Family Matters

Archive for the ‘Relationships’ Category

A few weeks ago, we attended a musical competition where my brother and his school band played. It occurred to me that every player in the band had a brother or sister in the crowd, some of whom were very resentful of their sibling up there on the stage. After all, it is hard to be that person in the crowd who misses out on all the attention.

When I was in high school, it was very common to hear stories about brothers and sisters who fought with each other constantly. I heard things like “My brother is so stupid. He’s always in the way” or “My sister is such a terror she never listens”.

Now that I am at university with students who are a little older, they are much more aware of the reasons behind it all, but they still seem to fight and argue a lot with their siblings. When I ask if they get along with their siblings, they reply, “Sure don’t. He hates my guts” or “No way! I can’t stand her”. One of my friends was on such bad terms with her sister she would wish on an almost weekly basis that her sister would hurry up and move out.

It is said that sibling rivalry is influenced by things like parental treatment, birth order, personality and experiences. Apparently, sibling rivalry is particularly strong when one child is gifted.

When you read the title “people change”, you might be thinking, “Well, of course they do”, but very often, when you are very close to another person for a long time, these changes are difficult to notice. On the other hand, sometimes it is not the other person who changes, but us, and that just changes the way we see them.

When we start a long-term relationship, we are so intent on making it work that we overlook things we would prefer to be different “as long as we’re happy together”, but the discomfort caused by those overlooked things grows over time to the point where we suddenly notice them. One day, we are surprised to discover for the first time something our partner has been doing or saying for years. All that time, we dismissed it in different ways (“bad mood”, “something at work”, “didn’t really understand”, “only joking”, etc), but now, we look at “this thing” head on and think our partner has changed.

In a strange sort of way, the things that attracted us to that special person in the first place can become annoying over time, until we determine that the person has changed. We also get used to good things (annoying, but natural), which makes us take the good side of any character trait or behavior for granted, while getting more and more upset with the bad side.

One morning, as I was walking around the neighborhood, I saw a Magpie-lark (the bird on the left) fluttering next to a parked caravan. It flew away from the caravan and then sped towards one of the windows, flapping its wings aggressively.

“What a strange thing to do”, I thought, but then I moved closer and realized the bird was seeing its reflection in the window and, perceiving it as a threat, was probably defending its territory from the “other bird”.

This got me thinking (and not for the first time) about how we humans view our own world and how we become aggressive towards certain things, while being completely OK with others.

It reminded me of a friend of ours who complained about one of her kids. She said, “I get along just fine with my oldest boy, even though he likes different things to me, and the little one is just cute, no matter what she does, but my middle daughter Ruby drives me crazy sometimes. You know, Ruby reminds me a lot of how I used to be as a girl. She’s stubborn and strong willed just like I was. Oh, maybe that’s why we argue so much, because we’re the same…”

All of our actions and words are done and said within a particular environment, physical conditions, emotional state, human company and various other circumstances. In a different situation, the same actions and words are likely to have completely different meaning.

Just imagine for a second your little toddler getting upset at you for putting her to bed and saying, “I hate you! Bad Mommy!” Now, imagine your teenage daughter leaving the house in a storm, all dressed up, made up and accessorized, turning to you before slamming the door and yelling, “I hate you! You’re such a bad mother!” Can you imagine this being said by your soon-to-be ex-husband during a divorce? Your mother after she has tried to tell you for the millionth time how to raise your kids and you have told her to shut up and butt out?

My daughter’s Grade 4 teacher, Mr. M, loves stories and, a lot like us, he thinks that if he inspires kids to love reading and writing, he will consider himself a very successful educator.

Two weeks ago, Mr. M told the kids a story about a club. He told them the story over a few days and the kids liked it very much. The girls in the class were so inspired they started a new club – “The Girls’ Club”. All the kids were so happy about the idea of clubs that over a week, each group started its own club.

Mr. M’s idea was very good and talked with the kids about inclusion and about the sense of belonging people have when they join a club, but he did not take into consideration that kids will use this “clubbing” idea to exclude others (or maybe he did).

Last week, When Gal wrote about the dark side of Quid Pro Quo, it made me think immediately of solutions to that effect.

You see, much like in Gal’s example of fighting with your husband, wife, kids, your own parents or just anybody else, life is full of little personal wars – you do something I think is hurtful, I do something to hurt you back.

Wars have become part of our life. I think that as we grow up, we shift from “living” to “surviving”. If we do not fight someone else, we fight ourselves, our desires and dreams, using norms and external rules of behavior.

The wars with others are loud and produce feelings of revenge and anger. The war inside echoes in our mind and produces regrets and low self esteem. But in wars, there are no winners, only those who lose more and those who lose less.

This reminds me of the story of the line. I think this story speaks for itself. Enjoy!

Last week, I wrote about the notion of fairness and how it can be used to manipulate people to do what we want them to do. Today, I am going to cover “the dark side” of fairness, which makes us do things we later regret.

If you have ever broken up a fight between kids, you are familiar with the exclamation “He/she started it!”

Further investigation into who “really” started it usually yields a detailed list of escalation steps, starting with something surprisingly small, even trivial, like “He stepped on my dragon” (little rubber toy dragon, that is) or “She made a face at me”.

But it is not just kids, is it? Any “married couple” (any couple sharing a life together for long enough, really) can tell stories of fights that started from nothing and ended up in days of angry silence, only to be resolved later when the original issue was finally addressed on its own.

So why is it we can be pulled into bad cycles with little things and get into big trouble “all of a sudden”?

When the ancient Romans wanted to be fair, they gave “quid pro quo”, literally “something for something”, meaning “a favor for a favor” or “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”. Not that they were fair to everyone they met – just ask the other ancient peoples of Europe and the Middle East – but this particular expression stuck.

More importantly, the people of our time still feel the need to be fair and return favors. So much so that it can be used to manipulate us in various ways. I want to talk about that today. It also makes us do things we later regret, but I will talk about that next time.

To find out how this notion of fairness works, Psychology researchers went to a museum. They joined a tour, picked a person and started talking to them, then went away and returned with two cans of soft drink, one of which they offered that person, who had been a total stranger only 5 minutes earlier.

A teacher in New York decided to honor each of her seniors in High School by telling them the difference each of them had made. She called each student to the front of the class, one at a time. First, she told each of them how they had made a difference to her, and the class. Then she presented each of them with a blue ribbon, imprinted with gold letters, which read, “Who I Am Makes a Difference.”

Afterwards, the teacher decided to do a class project, to see what kind of impact recognition would have on a Community. She gave each student three more blue ribbons, and instructed them to go out and spread this acknowledgment ceremony. Then they were to follow up on the results, see who honored whom, and report to the class in about a week.

Parenting kids is a challenge for most people. There are many things that make parenting such a challenge, but one of the big ones is that a couple of parents is made up of two different individuals, each with their own upbringing, values, beliefs and preferences.

If life was just smooth sailing, this would not be such a big problem, except life is bumpy sometimes and when tensions are high, things can get silly and weaken the parents’ position of authority.

Even when things are pretty quiet, the ever-so-sensitive kids can detect notes of disagreement between their parents and immediately try to use them to their advantage (little buggers). Parents who are too preoccupied to notice end up facing the “But Mom/Dad said” and looking pretty stupid being caught unprepared.