Introduction

The goal of this chapter is to consider normal developmental patterns in children's handling of conflict, their prosocial behaviour and moral understanding in early childhood, and in particular, some of the questions and challenges to developmental accounts raised by recent research on children's social understanding. Clearly, conflict management and moral sensibility reflect only two facets of the disparate behaviours grouped under the umbrella of conduct disorder. However, a focus on children's handling and resolution of disputes and their moral reasoning can provide a useful window on the broad developmental themes implicated in patterns of oppositional, antisocial and aggressive behaviour within the normal population. If we consider either normal developmental changes or individual differences in children's conflict behaviour, we are alerted to the major changes in children's regulation of their own emotions, their understanding of social rules, their understanding of and concern for others' feelings, and their moral sensibility during childhood. All of these are implicated in the development of ‘ordered’ behaviour, and by analogy, potentially important in the growth of ‘disordered’ conduct.

It is important to note at the outset that conflict (both intrapsychic and interpersonal) is recognized as a major force in individual developmental change in the grand theories of psychological development – those of Freud, Vygotsky, Piaget, Sullivan, Erikson and Lewin, for example (Shantz & Hartup, 1992). Thus while a focus on conflict means attention to what is only one aspect of conduct disorder, it does entail facing some central developmental issues.