Kids need to know when they sense the truth

Some people hesitate to acknowledge the truth kids see, know or sense.  Common examples are when kids sense they’re unsafe in the presence of:

• A neighbor or a family friend or relative or someone’s unleashed pet.
• An older kid who lives next door or who’s included in family activities.
• One parent in a divorce or someone at that parent’s home.

Sometimes, adults simply don’t see the truth themselves, but more often, some adults:

• Want to maintain illusions that these close people are not actually dangerous.
• Hold back because they don’t want to say anything bad about someone like an ex or a relative.
• Have a value that it’s wrong to judge a person’s identity as bad or evil.

Some parents hesitate even when the danger is obvious and glaring.

These hesitations are wrong and very damaging to the kids.  Kids need to now that they may be in dangerous situations even at home.  Especially, kids need to know when what they sense is accurate.

Jane’s father had even seen his five year-old daughter yelled at, harassed and verbally and emotionally bullied by the new boyfriend of his ex, Jane’s mother.  So when Jane said she was scared to go there and that the boyfriend was bad to her, he knew her fears were well-grounded.  Jane also said that her mother had said that the boyfriend was a good person.  Obviously, Jane was unsure what to think.  But she knew what she felt.

Jane’s father was a nice person and didn’t want to think of the boyfriend as a bad person, so he hesitated in responding to Jane.  He didn’t want to say that someone was bad.  Also, he thought it was important for a child to see her mother often and to like her mother’s friends.

Get your hierarchy of values and priorities straight.  Jane’s father is missing the point.

1. Jane’s father has conflicting values and hasn’t effectively organized his priorities in a hierarchy of importance.  It may be important to him not to judge or label people as “bad” or “evil,” but more important than that value is the value of protecting his child.  And there’s a way he can intervene without judging the boyfriend’s identity.
2. Jane is unsafe.  She’s being subjected to mental and emotional bullying and abuse.  Her mother may be also.  And both Jane and her mother may be targets of physical abuse already or in the near future.  Jane’s father must intervene effectively even though he may have difficulties because of court ordered divorce requirements or because of the possibility of starting a fight with his ex in court.

Kids need to know when their sense of things is accurate and true. A key step in developing confidence and self-esteem is learning when we can trust our estimations of people and situations even if other people disagree or our self-bullying, “monkey mind” tries to talk us out of what we sense to be true.  Tremendous damage is done to kids when adults tell them not to trust their feelings, thoughts and intuitions.

Jane needs to know that she’s right.  What she estimates as “not safe” and “fear” is accurate.  She should not be talked out of those accurate estimations because of big and meaningless words like “compassion,” “kindness” or “being non-judgmental.”  She must know that she does see the reality of the situation.  Even more damaging than thinking that “love” means putting herself in dangerous and painful situations, if she’s talked out of her feelings, she’ll grow up riddled with self-doubt.

To protect Jane, we don’t need to judge the boyfriend’s identity. Jane, at age five, may think in terms of good or bad, but we don’t have to.

Thinking in those terms is usually a self-motivation strategy.  Some adults generate enough anger to act only if they think in those terms.  Then they often over-react because they’re so emotional.

But we can act simply when we recognize that a situation or person is dangerous.  We don’t need to get into a highly emotional loop that keeps us from acting effectively.  And we don’t need to label people’s identity.  We can simply discern a pattern in their actions no matter what their reasons, excuses or justifications are.

In a way that a five year-old can understand, Jane’s father must acknowledge to Jane that she’s right; the situation is painful, dangerous and scary.  Then he can deal with the difficulties in the situation.  If Jane’s mother is also feeling abused by her new boyfriend, Jane’s father may be able to stimulate her to act without her admitting she’s done anything wrong – which might make it easier for her to act.

But Jane’s father may have to deal with difficulties in order to protect Jane.  Can he get Jane’s mother to get rid of the boyfriend without going to court?  Can he get documented evidence that a court would accept?  Must he get a court-approved psychological evaluation, which would put Jane in the middle of choosing between her parents?

These are not easy choices.  Jane’s father probably needs good legal advice before he begins.

But he must act soon.  He can’t keep putting his daughter in danger.

Since all tactics depend on the situation, expert coaching by phone or Skype helps.  We can design a plan that fits you and your situation.  And build your will and skill to carry it out effectively.

Can We Stop Bullies if We Have Sympathy for Everyone?

Of course, it’s easy to sympathize with most people.  If someone has been abused, bullied or worse as a child, our hearts go out to them in sorrow for their suffering.  Or we can see someone’s beautiful spirit, the spirit of God, in them and our hearts will go out to them with compassion and empathy. But if a friend, neighbor or co-worker comes to you full of hurt, anger and outrage, does that mean that someone else actually did something wrong to them?

Maybe or maybe not.

For example, Linda recently moved next-door to Carrie in their friendly, family-focused block. It was a cul-de-sac and all the families had kids approximately the same age.  They’d organized many activities, birthday parties and car pools in order to create a community feeling.

Carrie and Linda started becoming close friends.  One day, Linda came to Carrie crying and angry.  As Linda struggled to stop her tears, Carrie felt herself becoming angry on Linda’s behalf.  Who’d caused this much pain and suffering to her friend?

Linda explained that one of the other women had made cutting remarks about Linda’s husband not being as successful as many of the other husbands and that Linda’s children weren’t as athletic or smart as the others.  Carrie was furious.  How could that woman say such things and hurt Linda so much?  What kind of neighborly welcome was that?

In an act of sympathetic friendship, Carrie said she’d never liked the other woman, who was always pompous and inflating her husband and children.  Linda shouldn’t pay attention to what the other woman had said.  Linda should know all the other women liked her much more than the other woman.

None of that was true.  Carrie actually liked and admired the other woman.  She’d never been negative, insensitive, righteous or arrogant before.  She’d always gone out of her way to help everyone.  Actually, Carrie couldn’t imagine the other woman saying those things to Linda.  But, obviously Linda’s pain meant that she had, indeed, said those things.  And Carrie thought it was her responsibility to comfort Linda and make her feel better.

The tactic worked.  After Carrie’s statement, Linda seemed to feel much better.  She thanked Carrie and left.

Two days later, Carrie noticed that the other woman had snubbed her in public and was whispering with Linda and a few of the others behind Carrie’s back.  Linda seemed to be accepted as part of the group and Carrie was glad for her.  But she still felt the cold shoulder.  Over the next week, it got worse.  She felt defeated, being cut out by the other women.

Episodes like this were repeated, sometimes with Carrie as the target and sometimes with other women as targets.  Carrie realized that it was like being back in junior high or high school again.  There was the clique of “in girls,” now led by Linda, and a shifting group of “targets-of-the-day.”

Carrie later discovered that after she’d sympathized with Linda, Linda had gone to the other woman and told her what Carrie had said behind her back.  Of course, the woman had reacted and had started snubbing Carrie.

In this article, I won’t go into how Carrie learned what Linda had been doing to each of the women or how Carrie managed to combat it.  Carrie might have been Linda’s first target, but she was not a victim.

Linda’s narcissistic, sneaky, manipulative, back-stabbing behavior was her tactic for breaking in to a new group and taking control of it.  Linda was a Queen Bee.  She wanted to control the turf.  She wanted everyone to be either so worshipful or so afraid that they sucked up to her and did what she demanded.

If Carrie had let herself be ruled by her sympathy for a friend trying to break in to a new group, she’d have never been able to protect herself.  Instead, she did not accept defeat.  She took power over her actions.  She was able to bring the women together in friendship and to return the block to a friendly, activity-filled community.

Carrie and the other women found that acts of friendship did not change Linda’s behavior.  She could not be won over to acting nicely.  All their sympathy and compassion didn’t stop Linda from harassing or bullying.  She would not be a true friend.  She remained a “mean girl.

As Carrie discovered the hard way, sometimes sympathy can be a trap.  Her sympathy only aided and enabled a bully to spread her poison.

Just because someone is hurt and angry does not mean that someone else really did anything wrong to them

Carrie should have been more careful of what she did to make Linda feel better.  And she should have trusted her knowledge of the other woman’s good character.  She should not have believed Linda’s report, no matter how convincing.  She should have spoken face-to-face to the other woman in the beginning.

If a person who’s hurt, angry and complaining is a snake or go-between, who likes to pour gasoline on fires and stir up trouble between other people – who plays the game of “Uproar” – they’ll use any sympathy, opinions or information to enmesh you in a fight with someone else.

I haven’t mentioned the “Linda’s” in our extended families because we already know who those manipulative tricksters are.  We’ve already been sucked in to their manipulations so many times that we’ve learned to protect ourselves and to maintain good relations with the other people who act nice in return

A big learning for Carrie was that we may see someone’s shining, Godly spirit, but we’ll probably get to deal with their personality and the consequences they cause us.

It’s not the sympathy that’s a problem.  It’s how we express that sympathy or the dumb ways our sympathy can lead us to act in order to make someone feel better.

For some examples, see the case studies in “How to Stop Bullies in Their Tracks,” available fastest from this web site.

Since all tactics depend on the situation, expert coaching by phone or Skype helps.  We can design a plan that fits you and your situation.  And build your will and skill to carry it out effectively.

Case Study: Dealing with a righteous, angry, bullying friend

Dana thought her new friend Tracy had a strong personality.  Tracy always knew what was right and knew how she deserved to be treated.  She could always justify why her standards were the right ones.  If anyone didn’t live up to Tracy’s rules and logic, she let them have it. She was even right when she told off Dana’s next door neighbor.  But Dana had to live with the consequences of Tracy’s tirade.

Do you know any quick-tongued people who are sure they’re right?  How do you deal with them?

Dana’s neighbor was having a pretty loud party the evening Tracy was visiting.  Dana would have let it go because the neighbor usually was quiet or she would have sweetly asked the neighbor to tone it down a little.  As part of their good relationship the neighbor would have apologized and made her guests quiet down.

But Tracy got livid at the noise and shifted into action.  She raced over to the neighbor with Dana following behind.  When the neighbor answered the door, Tracy lit into her.  The guests were looking on but that didn’t stop Tracy for a second.  She yelled that the neighbor was discourteous, arrogant, crude and trailer-trash.  When the neighbor reacted defensively and angrily, Tracy cut her off, called her a string of dirty names and said she was getting the police on her.

Tracy ran back to Dana’s house, called the police and complained loudly about the noise next door.  The police did come.

When Dana said that she thought that was overkill, Tracy got angry at her; no one was going to disrespect Tracy.  The neighbor was too loud and she had a lot of nerve to get angry when she was in the wrong.

When Tracy left, Dana was stuck.  She’d always had a nice relationship with the neighbor and she didn’t want to start a spite-fight with someone who lived next door.

So what would you do?

When Dana and I talked the next day, we began by separating the three people she had to deal with; the neighbor, Dana herself and Tracy.  We went through each one separately and then Dana took the action she’d decided upon.

That evening, she went to the neighbor’s house and apologized for Tracy.  The neighbor was furious and wouldn’t accept Dana’s apology.  She told Dana off and slammed the door in her face.

Dana waited and after about five minutes she knocked again.  The neighbor wouldn’t answer until Dana had knocked for what seemed like another five minutes.  Again Dana groveled.  She explained that she hadn’t known that Tracy had called the police, she would never have done that and she still wanted to be neighborly.  They’d always gotten along before and they could still talk to each other reasonably in the future.

Again the neighbor slammed the door.  But an hour later, the neighbor called and acknowledged that the party was a little loud.  She said she understood, but she never wanted to see Tracy again.  Dana was satisfied with that arrangement.  She and the neighbor actually got along better after that conversation and the neighbor didn’t have a loud party again.

The second person Dana had to look at was herself.  She was shocked and stunned when Tracy threw her fit.  Dana finally realized that she wasn’t a bad person for letting Tracy attack the neighbor; she didn’t have a character flaw.  She simply hadn’t trained herself.

When humans are surprised and shocked, we often revert to our childhood reactions or to one of the three primitive reactions we have – fight, flight or freeze.  Dana froze; she called it “brain freeze.”  Maybe Tracy reverted to “fight” mode.

Since Dana didn’t like brain freeze, all she had to do was to train herself to make a different response.  She had known that she’d wanted to stop Tracy.  Actually, she knew how Tracy was and that if she’d prepared herself, she wouldn’t have allowed Tracy to go to the neighbor’s house.  Or, she would have stopped Tracy in mid-tirade.

Now she had to make her boundaries clear and stand up to Tracy.

When Dana told Tracy how much trouble she’d caused with the neighbor, Tracy attacked Dana.  “I was right.  Your neighbor was way too loud.   I had a right to be angry.  Nobody’s going to bother me any more.  Someone needed to tell her off.”

When Dana told Tracy she didn’t want to deal angrily with a neighbor over one incident, especially when the woman had been a good neighbor for a long time, Tracy again attacked Dana.  “When I get angry I have to get it off my chest.  You’re trying to repress me and put me down.  I have a right to my feelings and I won’t be stifled.”

Dana she recognized that Tracy was bullying her.  Now, Dana was prepared.  She said, “You know, you seem to think that you’re entitled to throw a fit if you feel like it; if you feel righteous, right and justified.  Did you grow up getting your way when you threw fits?”

Tracy yelled that it was none of Dana’s business how she grew up.  “Anyway,” she spat out, “I feel better when I let people have it.  They deserve it.  And it helps me get what I want.  You’re just a coward if you don’t tell people off.  You’re asking them to take advantage of you.”

Dana repeated, “Usually, I don’t have the strong feelings you do.  And even when I do, I think of what will get me what I want, instead of just throwing a fit and spilling my guts.  I wanted to start off nice with the neighbor.  When I simply ask, she always takes care of things.”

Again, Dana challenged Tracy, “Is it more important for you to throw a fit than to get what you want?  I wanted to tone the party down and I wanted to keep a good relationship with my neighbor.  Whenever you feel right and righteous, do you beat people with your tongue or do you think of what else you might want?”

Tracy blew up again.  “I was right, your neighbor was wrong.  I can do whatever I feel like when people are treating me bad.  And if you don’t like it, I’m not your friend.”

After careful consideration, Dana decided that Tracy wasn’t interested in changing her reactions and that not being friends with her was a good idea.  She didn’t want to get drawn into fights because Tracy had the self-control of a child.  Rage, bullying and verbal abuse weren’t her usual style.

Coaching helped Dana clarify how she wanted to act and what she’d allow in her personal space.  Our talking and her learning from “How to Stop Bullies in Their Tracks” helped Dana maintain her boundaries with the neighbor and her former friend Tracy.  They also helped Dana stand up for herself against other bullies in her personal life and at work.

I hope this case study and the techniques Dana used will alert you to areas in which you’re not taking charge of your personal ecology.