Conflict situation between neighbours - Essay Example

Conflict situation between neighbours The conflict I am going to discuss is about the conflict I had with my neighbor. My family and I just transferred to a new neighborhood. Our neighbors are Mr. Hendrie and Mrs. Susie Freidrich. Hendrie is a German national married to Susie, an American woman. They have a ten-year old son, Angelo. Angelo, is the typical spoiled brat, a “Dennis the Menace” kind of a boy. It wasn’t long before I discovered that Angelo will be a problem to me and my family.

My other neighbors already warned me about Angelo but I thought how could a ten-year old boy give me problems? My husband and I met the Freidrichs after a week and found the couple very friendly. I also got to meet Angelo, who seemed like a harmless boy. Barely two weeks from our transfer, my nightmare begun. My two daughters kept telling me how Angelo would often post paper in our gate with some offensive writings. Angelo would post those papers in our gate every day. Each day he would write bad things such as “Beware!

This house stinks!” or “Monsters live in this house!” I told my daughters to just ignore it telling them that maybe he was just trying to get our attention. I dismissed the incident as a mere childish prank and told them that maybe he will just stop one day because we did not mind those silly writings. The conflict strategy that I used at this point was a combination of the abandoning and avoiding strategy, which means I am trying to walk away from it and avoiding a possible confrontation with Angelo and maybe with his parents.

I felt that the situation was not worth my time and effort and that the conflict will be resolved soon. But I was wrong, it even became worse. He started to use paint instead of paper. He used red paint to write offensive things on our walls and gates. He did not stop there; he started a new “hobby”. Whenever we put our trash bags in front of the gate, ready to be picked up by the garbage truck, he would slash the plastic bags and scatter all our trash in the middle of our street. At that point, I realized that my neighbors were right; Angelo will indeed give me a headache.

After the trash incident, I decided to use another conflict strategy, the dominating strategy. I felt that this strategy will be effective since I was the more “powerful” one, being much older than Angelo. Since “right and might” was on my side, I decided to talk to Angelo in a friendly manner and requested him to stop doing those annoying things. I even added humor, another conflict strategy, by telling him that I don’t think he would like to be a garbage collector when he grows up.

I thought I had victory in my hands because he said “yes” politely and promised not to do it again. I said to myself, “End of conflict!” For the next three days, I was right because Angelo did not do anything unfavorable. I was wrong though because on the fourth day, he painted our wall with a big “I tricked you. I am not stopping!” At this point, I thought enough is enough. I had to think of another strategy to put an end to this situation. I felt the conflict slowly escalating. I decided then to write a letter to Hendrie and Susie detailing to them what has been happening.

I had to write a letter because I seldom see them and I thought maybe that was a better alternative because it seemed less confrontational. I waited for four days for a reply but I did not get any. Meanwhile, Angelo was still busy messing with our trash and our walls. My other neighbors told me that Angelo’s parents tolerate his behavior. Either they don’t know how to discipline him or they just ignore his mischievousness since they were not the aggrieved party. I realize now that the intensity of the conflict is escalating because whereas I had to deal with Angelo only before, now I have to deal with his parents too.

After having been ignored by the parents of Angelo, my next move was to approach our community leaders to ask for their assistance. I felt that I already needed a