When my daughter was a teen in high school, she asked that she be allowed to attend a movie with her friends on a Friday night. As background, Friday nights were our family time, when we all sat at the dinner table, talking about our week, the weekend, etc. (We won’t talk about how the number who started at the table and the number that made it through until the end was often not the same.)
We told our daughter “NO! This was our family time, the wonderful meal that we all looked forward to.” You may ask our neighbors about her response, I’m quite sure that they heard it. But there is a little technique that I learned from wife early in our marriage. When telling someone something that you KNOW that he or she will definitely not like, say it, turn your back and walk away. There’s absolutely nowhere to go with the response. No need to elaborate as to how effectively I learned this. Let’s just say that as a teacher I found this technique very effective with my students. Staring at the student (in this case my daughter) after you’ve said your piece, invites a response and can open a very unwanted ‘discussion’, the result being no peace.
So what of my daughter? I learned a valuable lesson. The next morning she told us, very calmly, (speaking softly due to the strain on her vocal cords from the night before), that she would have been even more upset (really hard to imagine) if we would have let her go. Why? Because it would have been inconsistent with everything we have always said and done!
Lesson learned: even if they don’t say it, children are well aware of the consistencies and inconsistencies in the things we say and do. It’s not they who create the inconsistencies (although we all know how hard they try), it’s all up to us. Let’s not let them down.
Next up…rules and freewill: are they compatible?
Norman j. Fischer Ed. D