'Initiatives like Peaceworks Peer Mediation in Schools help children feel happier and safer.'
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Peer Mediation and Autism
We classically say that peer mediators should be role models in their cohort of students. Whether as young as Year 2 or full-on sixth formers, its usually a good idea to have 'able' material as your mediators. That is, those with sufficient emotional and intellectual quotient to hold down the basic mullarkey involved in handling and managing playground conflict.
But the other day I came across an autistic peer mediator. This at a school where we had built in sustainability and teachers were doing their own training of mediators. I was told that this peer mediator was a great asset to the team. She could follow a process so well that she really helped her peers to get through sticky conflicts. She was able to hold them into the stages in a way that the process worked well. The only problem was that this girl's co-mediator had better follow the mnemonic on the ground rules to the letter!
Has anyone else found that mildly autistic children can make good peer mediators?
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Comments
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Thanks Karen, that's an encouraging piece of feedback.
Posted by Chris Seaton, 24/06/2011 12:17pm (11 months ago)
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Although I don't have direct experience of child peer mediators, my godson is mildly autistic and it would not surprise me to find he made a good mediator. He has a deep commitment to process and very little interest in content, particularly emotional content! He would be able to remain neutral, sit calmly with parties experiencing difficult feelings or frustration and, although he would miss emotional subtleties, he would remember to honour all issues even if he could not understand them. Like the mediator you observed, he would find it important to follow the process rigidly. Your observations of her approach were very familiar to me.
Posted by Karen R Bray, 25/04/2011 1:32am (1 year ago)
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