Family Matters

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.

In the Stone Age, survival involved hunting, gathering, finding shelter, keeping a file going and making simple stone tools. Men were men, women were women and kids had to observe and learn from their respective role models how to survive, but it was fairly simple – get food, make sure nothing eats you, that sort of thing.

From a social point of view, kids did as they were told and stayed out of the way of people who were physically stronger. When they did not, they were beaten, denied food or faced danger on their own.

Over time, life changed quite a bit. Farming, wars, new religions, the industrial revolution, colonization all required the development of new survival skills, but generally speaking, one’s position in life was mainly determined by one’s position at birth – place of birth, social status, financial position and so on. Although stories are told of those who have made great changes, most people lived life pretty much the same as their parents had.

From a social point of view, kids did as they were told and were bound by strict societal rules of politeness, respect and service towards adults and people who were socially stronger.

Nowadays, things are very different. Getting from one place to another, far away, is relatively easy and inexpensive, so even young people can afford to travel and relocate and even kids experience the change created by international or long distance moves.

Jim, the neighbor sharing our back fence, rang this week to ask if we would share the cost of replacing the fence that separates our back yards. He was very polite and patient, but made it clear he wanted to put up a “good fence”.

So let me tell you exactly what I think about fences and what I think about how they separate people.

Every relationship, with your partner, your parents or your kids, requires effort. No matter how compatible you are with the other person, each of you has a different background and continues to go through a different life. Each of you may be completely blind to the other’s experiences and feelings.

So typically, relationships involve a lot of guesswork. When we know the other person well, guesswork does an OK job in most cases, particularly when everyone is in a good mood and has enough energy to share.

Things get a bit messier when one person feels down and needs support and real storms can erupt when both people have gone through something unpleasant and both need an emotional hand.

In longer relationships, like a marriage over 10 years, a teenager or with your own parents, I would not be surprised if you have had a few storms already. Moreover, the same storm may have happened again and again, reaching full blast more quickly and increasing in intensity every time.

Someone very close to us lost her son to teen suicide. Her son was 18 years old, a great kid who took his dad’s gun one day, sat in his parents’ car in a park and shot himself to death.

He is gone and is probably not suffering anymore, but a whole family he left behind is still picking up the pieces of their shattered life and cannot find comfort.

I am writing to you because I pray you never have to be in the same position.