In each one of us, there is the potential for love and hate. It is necessary to expand the loving impulses into empathy, compassion, solidaridy and gentleness; and channel aggression into constructive pathways (the capacity of persistence for fighting for life goals, for claiming for justice), thus avoiding the transformation of anger into hate and violence. This is the goal of peace education, in the joint work of family and nursery school, two prototypes of social communities.The ultimate goal is to counteract the increase of stress and violence in the world.

Stress and violence have been increasing in most countries during the last decades. The potential for love shrinks with the lack of solidarity and sensitivity in the face of other people’s suffering. The unchanneled aggressive potential turns into hate and violence. The inequality between the income of the very rich and the very poor reaches dramatic proportions in a number of countries; religious and ethnic differences generate severe conflict sometimes leading to war and destruction. Besides political, economic and social interventions, what can we do to revert these threatening trends?

In the method of education for peace, one can work with teenagers in order to increase the possibility of conscious and responsible parenthood, to safeguard the formation of a new generation of babies, trying to avoid unplanned pregnancies, and including information about the early aspects of bonding since the fetal stage. Breathing exercises and meditation are particularly useful during pregnancy to create a peaceful internal environment.

In working with families of infants and young children, it is especially important to pay attention to details of everyday
interactions - where the big themes of life and the basic human values are embedded (cooperation, gentleness, generosity, solidarity) and can be stimulated in the “interactive circuits” among parents, children, siblings, teachers and classmates. Thus, since the first years of life, it is possible to stimulate the perception of the other’s needs and wishes which also have to be taken into account, besides one’s own.

The essential aspect of this method of education for peace is to stimulate the expansion of the “art of listening” to feelings and to be attuned to the differences among people. Young children may well understand the flowing and mixture of feelings (sadness, fear or love turning into anger; shame and fear oppressing courage, etc). Through listening to others and respecting differences, empathy may be enlarged and conflicts may be solved by conjoint resolution. This avoids both the
authoritarian (where parents are the oppressors) and the permissive way (where parents are oppressed by guilt feelings and children can hardly learn to take other people’s needs into account) of raising children.

In the method of conjoint resolution, the needs of both parties are taken into account and one stimulates the participation of all (by verbal and nonverbal means) in creative solutions for everyday situations. This is an effective way of establishing “domestic democracy” with the notion of non-authoritarian hierarchy. By means of this method, it is possible to facilitate the expansion of empathy, cooperation and solidarity even in young children. It is also important to openly express appreciation for what children do (as a basis for the formation of a good self-esteem) and to utilize non-hostile means
for expressing dislike and disapproval.

*This paper was presented at the 6th Congress of the World Association for Infant Mental Health, Finland, July 1997.