One of the kids I spend my days with got really mad the other day. Really REALLY mad!
She simply started yelling, dropped her paperclips put her hands out in the air in a surrendering gesture and stepped away from the table as if she just shot the guy across from her. As it turns out, I was the guy across from her, so I'm grateful there was no gun play. It was not me she was yelling at.
She was yelling at the paperclips.
Yes, the paperclips.
She was trying to manipulate them and do something with them that they apparently did not wish to do. By her reaction to the lack of accommodation or compromise that the paperclips were willing to give her, she opted to yell at them as if they were a living being choosing to be a pain in her ass.
At this point, the father figure in me opted to make this a lesson. I seem to remember this happening to the Beave' in one of those episodes where Ward was trying to help him make a puppy out of an erector set... or something like that.
So, I discussed with her:
- the merits of controlling ones (mostly hers) temper
- you cannot scold or correct the behavior of inanimate objects
- paperclips are inanimate objects
- that means they aren't alive
- no, they don't think
- no, there are no Mommy and Daddy paperclips
- no, yelling at them won't change anything
- no, the problem is with what you're trying to do
- no you're not stupid, you just have to practice
- here let me show you
- how did you get me to do this
- just, just don't yell at things....
So, yes, I found myself make a keyring out of a paperclip on which to place all of the other paperclips. By the time I was almost done, she had moved on.
I'm sure this is a phase we all go through. Some of us grow out of it. Some of us (you know who you are) do not. But like most anything a parent tries to instill in children, you have to say it to them a couple of THOUSAND TIMES before it finally sinks in.
Anyway, this got me to thinking.... I am not a yeller. I am not an angry person. Although people who are angry at me because they're really mad at themselves seem to think I am an angry person. I do get angry. It takes a lot to get me angry. You do not want to make me angry. Seriously, it's counter productive and I'm not good at it.
So, I too once had to learn the life lesson of not yelling at or trying to scold or even correct the behavior of inanimate objects (or angry people). They just will not respond to anger or loud noises. And their lack of response tends to make angry people angrier.
Granted, it still happens from time to time. Surely you can think of an example? Like when you are trying to load the black ink cartridge into the printer, you know, the one you JUST took out to shake up and now it won't go back in. So you try it from every angle but it just wont fit. So you try to cram it in... smash it in... force it in there so hard that you hope to make it an example for the other printer cartridges (magenta, cyan and that yellow one whatever it's called) so they know to never be as difficult.. and eventually you have to buy a new printer because, well, things escalated and it turns out that the printer was in cahoots with the cartridge and now it had to die so that the rest of the printers would learn how we deal with bad printers!!!!
Or like when your weed eater keeps breaking the line too quickly and it gets so frustrating that you have to swing the whole thing over your head and smash it to the ground in front of you into teeny tiny bits just like you're the Hulk acting out the song "I've been working on the railroad!!!"
Just take a deep breath... in and out, in and out... find a happy place....
So, you get the picture.... we just have to grow up and learn to take deep breaths and pray that our children never learn the deep dark secrets of what we did to that printer... and its friends....
I think kids have to act out these issues and learn these lessons early. It helps them learn to not yell at animate objects either.
For example, just today, I went home for lunch and discovered that the squirrels ATE ALL OF MY DAMNED MARIGOLDS!!!! I just filled my planters a week ago. I thought I'd liven it up a bit and I planted Vincas, Begonias, Petunias and Marigolds in my planters.
If there's anything you should know about me, it's that I am not good with keeping flowers alive. As seen in this article here: By the way, the plant in the cup has since died....
And so here I am, trying to make my home all homey for my lil' homie (my kid) by planting flowers AND THE DAMN SQUIRRELS ARE EATING THEM!!!
But what can I do, I can't yell at them, I can't punish them and I certainly can't make an example of them. Seriously, I don't know what fight the car tires in my neighborhood have going on with squirrels, but they make an example of a squirrel a day on average and it's just not getting through to the little rodents.
If I were a squirrel, I'd move out of my neighborhood and leave people's marigolds alone.
Come to think of it, I think they ate my Petunias too. I'm telling my tires!!!
I got off point again somewhere....
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