Recently my eight-year-old daughter came home from school in a good mood. But by bed time, as she became more and more tired, she started to really misbehave, which is quite out of the ordinary for her. When she crossed our line of acceptable behaviour, she was sent to her room to calm down. Ten or so minutes later I dropped in and she burst into tears and apologised, explaining that she had been feeling frustrated from the day's events. Aha. The old hold-all-the-emotions-in trick.
I have raised my children to be kind, but that is, I now see, not good enough. Because when faced with someone who is mean, kindness has little effect. I actually think the kindest kids may be the favourite to pick on, because the retribution is minimal, and the resulting stress the kind children feel and express through tears is a good reward for those kids doing the harrassing. In the two schools we have attended the staff at both teach the children being hassled to put up their hands and say, 'stop it, I don't like what you are doing,' and if it continues to escalate, to say, 'if you don't stop I will tell the teacher.' To the kids who love to stir up others, these retorts would have very little effect. In fact, it may just stir up their fun level a notch or two. In the face of these kinds of children, kindness does not work. No wonder she got so frustrated: despite following the social rules, some children will not (can not?) reciprocate.
To my daughter's shock, I gave her permission to say 'no' to the troublesome child when she tried to come between the two friends. And in class when this child interrupted and disturbed her learning, I gave her permission to speak out loud and interrupt the teacher by demanding that the child stop. 'Really?' she asked. 'I don't want to get in trouble.' I smiled, 'you can tell the teacher that I gave you permission to speak that way, and the teacher can talk to me if she doesn't like what you did.'
At school the very next day the trouble maker came over to stir up the two kids playing nicely. My daughter turned to her and said, 'no,' and explained she had had enough of her interruptions. Shocked, the troublesome child went to the teacher to report the incident. (Imagine!) The teacher heard both sides of the story and requested that the troublesome child leave the others alone and sent her off to play elsewhere.
It's not enough to be kind in this world. There are unkind people who need to hear 'no'. And the nice kids need to know how to say it and stand up for themselves. It doesn't mean stooping to the behaviour of these kids, but it does mean knowing that if that amazing inner voice says, 'this feels wrong,' the nice kids have the power to say 'no way,' whether it's trouble making kids in the playground or adults intent on mischief. Our kids need to know they've got permission to stand up for themselves. They need to learn to listen to their intuition. They need to know they have the right to refuse to do anything that seems wrong. The relieved and satisfied look on my daughter's face when she relayed the success of her new strategy during the day's events confirmed for me that kindness, while an important aspect of feeling good about oneself, is not enough on its own.
No comments:
Post a Comment