This story starts a few weeks ago when I was having dinner with one of my best friends/heros/the person who I want to be when I grow up. Her name is Sarah Ann Taylor and she is amazing (and yet will also be mad that I just said that, because she is, in all her awesomeness, also the most humble person you will ever meet right up there with Mother Theresa, Jesus Christ, Ghandi, and Jeremy Christopher Robin Crouthamel.) Anyways, Sarah Ann is an incredible kindergarten teacher. I am constantly in awe of how she is constantly redefining the role of "teacher" to encompass nurturer, friend, and guardian angel (because, if anything, that's what she is to her her students and pretty much everyone that is lucky enough to know her). Sarah was telling me about how she approaches when children tattle tale on each other in her classroom. If you have ever taught, worked with, or been around a 5 year old for 10 minutes, you will notice they are very quick to tell on each other: "joey pushed me!"... "billy hit me!"... "Charlie bit me! ouuuuch Charlie! It's. Still. Hurting!" But Ms. Taylor has a rather unique way of dealing with these situations. When a student approaches her with a problem with a fellow classmate, ie "Sam hit me!" Sarah asks them, "Well, how did that make you feel?" My guess is that they typically are a little bit stunned at Ms. Taylor's question. Children are so conditioned to telling an adult their problem ("Sam hit me!") and then the adult quickly rushing off to deal with Sam, force him to apologize, put him in the naughty corner, and send a note home to Mom. The injured party is immediately no longer even involved in the process. They wipe their tears and run back to the playground, at least feeling vindicated in the fact that Sam is TOTALLY going to get banned from Sponge Bob for a whole week when he gets home! Although this method will surely make Sam think twice before he hauls off and smacks someone the next time, is this the BEST approach for both parties involved? Ms. Taylor thinks "no," and I agree. Wouldn't it be better if Sam was INTRINSICALLY motivated to behave better, as opposed to extrinsically motivated for fear of time out and loss of privileges? And wouldn't it be better if the injured party was a part of the solution? Obviously, yes, but that's not typically how it works. When I was a child and someone did something to me, I did exactly what I was told: I immediately ran to an adult and then let them handle the entire situation. Well guess what, at 24 years old, I realized I don't have a clue in hell how to stand up for myself or express my feelings of hurt to other people. Why? Because no one ever taught me. In fact, I was taught specifically NOT to stand up for myself. I learned it at home and at school. I wish Ms. Taylor had been my kindergarten teacher. She asks the injured party "how did that make you feel?" They are stunned. No adult ever asks that... they just run off, scold the villain in the situation and fix the problem. But the adult SHOULD be asking the child that pivotal question, "How did that make you feel?" so that the child will grow up and be able to ask HIM/HERSELF "How did that make ME feel?" Ms. Taylor is training her students to stop and reflect on their emotions. She is not teaching them to haul off and retaliate or blurt out the first insult that comes to mind. No. She is teaching them to pause and reflect internally. And guess what Ms. Taylor's student realizes? Yep. It's pretty obvious: "I didn't like it when Sam hit me! That really hurt my feelings! That made me feel sad!" Something important happens in that moment: the child realizes their own emotions. Too bad no one ever taught me to do that. I've been pissed off and hurt before and not done anything about it, because as it turns out, I had never even taken the time to pause and gage my emotions. It's hard to do something about feeling crappy when you don't even first realize WHY you feel that way. So Ms. Taylor's student now realizes how he feels: "I feel hurt. That SUCKED!" and WHY he feels that way: "Because Sam hit me." Once the student comes to that realization Ms. Taylor tells him, "Well go tell Sam how that made you feel!" It seems so obvious doesn't it? But we haven't been trained to do that. My entire life I was trained NOT to do that. I was told, "go to the responsible adult, let them take over." That works out great when you're 5 and on the playground, but who handles the hurt when you're 24? As an adult, I think I've still been waiting around for someone to put the bad guy in time out. Doesn't happen. But you know what happens when Ms. Taylor's student goes and finds Sam on the playground and says "Hey Sam! You hit me and that REALLY hurt! It hurt my feelings! I do NOT like the way you are treating me! That's NOT nice!"? Sam hears that he has hurt someone, and he doesn't feel so good about it. Sam is now forced to think about his actions (and not because he is sitting on a bench in time-out and now he knows he is gonna be in BIG trouble when he gets home, so he better not do that again) but because he is being forced to see the consequences of his actions: he caused another human being, a fellow classmate, a friend, to feel pain. It sucks to know you hurt someone. It's easy to go around being a bully until you are forced to see the pain you have caused. But when you see the hurt you are responsible for, something we call cognitive dissonance kicks in. You know in your conscious that how you have behaved is not nice, so does that make you a "not so nice" person? Are you the "bad guy?" The "villain?" It's A LOT harder to distance yourself from feelings of guilt when the person you have hurt is standing in front of you, openly telling you "that sucked. I hurt and guess what: It's your fault." I'm glad that I, like Ms. Taylor's kindergartners, have finally learned that it's OKAY to tell the people that hurt me that 1) "ouch. that hurt!" and 2) "I did NOT like that!" When I had that conversation with Sarah at dinner I resolved to begin to make others aware of how their behavior makes me feel. If someone does something nice to me, I say "thank you!" If someone does something not so nice to me, I am FINALLY learning how to say "um. NO THANK YOU!" In 24 years of my life a lot of s-h-*-t has gone down. I have been cheated on. Twice. I have been dumped in a text message because the person was too much of a coward or too lazy to speak to me in person. I have literally been left behind when someone I cared about moved to a foreign country and refused to grant me the dignity of at least saying goodbye. I have been mistreated at a job because the person in charge fully admitted they knew that I was too passive to complain and that I would be the easiest employee to push around. And not ONCE did it ever occur to me through all that to ever say "I cannot believe you betrayed my trust like that. I am so hurt!"... "I am so disappointed and hurt that you did not care about me enough to speak to me in person!"... "I cannot believe you left without saying goodbye. Why did you do that? Do you know how much pain that caused me?"... "Why did you abuse your position of power? That was very difficult for me." I'm not condoning letting the air out of your ex's tires or putting a rotting fish in the ceiling tiles of your boss's office like that guy does in the movie Office Space, but I am finally learning that it is OKAY, and moreover that it's completely healthy, to say "that REALLY hurt. I don't like that! Please don't do that again!" Hallelujah!
Fast forward to today. The incident is irrelevant, but needless to say, someone that I was fond of behaved yet again in a way that was hurtful. So I did what Ms. Taylor has taught me. I paused. I asked myself "How did that make you feel?" My response: "Well duh. It sucked. No shit sherlock! That hurt my feelings!" And today folks, for the first time in my entire life, I told the person whose actions caused me to feel that way: "that was rude and uncalled for. I do not like the way you talk to me." I don't think said person really cared or will think of me ever again, but I'm so grateful for the lesson I have learned. It's okay to tell someone they hurt you. Thanks for that, Ms. Taylor. Guess maybe I'm at the emotional maturity of a rising first-grader now.
No comments:
Post a Comment