What is Mediation?

Mediation is an empowering and nonjudgmental way of resolving conflict. Clients meet with the mediator, whose role is to help them work together to find their own solution to the problem or issue that brought them to mediation. Who can benefit from mediation? Mediation can help couples resolve even chronic areas of conflict. Mediation can also be very useful to parents and stepchildren or teenage children who find themselves at odds, because each participant has a voice in the process. Working toward solutions that everyone has a part in designing helps to avoid the power struggles and resentment that can often form a backdrop to life with adolescents, especially in blended families. Mediation also offers a way to deal with intense emotion that does not require extensive insight-oriented work that adolescents are often resistant to. How is mediation different from therapy? Mediation differs from therapy in that it is more structured, future oriented, and usually shorter term. The focus is on the dynamics of the problem rather than the dynamics of the people affected by the problem. Both therapy and mediation can be extremely useful, although the situations they are most useful in may differ. How well does mediation work? When people come together in good faith to work on an issue, they are able to reach agreement on how to resolve it about 75% of the time. My experience in mediation: I am certified by the Washington Mediation Association in the areas of domestic relations, education, community, and health care. I have been a mediator for the City of Bellevue’s Parent-Teen Mediation Program since the program’s inception. I co-wrote the City of Bellevue’s peer mediation training curriculum, and have taught peer mediation and conflict resolution skills to middle and high school students in the public schools as well as to adolescents in residential treatment. I have also mediated in court settings. I have had a private practice in family mediation since 2001.