Family Matters

Communication is an important part of everyone’s life and conflicts are inevitable. No two people react the same way to all situations. If you choose the aggressive approach, either physical or verbal, you risk the relationship, but if you choose the passive approach, you risk the relationship too.

An assertive approach from both parties can contribute a lot to the communication and the relationship between the two parties.

Here are 32 techniques that will get you to act assertively in now time…

I heard about assertiveness long before I knew what it meant, at a time when I did not express myself much. The fear of rejection was so huge that I was willing to suffer a lot for it. Just today, I talked about a problem I had on my vocal cord. Since I was really young (age 5-6) I had a huge polyp on my vocal cord and when I spoke, I had to take a deep breath to get enough air for 2 or 3 words.

For children, what seems like a simple thing might be a horrible problem. We have good friends whose 18-year-old son took a gun and shot himself in the head because he was not accepted to the course he wanted. After it happened, it does not help any of us to ask why a successful, normal, gentle kid, with a wonderful family, decided that not getting into a course is “the end of the world”.

“Fat” kids suffer a lot from problems associated with being overweight. Many grown ups carry feelings of self-loathing and self-disappointment following the negative treatment they got during their younger years.

If you want to understand the influence of the groups on our life, put yourself at the centre of a circle and draw bigger and bigger circles around you for your family, friend, work colleagues, acquaintances and so on. The closest the circle to you, the more influence you allow this group to have on your life.

Every person in the universe is searching for happiness. Our thoughts about ourselves, our self esteem, are part of that one “map” that everyone is looking for, the one we think fits us all. But we all have different experiences and mindsets. Therefore, we each use a different map to guide us to our own happiness.

Last week, in Self Esteem Mini-Course (part 1), I wrote about the definition of self-esteem. This week, let us explore how school promotes low self-esteem in children and shapes our society in the opposite way.

Since our self-esteem is based on our perception of ourselves and school is the place we spend most of our time between the ages of 6 and 12, every school experience either increases or decreases our self-esteem.

I believe that every parent wants their kids to have high self-esteem, so I have decided to publish a few posts over the coming weeks about self-esteem, what it is and how to increase it, so every parent reading this will be able to help their kids develop this very important emotional strength.

I learned a powerful lesson about self worth 21 years ago. I was studying Special Education and was lucky to have some very inspiring mentors. One of them was a psychology teacher. Our first meeting with her was most challenging. She scared us half to death. During roll call, she skipped names. After calling someone’s name, she would tell them, “That’s not a good name for you. In my class, I’m going to call you a different name.” By the second lesson, the number of students had dropped from 80 to 25. She came in, looked at us and said, “This is great. I see it worked. Now we can learn something.” She was so strange, yet so inspiring. I was so excited to have her as my teacher. I learned a lot from her.

For kids to be happy, they need to have boundaries. In the fish bowl, the fish cannot swim past the glass. Tiny fish prefer small, familiar, friendly bowls because they feel safer in them. No matter how many times they bang their heads against the glass, it still makes them feel safe, because it keeps the water around them and potential threats away from them.