by Naomi Aldort Ph.D.
Q: Homeschooling means many hours of children having to get along. When my daughter plays at home with two friends, one of them is often rejected and comes to me complaining and hoping that I will ask the girls to let her in again. If the other two mothers are present, they always intervene and insist that the girls play together. This keeps happening often. Is there a better way to respond, maybe one that will help for more than one time?
A: Last week, when the Mount St. Helens volcano started to erupt, one of my children asked, “Do people who live close by get mad when the volcano erupts?” “Do you get mad at the rain?” I asked, to which his older brother said, “Being mad at the rain or a mountain erupting is as insane as being mad at another person.” I gasped with delight; indeed, by presenting itself totally unchangeable, the volcano teaches us to love reality. When it erupts, we don’t try to stop it, change its mind or judge it; we simply remove ourselves from the area and we get excited about the drama of nature from a safe distance. We live at peace with nature because we have realized that it doesn’t change for us. Yet, we expect humans to change for us.
Such expectation often leaves us frustrated and powerless.
You can be kind, validating and caring without taking the power away from the child. If you do not project that something is wrong, she will feel content and solve her own issue; she will either find something to do without her friends, go back and convince them to include her, or ask you to mediate. You are absolutely right in your assessment that helping the “rejected” child to undo her friends’ decision causes the recurrence of this scene. Obviously, she has figured out that being a victim and pleading for justice gets parental attention. If she wins such a victim game often, she will play it for life.
Even the concept “rejection” is a parental projection. When parents respond with their own fears, the child will match their expectation and create painful inner drama that may sound something like this: “They don’t like me. Its unfair. I am helpless. Someone will be on my side and tell them how wrong they are...” This sad story robs the child of her own freedom and power to move with reality and not against it. Even if she is already fully engaged in this point of view, by becoming a player in her drama we make her strategy successful and empower her victim stance.
It is very tempting to “teach” children to play peacefully together and to be accepting of each other. Yet, cajoling and convincing does not teach them acceptance or mutual care. How would you feel if your mom tried to convince your friends to accept you? Children play together or they don’t, just like adults, only they are more candid. When we negate their choices we are neither peaceful nor respectful, and it leaves them feeling weak and limited, because they learn that they can only be happy if everything moves predictably and caters to their wishes. I would rather see children grow up empowered to be happy in the face of the many experiences awaiting them.
I recall when one of my children came out of the play room and said that his friends asked him to leave. I hugged him and asked what he would like to do. He didn’t respond and sat in my lap enjoying some kisses and cuddling. After a while he got up and went to play by himself. He was content.
In another situation, a group of children were playing on the grass at a lunch break of one of my workshops. One boy came to his mother to say that he was not included in the game. The mother asked for my guidance and I said that there was nothing to do other then respond to his initiative as she would in any other setting.
“So, are you going to play inside now?” she asked her son, trying to guess his plans.
“No,” the boy said, “I want you to come with me and talk to the kids.”
They went over and the mother acknowledged the difficulty and then listened fully to each child’s point of view. It turned out that her son didn’t know the game and was breaking the rules. The children said he could watch and learn but he decided to join his parents on the porch.
This mother did not initiate talking to the other children, nor did she solve, preach, teach or give a sermon about kindness and inclusion. She followed her child’s request. The child took action on his own behalf by asking for his mother’s mediation and since she didn’t see a problem, neither did he. He made his choice freely and without starting a painful story for himself.
A child derives strength from your trust in him. You can validate, “You wanted to play with them but they prefer to play without you?” Then you can listen until she is done talking and is clear that you heard her, or she may catch on to your benign attitude and tell you what she wants to do by herself.
When you validate, be sure not to dramatize, take sides or evaluate. Validate the feelings she is expressing without adding your own anxiety. If you dramatize with, “oh how terrible,” or take sides and evaluate with “that’s unfair,” she will go deeper into her victim and injustice story. She needs to be heard and then she can take action or make a request on her own behalf.
If the child does not seem resourceful, you can offer, “What would you like to do by yourself?” or, “Would you like a book to read, a puzzle, or do you want to help me in the garden?” Your offers don’t suggest changing reality; on the contrary, they embrace reality and count on the girl’s power to accept it and to move on. In essence you are saying to her, “There is nothing really wrong, only a new direction to take.” If she asks you to talk to her friends, stick to being a listener/mediator, not a judge/teacher. Do so without an agenda and you too will experience the joy of embracing reality.
©Copyright Naomi Aldort
Q: Homeschooling means many hours of children having to get along. When my daughter plays at home with two friends, one of them is often rejected and comes to me complaining and hoping that I will ask the girls to let her in again. If the other two mothers are present, they always intervene and insist that the girls play together. This keeps happening often. Is there a better way to respond, maybe one that will help for more than one time?
A: Last week, when the Mount St. Helens volcano started to erupt, one of my children asked, “Do people who live close by get mad when the volcano erupts?” “Do you get mad at the rain?” I asked, to which his older brother said, “Being mad at the rain or a mountain erupting is as insane as being mad at another person.” I gasped with delight; indeed, by presenting itself totally unchangeable, the volcano teaches us to love reality. When it erupts, we don’t try to stop it, change its mind or judge it; we simply remove ourselves from the area and we get excited about the drama of nature from a safe distance. We live at peace with nature because we have realized that it doesn’t change for us. Yet, we expect humans to change for us.
Such expectation often leaves us frustrated and powerless.
You can be kind, validating and caring without taking the power away from the child. If you do not project that something is wrong, she will feel content and solve her own issue; she will either find something to do without her friends, go back and convince them to include her, or ask you to mediate. You are absolutely right in your assessment that helping the “rejected” child to undo her friends’ decision causes the recurrence of this scene. Obviously, she has figured out that being a victim and pleading for justice gets parental attention. If she wins such a victim game often, she will play it for life.
Even the concept “rejection” is a parental projection. When parents respond with their own fears, the child will match their expectation and create painful inner drama that may sound something like this: “They don’t like me. Its unfair. I am helpless. Someone will be on my side and tell them how wrong they are...” This sad story robs the child of her own freedom and power to move with reality and not against it. Even if she is already fully engaged in this point of view, by becoming a player in her drama we make her strategy successful and empower her victim stance.
It is very tempting to “teach” children to play peacefully together and to be accepting of each other. Yet, cajoling and convincing does not teach them acceptance or mutual care. How would you feel if your mom tried to convince your friends to accept you? Children play together or they don’t, just like adults, only they are more candid. When we negate their choices we are neither peaceful nor respectful, and it leaves them feeling weak and limited, because they learn that they can only be happy if everything moves predictably and caters to their wishes. I would rather see children grow up empowered to be happy in the face of the many experiences awaiting them.
I recall when one of my children came out of the play room and said that his friends asked him to leave. I hugged him and asked what he would like to do. He didn’t respond and sat in my lap enjoying some kisses and cuddling. After a while he got up and went to play by himself. He was content.
In another situation, a group of children were playing on the grass at a lunch break of one of my workshops. One boy came to his mother to say that he was not included in the game. The mother asked for my guidance and I said that there was nothing to do other then respond to his initiative as she would in any other setting.
“So, are you going to play inside now?” she asked her son, trying to guess his plans.
“No,” the boy said, “I want you to come with me and talk to the kids.”
They went over and the mother acknowledged the difficulty and then listened fully to each child’s point of view. It turned out that her son didn’t know the game and was breaking the rules. The children said he could watch and learn but he decided to join his parents on the porch.
This mother did not initiate talking to the other children, nor did she solve, preach, teach or give a sermon about kindness and inclusion. She followed her child’s request. The child took action on his own behalf by asking for his mother’s mediation and since she didn’t see a problem, neither did he. He made his choice freely and without starting a painful story for himself.
A child derives strength from your trust in him. You can validate, “You wanted to play with them but they prefer to play without you?” Then you can listen until she is done talking and is clear that you heard her, or she may catch on to your benign attitude and tell you what she wants to do by herself.
When you validate, be sure not to dramatize, take sides or evaluate. Validate the feelings she is expressing without adding your own anxiety. If you dramatize with, “oh how terrible,” or take sides and evaluate with “that’s unfair,” she will go deeper into her victim and injustice story. She needs to be heard and then she can take action or make a request on her own behalf.
If the child does not seem resourceful, you can offer, “What would you like to do by yourself?” or, “Would you like a book to read, a puzzle, or do you want to help me in the garden?” Your offers don’t suggest changing reality; on the contrary, they embrace reality and count on the girl’s power to accept it and to move on. In essence you are saying to her, “There is nothing really wrong, only a new direction to take.” If she asks you to talk to her friends, stick to being a listener/mediator, not a judge/teacher. Do so without an agenda and you too will experience the joy of embracing reality.
©Copyright Naomi Aldort
Naomi Aldort Ph.D. is the author of, Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves (available on Amazon and in bookstores). Parents from around the globe seek Aldort's advice by phone, in person and by listening to her CDs and attending her workshops. Her advice columns appear in parenting magazines in Canada, USA, AU, UK, and translated to German, Hebrew, Dutch, Japanese and Spanish.
Naomi Aldort is married and a mother of three. Her youngest son is thirteen-year-old cellist Oliver Aldort www.OliverAldort.com.
For more information: www.NaomiAldort.com or www.AuthenticParent.com
