teacher's job. Opening the column with an anecdote from a pre-K teacher, Gartrell discusses what teachers can do when children cause conflicts on purpose and how teachers might prevent such conflicts.

Conflicts happen all the time in early childhood classrooms--and just about everywhere else in life. Conflict management includes the ability to: (1) prevent conflicts from becoming too serious to resolve easily and (2) resolve conflicts peaceably no matter how serious they get. When a third person assists others in resolving a conflict, this is…