Conflicts are a part of life. As long as people have goals or opinions, there are going to be conflicts. Until we've all evolved into a hive-minded species, conflicts are going to happen. They don't necessarily have to be a bad thing, though. Sometimes, if you use them right, conflicts can help us grow.

For any of you who are familiar with the Myers-Briggs/Jungian personality archetypes, I've consistently tested as an INTP, a type of rational. (For those of you who are not familiar, educate yourselves!) I've read in many places that INTP's of all of the archetypes experience the mose stress when it comes to parenting. I'm used to dealing with everything logically and rationally, and I thought I had a handle on all things emotional because of it. This claim that I would find parenting particularly stressful made me laugh, because with my logic and problem-solving skills, how hard could it be?

Clearly I'm an idiot.

Children are irrational. Irrationality incarnate. Day after day. And they don't stop because you've shown them the error in their logic. That's not what drives them. Well, not what drives my children. If that's what drives your children, congratulations on your alien children. Children want to do what they want, because they want to do it. And now.

And as luck would have it, my son is one of the most irrational of all. He has sensory processing disorder. A particular kind where he seeks movement and sensations. Any kind at any expense. Even pain. He cannot be left unattended for very long. An absolute nightmare for a rational.

I made the mistake of moving his giant bean bag chair to sit right outside of the laundry room, which is at the bottom of the steps, so I could clean it's covers in the next load of laundry. I walked away for a moment and felt my mommy-sense tingling. I turned to see my 3 year old son launch himself from almost the top of the steps onto the bean bag chair at the bottom. He lands half on the bean bag chair, and half off. Thankfully his head is on the half that landed on the bean bag chair. Regardless, he is hurt and crying. I comfort him and make sure he's ok. No broken bones, no bruising, no blood.

Next step, the talk: "Hey, kiddo. That really wasn't a good idea. Did you think about what could happen before you jumped?"

"No."

"Well, let's think about it now before you do it again. What could possibly happen if you jump off the stairs?"

"...*silence*"

"You could get hurt, right? Like you just did?"

"Oh, yeah!"

"So we don't want to jump off the stairs anymore, because we don't want to get hurt, right?"

"Yeah!"

Great. Now that's settled. I can return to the kitchen to finish what I was doing, and by the time I'm done with that, the washing machine should be ready for the bean bag- OH DEAR LORD HE DID IT AGAIN.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?? WE JUST AGREED YOU WOULDN'T DO IT AGAIN!"

"I didn't get hurt!"

"THAT DOESN'T MATTER! YOU COULD'VE BEEN HURT!"

"Look, Mommy! I didn't get hurt! No ouchies!"

There were no words for my rage at that point. My son clearly was not getting the point I was making, even though he said he was. I couldn't reason with him!

This whole episode made me reflect on the personality types. I, a rational, was clearly dealing with an artisan son. As a rational, I seek to frame problems logically and to gain knowledge. As an artisan, my son seeks sensation and couldn't care less about logic. I was trying to solve the conflict by approaching it on my terms and ignoring my son's terms. Granted, what I say goes, because I'm the boss, and I can't allow my son to jump off the stairs just because it satisfies his needs. Well, I could, but I wouldn't be fulfilling my obligation as a parent.

So I took my son aside and gave him a timeout. Because, darnit I told him not to jump off those stairs! And I'm a mom and that's just how we roll. During his timeout, while he was hopefully but probably not thinking about what he did, I took some time to reflect on the incident. It was a common pattern. My son loves throwing himself around, without care of injury. If I kept just punishing him all day, we'd be caught in an endless spiral that's sucked us in so many times before. So, I moved the bean bag chair away from the stairs (like I should've done the first time he did it- I'm such an idiot sometimes-) and spoke to my son again.

"Do you know why I was upset?"

"I jumped!"

"Well, yes, you jumped when I told you not to, but I was mostly very upset because I didn't want you to get hurt."

"Sorry, Mommy!"

(*inner sigh* That always meant he wasn't listening and just wanted out of timeout to go do it again.) "I'll tell you what; do you want to jump on the bean bag chair?"

"YES!"

Now I had him engaged in the solution. We made a "THE FLOOR IS LAVA" game for him using the L-shaped couch, the bean bag chair, and our ottoman (which is more like a pillow with stumpy legs.) He was allowed to jump gently from one to the other as long as he landed on his legs. Also, he had to sing a song while he was jumping. By structuring his jumping, I think I let him know that he needed some context to it and couldn't just jump anywhere he wanted to. At least I hope so. (Don't tell my kids, but I'm making this parenting stuff up as I go along.)

In the end, he was happy because he got to jump. And I was happy, because he didn't break his neck. And he was super tired and slept really well that night. Bonus!

After that incident, I've been trying to meet him more on his terms, especially considering his sensory processing issues. He's going to need more stimulation than most kids, every single day. I need to allow for that and understand he won't be satsified with just being told why he can't do something. He doesn't care about the why like a rational is, which is typically how my parents could get through to me. He cares about experiencing as much as he can.

As awesome as I thought I was at handling conflict with my cool-as-a-cucumber-but-still-honest approach, my son taught me there was more to learn. I needed to learn to address the emotional, and sometimes irrational, side of conflict. It's actually something I still struggle with, but at least now I acknowledge it. And knowing is half the battle.

A battle that will be over once we are all assimilated into the hive-mind. Resistance is futile.