1 Introduction

Cross cultural conflict competence is a key ability to manage emotional setbacks and conflicts caused by cultural, linguistic, or racial differences. The parent-child relationship has a significant impact on conflict management ability, and the emotional expression of parents plays an educational role in parent-child communication. Children learn conflict management skills through conflicts with their parents and apply them to other social environments. Studying parent-child conflict management models can help understand the formation of cross-cultural conflict competence and may become a key factor in enhancing cross-cultural competence.

2 Literature Review

Parent child conflict involves cognitive, emotional, and behavioral inconsistencies, and its management requires emotional recognition and naming, as well as empathy skills. The communication patterns and emotional management of parents have an impact on children, and children can learn from their parents' emotional expressions. Sociocultural background has a significant impact on parent-child conflict and emotional management, with varying frequencies and intensities of parent-child conflicts across different cultural backgrounds. Chinese college students may exhibit extragroup preferences and ethnocentric tendencies in cross-cultural communication. In cross-cultural foreign language teaching, students still tend to choose assimilation or separation strategies at the behavioral level, rather than facing conflicts directly. To help students understand conflict situations, the college English course has added exercises in emotion recognition, naming, and empathy cultivation, and designed discussion activities about the movie "Baobao" to collect feedback and analyze practical effects, providing reference for cross-cultural conflict ability cultivation.

3 Design Concepts

The discussion activity of the movie "Baobao" aims to guide students to express their understanding of parent-child relationships and explore conflict management methods. The event invites parents to participate and aims to promote emotional communication. The film tells the story of the relationship between a Chinese mother and "Baobao", as well as the ultimate reconciliation. In the course, students learned conflict theory and had group discussions after watching a movie. After class, students and parents are required to answer open-ended questions to promote parent-child communication and collect data. The research is also comparing two universities in Beijing and Wuhan to explore the different reactions of students and parents to movies, as well as the implications for cultivating cross-cultural conflict skills.

4 Research Methods

The research subjects were college students and their parents from two universities in Beijing and Wuhan, and a total of 140 students and 101 parents' observations were collected. Data collection is conducted through an open-ended questionnaire format, requiring students to answer six questions about the movie 'Baobao' in English, and encouraging parents to answer the same questions in Chinese. The researchers used a bottom-up three-level coding method to analyze the data, including extracting initial concepts, establishing concept connections, and summarizing core categories. In emotional expression analysis, Pavlenko's definition was used to statistically analyze the usage of emotional label words and emotional load words. Empathy analysis refers to the definition of empathy in Dearing, and is conducted from two dimensions: empathy perspective and empathy response. The conflict management strategy is based on the dual focus model of Zheng and Gao, and six strategies are summarized. The coding work was carried out by two authors, with a coincidence rate of 92.7%. Inconsistencies were resolved through discussion.

5 research findings

In the discussion of the movie "Baobao", there are significant differences between students and parents in terms of emotional expression, empathetic response, understanding of conflicts, and choice of conflict management strategies. Parents tend to use emotional labels less frequently in expressing their emotions, while students tend to express their emotions after watching movies, with positive emotions such as "moved" and "warm" being more common. In terms of empathetic tendencies, both students and parents can understand the thoughts and feelings of both parents and children from their respective perspectives. However, in terms of empathetic responses, parents are more inclined to only have empathetic responses to their children, while students are more likely to have empathetic responses to both parties. In terms of understanding conflict, parents tend to view it as an instantaneous result of impulse, while students are more likely to view it as a long-term accumulated process result. In conflict management strategies, students prefer the direct expression strategy and hope to solve problems through communication, while parents are more inclined to comply with the strategy, emphasizing letting go and giving space. These differences reflect the different orientations of different generations in emotional expression, empathy understanding, and conflict resolution strategies.

6 Summary and Reflection

This study analyzed the feedback of students and parents from two universities in Beijing and Wuhan on the movie "Baobao", and explored attachment and separation in parent-child relationships. Research has found that students are able to analyze parent-child conflicts in more detail and tend to express themselves directly, while parents tend to reflect unilaterally and expect their children to comply. This misalignment may lead to communication failure and exacerbation of conflicts. Beijing students perform better in emotional expression and empathy, which may be related to cross-cultural communication education. The study also found that the management of parent-child conflicts may affect students' conflict management in other social contexts, such as their tendency towards ethnocentrism. Educators should help students become aware of the existence of conflict management habits and engage in reflective teaching to enhance their cross-cultural conflict management abilities. The limitations of the research lie in the construction of data sources and classroom contexts. Future research should adopt more research techniques and focus on real-life parent-child conflicts.