What I'm Learning In Mediator Training
A tweet:
The story? From Zuri Davis at Reason, the cops were called on a little girl selling cookies to earn money for school clothes:
Why call the police on a 10-year-old selling cookies?One neighbor said that she did so out of concern for other neighborhood children. She claimed that her own daughter was almost hit by a car belonging to one of Watters' customers.
"Well, we've got a little girl been selling cookies and water for four weeks and the traffic is getting to the point that they're using our driveway to turn around, which is fine, but they almost hit my daughter," the neighbor said in a phone call to emergency services. "I mean, it's just adding. It's getting out of control."
Another neighbor called to conduct a welfare check to make sure Watters was being properly supervised.
Oh, please -- now we have helicopter neighbors?!!
This is ultimately about something else. However, to my surprise, what I'm learning in this mediator training is not to solve people's problems but to get them to lay out the underlying interests beneath their positions...in other words, what's really bothering them, what they really want.
That's the start of their possibly coming together instead of having their lives in the neighborhood be a persistent small-scale pitch battle.
As Kenneth Cloke puts it in this $5.99 (bargain!) Kindle Mediation Training Manual (a bit roughly formatted, but not a big deal):
While law is more "black and white," mediation recognizes the legitimacy of both parties' self interests and seeks ways to reconcile them....Mediation is an alternative that allows people to express their needs openly, without being frightened, and to understand their opponent's needs and the possibility of resolution without denying their own self-interests.
...The mediator invites the parties to participate in defining the issues, identifying creative solutions, and collaboratively implementing solutions. Mediation is future-oriented and less concerned with deciding who is right or wrong than solving problems so they do not occur again.
...Mediation works because the motivation of disputants is made the center and object of the process. Motivation, as an expression of subjective desire, is not debatable. By separating people from positions and positions from interests, by surfacing motivation and generating options, mediators create a problem-solving process in which combatants form a team in an effort to reconcile their apparently conflicting self-interests.
I especially appreciated this thought on conflict:
Valuing conflict as positive, seeing it as an adventure or journey, an opportunity for growth and change, an invitation to intimacy and relationship, and an opening for transformation.
I'm not sure why you don't consider that a legitimate concern. The daughter has a right to be in that driveway; the person who used it to turn around does not.
Maybe the person could have her child to play in the backyard (assuming this daughter is a child, not an adult who happened to be walking in the driveway when she was almost hit) while Watters has her sale, but why should she? Why should a neighbor's child's activities restrict your use of your own property?
I'm happy that Watters' entrepreneurship will allow her to buy new clothes for school, but there has to be a solution to this. I consider a desire not to have people trespass on your property to be a valid one, especially if by doing so, the trespassers endanger the lives or well-being of your loved ones.
Patrick at August 9, 2018 2:31 AM
Wasn't it discovered that the little girl was actually selling cookies for her mom's business, which mom was advertising online, hence the traffic.
Also that neighbors were worried because mom had her working 8 hour days and only brought her near the house because she'd been warned not to sell cookies at a busy intersection nearby.
This all came out when the story first circulated. The evidence is on facebook.
cruela at August 9, 2018 10:37 AM
Speculation: the neighbor(s) talked to the mom. Maybe she told them to GFY.
Or, possibly, it is simply easier to narc on them than to confront them. I wouldn't want a crazy woman knowing where I live and having a grudge.
I R A Darth Aggie at August 9, 2018 11:42 AM
Great questions IRA Darth Aggie.
Think carefully about how mediation can be subverted.
Have known some people ordered into mediation mandated as part of a contract.
It is inferior to going to court, but also much cheaper.
Several problems.
First, no rules of evidence.
Second, the truth of many issues is not deternimed or resolved by everybody giving up a little bit and compromising.
Example. I believe my x is a pedophile. I want him to have no unsupervised contact with our pre school aged children. He wants full custody.
You seriously want to find a compromise here?
Third: people lie when it serves their interests or they perceive an advantage in doing so.
Cant tell you how many times someone has agreed to do something and then blew me off the moment my back was turned.
Mediation is something that should be tried only when the stakes are both incredibly low, and the mediator has no vested interest, emotional or otherwise in the parties reaching an agreement, and participation is both voluntary and non binding.
Isab at August 9, 2018 1:25 PM
"Maybe she told them to GFY."
THIS! This is why I will not "confront" (i.e., talk) to a neighbor doing something stupid or just plain not neighborly. If they had even a little consideration for their neighbors no one would have to tell them to knock it off as they would not be doing something stupid in the first place.
In this case, given that they don't care cars are using their neighbors driveway I don't think they could be reasoned with. And, if they can't be reasoned with what do you do then? Call the cops? Ha! They now know who called the cops on them.
Nope, forget "mediation" or even trying to talk sense to an idiot neighbor - call the cops on them from the start.
For what it is worth - I did try to talk with some neighbors about our parking spaces (reserved and numbered with our apartment numbers) when they were constantly parking in spots that were not theirs. Long story short - they always made up excuses as to why they did it and some of us ended up with flat tires, keyed cars, etc. Nope, I'll call the cops from the start - even if it is a "ten-year old" (BTW, there is an adult behind that 10-year old kid)
charles at August 9, 2018 4:52 PM
I'm not sure why you don't consider that a legitimate concern.
Why assume that I don't? Did you not read my tweet?
But people can say there's a hazard when there isn't one.
Amy Alkon at August 9, 2018 9:13 PM
I'm not sure why you don't consider that a legitimate concern.
Why assume that I don't? Did you not read my tweet?
But people can say there's a hazard when there isn't one.
Amy Alkon at August 9, 2018 9:13 PM
Sure they can, but it seems like mediator training is designed to drive the mediator to assume that all arguments and allegations are pretextual rather than factual.
Because without that assumption, there really is nothing to mediate since the mediators themselves have no legal tools, training, or the power of the court to compel witnesses, punish perjury, or determine the facts.
While I don't think cookie selling rises to the level of having a crack house next door, with sufficient traffic on a residential culdesac , it could sure have the same effect. I would probably call the police as well, whicb I have only done once in my life.
The occasion was a really loud party going on at three in the morning just across the alley from my back bedroom window which was open because it was really really hot, and we had no air conditioning.
I wasn't getting dressed and going out to confront a bunch of drunken young adults. Sure enough later that morning my 80 year old neighbors had their house and their windows egged because the assholes across the alley assumed it was them. (They didnt hear a thing).
So Charles is right. You never talk to these people, and never confront them.
Isab at August 9, 2018 10:18 PM
Been there, done that. Neighbor Lady was whack.
Some of these cases being used a examples are not cases for mediation, at all. One would not mediate the use of one's assigned parking space.
Mediation works more when both sides want a solution to the issue and are willing to compromise; it works less, or not at all, when one or both sides want to punish the other side or when one side is breaking the law or the established rules of the community - that's what courts are for. Mediation is a way to work things out, not a way to triumph over someone or enforce community rules.
One would not use mediation for a potentially violent confrontation; you do not mediate a mugging.
Conan the Grammarian at August 10, 2018 7:10 AM
“Mediation works more when both sides want a solution to the issue and are willing to compromise; it works less, or not at all, when one or both sides want to punish the other side or when one side is breaking the law or the established rules of the community - that's what courts are for. Mediation is a way to work things out, not a way to triumph over someone or enforce community rules.
One would not use mediation for a potentially violent confrontation; you do not mediate a mugging.”
Agreed, which knd of begs the question as to why it would have any official place in the district attorney’s office.
Isab at August 10, 2018 7:32 AM
Leave a comment