Tag Archives: children

The Intoxicated Babysitter and the Third Graders at the Renaissance Hotel

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The Intoxicated Babysitter and the Third Graders at the Renaissance Hotel

Dateline: Chili’s bar, Little League World Series Final. These kids are great fun.

What was your first thought when seeing the two boys in the pool. Was it, where were their parents? Not that the question is a bad one, just not the only one.t was your level of fear seeing pic? Remember herding sheep in other countries. The swimmers do look a bit younger than the third graders in the situation below.

Okay, one more shot at James Arthur Ray, then I’ll let him go. Maybe. The sweat lodge situation is just such a good example of one person saying to others (who ended up dead, by the way, even though they were good “Warrriors”) “Listen to me. Not your own mind. You are safe because I know you and you don’t know yourself. You are safe because I am with you and I am so cool and great, you should trust me with your bodies and your money.” Okay, I paraphrased a little. But you get the message. is the same.

Remember the pledge. No judgments. James Arthur Ray and both mothers came by their responses to anxiety honestly. A child’s anxiety is hard to resist. It’s hard to keep
ourselves calm and communicating confidence once our fears are stimulated, once
we know or think we know danger lurks.

The following situation came about accidentally, but taught one father a lot about his
daughter and himself. This particular weekend Mrs. W was out-of-town and Mr. W
was in charge of his ten, four, and two-year old daughters. The mother of one
of his ten-year-old’s best friends called and asked if she could attend a small
slumber party.

The friend’s aunt, staying at one of the best hotels in town which happened to include
an indoor pool and miniature golf course, had offered to arrange a room next
door for their niece and three of her friends. The niece was excited and happy that her aunt had made such a generous offer. The plan was for the aunt to supervise an afternoon in the pool, then take the girls out to dinner before settling in.

What actually happened: An hour after the girls were in the pool, the aunt got into a huge argument with her husband on the phone. After the battle, the aunt
left the hotel, then returned with a six-pack of Mike’s Lemonade. Afte the swim the now intoxicated aunt retreated to her room and room service alcohol.

The girls went down to the indoor miniature golf and played a couple of hours. Returning to their room, the niece peeked in on her aunt to find her passed out on the bed. The four third greaders were on their own and for some reason, probably the fun
night ahead, no one called parents.

They made a joint decision for everyone to shower and change into the dresses brought for dinner. The four girls escorted themselves to hotel’s fine-dining restaurant signing the check to their room. Afterwards, the evening was spent with television and games as planned. Ice cream sundaes were ordered from room service.

The next morning, the aunt still in bed, the girls enjoyed breakfast in the restaurant then returned to the miniature golf course to wait for parents to pick them up at the
assigned time.

Once the niece’s parents were beyond their anger at the aunt, they could step back and see how well their daughter and the other girls had handled themselves. Would they have allowed her to go if they’d known what was going to happen? Of course not. But instead of raging on about the irresponsibility of the adults, or about the fact that his daughter had not called him the night before, they were able to appreciate how the girls had managed a tough situation quite well–and without anyone having to instruct them along the way.

Hang on, no one’s saying leave your third grader with a drunk relative in a hotel. Ten-year-olds do herd sheep and tend to the store in other cultures. (When a young person tells me he or she just can’t do a chore, I tell them about the young herders. Straightens them out in a hurry, since they do not want to end up with more responsibility.)

Next: Relationship
Dependence, the “Woman Who Used Two Potato Peelers at Once.”

 

 

 

HOW TO NOT LIKE YOURSELF and get others to agree with you

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vm__sx100_sy140_.jpg    Andy (Timothy Robbins) walks into Shawshank prison, an environment most of us would see as a hopeless place to survive, much less have a life of any quality.  He enters the mess hall and the yard, surveys his new neighbors, and joins the most sane group with the most balanced leader (Morgan Freeman).  He works in the library, teaches inmates to read, and every single night he scoops one teaspoon of sand out of the tunnel he’s digging for his escape.         

     Andy chooses to be in charge of himself rather than allow his surroundings determine what goes on inside him and how he conducts himself and he has a goal.        

     What are you perceiving if you’re the one walking into Shawshank?     

     You do not simply SEE the environment.  Your perception is an act of creation.  You will perceive in accord with the “AS IF” world you’ve made up.  You will PERCEIVE in accord to the WORLD YOU ARE RESPONDING TO, not the world as it IS.     vm__cr00180180_ss100_.jpg    

     How to talk someone else into thinking you’re fat:  A newly wed couple is enjoying a meal when the husband looks into his wife’s eyes and tells her how perfect she is.  The wife twirls a string of spaghetti, a shadow crossing her expression.  She says, “I know you think so, but I don’t.  Ever since I was twelve, I’ve always felt like my hips were huge.  I felt like a fat giant in junior high.  I can’t stand to think what’s going to happen as I get older.”  The husband says something sweet, but when the wife gets up to retrieve something across the kitchen, where do his eyes go?  How often and how many more times, in the years to come, will his eyes drift to the source of his wife’s junior high school misery?    

     It depends on how insistent is she that she SHOULD change the size of her derriere, and how insistent she is that IT IS AWFUL, TERRIBLE, AND UNBEARABLE to be a woman with a large (if it even is) posterior.   vm__cr00352352_ss90_.jpg

     But now we’ve moved from PERCEIVING to INTERPRETING.  Oh, baby now our EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM can really take off!

     

MOVIES: 1. PERCEPTION and Defining a Self

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vm__cr00277277_ss90_shank.jpg   HOW YOU PERCEIVE OTHERS and the WORLD determines, to a large degree, how much fun your are going to have in this life.  Whether you are FREE or in YOUR OWN PRISON.

     Sometimes when I talk about working toward a Self Defined Life, people mistakenly assume being SELF DEFINED is the same as being Self-ish.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Isn’t it more selfish to run your life on some kind of “auto-pilot” expecting others to change for you?  Could there be a more unselfish gift to a spouse, a friend, or relative than to say, “I’ve complained a lot about how you treat me as though it was your responsibity to see that I am happy, and that I never, ever doubt myself.  That wasn’t fair, and anyway, as dedicated as I’ve been to telling you how to change so that I stay calm–YOU KEEP BEING    vm__cr00358358_ss100_.jpg   YOURSELF.  I’ve realized, ‘Babe,’ since I’m making up the world as I go along, you’ll never be able to catch up with my needs.  Why don’t I work on my PERCEPTIONS instead of trying to change you?  Particularly, because, according to your limited view, you’re not doing the thoughtless things I accuse you of, anyway.”

     “I’m going to try something new.  I’m going to take more responsibility for my feelings.”  Now that’s un-self-centered.

     Operating in a self-defined way means working toward having your actions more determined by your BEST THINKING and less determined by EMOTIONAL PRESSURE from others, or EMOTIONAL PRESSURE from within yourself–that is, your own anxieties and   vm__cr00468468_ss100_addicted-to-love.jpg    fears.  Freedom is both having charge of what goes on inside your chest cavity, and having the capacity to manage your anxiety so that your interactions with others and the world are in line with BEST THINKING rather than automatic, anxiety-driven, predictable responses.

     We’re going to look at four steps that go into our response to a situation.  The first step is PERCEPTION.              vm__cr00485485_ss100_sholmessmarterbrother.jpg

     Let’s go back to Andy (Tim Robbins) walking into Shawshank Prison on a life sentence for a double murder he did not commit.  (Picture yourself at your job, class, party, dinner with family, involved in a disagreement with someone important.  For my writer buddies out there, imagine yourself sitting down to pitch an agent, facing a blank page, or adding another page to your rejection collection).  

     What and WHO DO YOU SEE?  Do they want to FIGHT?  vm__cr00433433_ss100_dollarbaby.jpg  What DO THEY WANT from you?   What do they think of you?  How is this meeting going to go?  “Which is more important?  The world you can touch, or the world you’re responding to?”

     This question of perception is particularly important as you approach your “Shawshank.”  You don’t walk into the same prison (party, bus, job, relationship, hospital, class) as any other person, though you are entering at the same moment at the same place.  Your emotions, your fears and anxieties, take a role in creating your situation.  In actually CREATING THE PEOPLE.        vm__cr490387387_ss90_.jpg

    Thus, YOU have a lot to say about how the encounters in your life turn out.  (Big encounters, like marriage.  Little encounters, like the one with the stranger next to you on the plane. 

   But, oh, I’m getting ahead.  And, what kind of “woo-woo” idiot psychologist am I, to suggest that other people aren’t EXACTLY as I perceive them?  I’m supposed to even be right about what others are THINKING.  Since I can see inside people’s heads, I know WHY they do and say the things I PERCEIVE.  I know I see reality because it FEELS like what I see is reality.

     Tomorrow we return to poor Andy walking into Shawshank Prison.  What will the places you’re in until then be like?