People learn poor interpersonal skills from their parents in their first 6 years.

From The Conversation 06/09/26, "Kids learn to bully from adults’ threats, manipulation and criticism – a child psychologist explains how parents can model better tactics"

Think about all the ways you can get someone to do something that’s undesirable to them, especially if you have power over them. You can use positive tactics, such as direct encouragement, incentives and praise. You can try negative tactics, such as threats, manipulation and force. Some – asking politely, saying please and thank you each time – work better than others, such as nagging or pleading.

Children learn which tactics work and are acceptable by seeing how adults, who hold power over them, employ them.

On one extreme, observing aggression between parents increases risk for children’s heightened aggression and violence in their own social relationships. Stanford psychologist Albert Bandura’s seminal 1961 “Bobo Doll Study” found that preschool children who saw an adult hit and kick a life-size inflatable figure were more likely to be aggressive toward that figure when frustrated.

In my own research, I focused on children who were exposed to domestic violence between parents as early as in infancy. As adults, these now-grown children were more likely to be both victims and perpetrators of violence with their romantic partners. People were particularly likely to be violent as adults if they were exposed to domestic violence when they were in preschool, as opposed to later in childhood, suggesting early childhood is a particularly important time for parents to model healthy conflict resolution.

Parents and other authority figures teach young children better by what they do, how they behave, than by what they say or as the aphorism is stated, "Actions speck louder than words." 

At age 80 I reflect on how my ex-wife and I modeled conflict resolution for our 9 children and I realize now that it was pretty dysfunctional and had a negative influence on our children. There is not much to be done about it now but admit our mistakes and ask for forgiveness.

The key skill children learn is how to use power in their interpersonal relations. Sometimes this is described as "control issues." There are things that children want to do that they are told they can't, and things that children don't want to do that they are told they have to. These conflicts lead to power struggles. The interesting thing to observe is who is going to win and how do they do it, and what are the consequences of getting one's way?

Are there better ways of resolving these conflicts than others? Yes. What are they?