- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
On the way home from my Pathways class last night, I was talking about our classwork on Family Relationships. She mentioned with sadness that she never talks to her children because they consider her “preachy” and looking down on their lifestyle choices, so don’t want to talk to her. She shared with me her goals to reach out to them and draw closer to them. She expressed her feelings on how she wasn’t sure what to say to them to mend fences as it were.
I carefully suggested that she get to know them as them in their current life. I recommended that she start the conversations with “Any Adventures?” and go from there. I also advised her to step back and pretend she was an archaeologist investigating a new site.
This would not have happened without this board teaching me their insights. Thank you!
Those are the best. Three cheers for you having a perfect answer, whether we guided it or it came organically from you, that family will be grateful. I am happy to know we helped you, as well as her through you. With nearly ten years of reading about struggles and hoping we are helping, it is good to be reminded of successes.
Interesting perspective. She needed to hear what you said…so much misery in this life is created by trying to get people to do what we want – when they don’t want to. It’s an important part of life, but when you have no real influence over people, it creates hardship. In my view, she needs to just serve her children. They will not forget the preachy personna she has created (or they have perceived, however you define it). And it will take a long, long time to change their perception. People are very slow to change their opinions of their loved ones, and in the process actually impede the change/repentence process.
I’m in one such situation now. My wife has felt for years she is “at my beck and call”. I admit I would often ask her to help me with outside projects in which she had no interest, particularly if I was in a crises or forgot something and needed it brought to me. But for the last year or so I stopped doing that completely given her feelings of being my personal servant. It cost money, and inconvenience, but I solved my problems without her.
Here is an example of how people are slow to acknowledge you have changed.
My car broke down this weekend and stranded me. When it was going to be astronomically costly to take Uber to get where I needed to be (for a paid assignment), she raised the whole beck and call thing again. Thsi is when I asked to use her car to get to work and fulfill some paid work I do on the side that I couldn’t postpone while the car was getting fixed I told her to reflect on the past 6-8 months when I haven’t asked her for one thing. She had no clue whatsoever that I had changed and wouldn’t even accept that I had made adjustments — she believed I had just been less forgetful or life hadn’t thrown any crises at me.
So, I have changed, but my wife won’t acknowledge it.
I realized I have to point out, at regular intervals, how I have asked her to do nothing for me at all for months and months and months now. This might lead to the perception of change on my part, and it might not.
Your friend will have to completely avoid any unsolicited opinions from her children, make kind investments, be a warm blanket for a very long time. She might acknowledge she’s been preaching and judgmental in the past and that she intends to change. Although, I find this puts a lot of pressure on you until you actually make those changes. It is better to make the change for a while, and then point it out to the people affected, and then say you are continuing your commitment to change. The momentum seems to matter and it feels less stressful or pressure-ful on the person trying to change.
SilentDawning wrote:
Interesting perspective. She needed to hear what you said…so much misery in this life is created by trying to get people to do what we want – when they don’t want to. It’s an important part of life, but when you have no real influence over people, it creates hardship.
Agreed. One of the lessons I am taking from this board (if I ever get around from leaving it) is “Is it more important to right, or more important to be kind?”
Until my transition, I had no idea how much I valued being “right” and how much accidental hurt I was causing by my viewpoint. Since then, I have sought to be more compassionate, more charitable, and less “right”.
SilentDawning wrote:
In my view, she needs to just serve her children. They will not forget the preachy personna she has created (or they have perceived, however you define it). And it will take a long, long time to change their perception. People are very slow to change their opinions of their loved ones, and in the process actually impede the change/repentence process.I think that learning to serve her children will benefit my friend. However, it looks to me like before she can serve them, she needs to get to know them as they currently are – not as deficient because they don’t keep her standards, and not as they used to be growing up. I know it will take a while – I just wanted to provide a perspective on what might be within her sphere of influence as a starting point.
I feel that our church culture is not great at providing TBM’s with tools to handle dealing with loved ones who aren’t living up to the perceived standards. It seems to me we are taught to preach to them (ala Nephi), serve them for a means (ala Ammon in his missionary experiences), or judgefully co-exist with them.
I remember taking a marriage class that was offered by the ward. One woman asked for help in how to present her arguments with her husband (the bishop). She says that she knows that she is right and correct because her position is just an echo of what has been said by the brethren. Therefore she holds the moral high ground in every discussion. The instructor said something very wise. He said that if we really seek to understand one another we must present our position as our opinion or understanding that might be wrong.
This can be very difficult to put into practice with adult children. “My belief or understanding is that pre-marital sex is against God’s commandments. I may be wrong though. What are your thoughts on that?”
It reminds me of one of the 7 principles of effective people. “Seek first to understand before seeking to be understood.”
Roy wrote:
I remember taking a marriage class that was offered by the ward.One woman asked for help in how to present her arguments with her husband (the bishop). She says that she knows that she is right and correct because her position is just an echo of what has been said by the brethren. Therefore she holds the moral high ground in every discussion. The instructor said something very wise. He said that if we really seek to understand one another we must present our position as our opinion or understanding that might be wrong.
One of the things that learning that the Asperger’s Autism description might be useful for me was that I started taking a second look at how I saw things. Even if my understanding was correct (which was something I needed to assume less often because I do have a deficit in reading and applying non-verbal communication), there is a greater chance that my interpretation of that understanding and my response to that understanding would be confusing to someone whose brain is not wired more like mine. This does not let me off the hook – it is my responsibility to be more clear and concise in my thinking and speaking, and work even harder/smarter to develop working communication protocols with my husband.
Roy wrote:
It reminds me of one of the 7 principles of effective people. “Seek first to understand before seeking to be understood.”
This principle was expanded on for Mr. Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Effective Families” book. In a 3 hour ADHD seminar put on by Dr. Russell Barkley (one of the leading researches/educators for this field), that is the one book he said that he would want all parents with children who have additional needs to read – because those principles were even more essential for those families rather then families without additional needs.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.