Learning About Conflict From Different Perspectives: A Glimpse Into A Real-Life Drama From My Own Family
Sometimes I think kids imagine that grown-ups have it all together. And though many of us have worked hard to deliver the best version of ourselves out into the world, many of us grown-ups are still growing and still trying to understand what’s underneath our own behavior, while trying at the same time to be there for our kids while they develop their own best versions of themselves.
And sometimes this can get messy, especially when us grown-ups have our moments, those moments when our best selves get lost underneath our own upsets.
So I thought it might be useful to share a family drama of my own, so anyone of any age can get a glimpse of what happens when three people—me, my son, and my husband—are all having difficulty seeing each other’s concerns in the heat of a moment.
So, my husband was putting in a new front door. He was using a Sawzall. If you don’t know what that is, it’s a very loud saw. It was loud as heck.
In the next room my son was playing Minecraft with one of his best friends, having the best time. Until he could no longer hear his friend because of the tremendous interruption of power tools.
But I wasn’t present to the concerns of my son at the moment. All I was present to was my own concern: a new front door is going to be installed and nothing or no one was going to get in the way.
So as soon as my son began complaining about the noise, I began unplugging his stuff with a smile on my face, a smile that I hoped would conceal the agenda of my inner drill sergeant who was privately issuing commands: “Ok, kid... you’re going to hut 2 and get the heck out of this room because this door’s going in now! I’m gonna need some more beauty around here if you think I’m homeschooling the likes of you another year!”
Lately, when my empathy lens is on, I’ve noticed that my son listens visually. In fact he often doesn’t hear me unless I also use an object to help me communicate.
“Hon, would you like some raspberries?”
Nothing.
Show him the raspberries:
“Yay! Can I have some?”
So, this is probably another reason he hadn’t heard my attempt to explain what was going on while I was unplugging his computer to relocate his Minecraft session to the other room.
“Dad is going to be making this noise for about an hour, so, if you’ll just lift your hands off that keyboard I’m just... going... to... run the computer into the other room and it’ll be fine! You’ll love it! It’ll be so cozy there!”
All he heard was what he saw:
“What the heck are you doing??!! Why are you taking my friend away?! We’re in the middle of the best time of my life!”
I didn’t get it in the moment, the cost of only bringing my own concerns to the table.
I didn’t get that I was literally carrying away his lifeline, while he was chasing me like it’s the oxygen he needed to breathe...
And then, he pushed me...
Silence. We looked at each other.
“Whoa,” my inner drill sergeant decided, “I'm being mistreated!”
Enter husband.
Who thankfully attends therapy remotely with me once a week. Because neither of us were raised with much empathy, so that means we have to work extra hard not to make the same mistakes our parents did.
But even so, my husband’s inner drill sergeant also came out. Not too harsh, but he wanted to address the behavior he saw, not the upset that I had just caused, not the upsets that both my husband and I have caused because of our collection of lagging skills, and not the upsets we can’t even properly guess about because we haven’t even found out what they are yet.
So my husband says to our son, “Did you push mama? Can we talk about why you pushed mama?”
Well, there’s nothing like seeing the drill sergeant agenda of my husband to get my empathy lens on, because let’s face it, no one is going to treat my son like that... besides me!
So instead of reacting with my thoughts out loud, I gave my husband the look of ‘let’s let this one go’ and I was left with that most uncomfortable feeling, that realizing I just messed up feeling, that realizing I had had zero empathy and zero interest in having empathy for my son’s concerns.
Thankfully while I was in this pit, my husband got his empathy lens on and he said, “You know what, I don’t need to install the door right now. How about I put in the door in an hour. Would that work?” Yes! Everyone agreed.
When I remember to step back from my concern of the moment, then I’m able to see my bigger concern: wanting peace and harmony in my household.
And with this new plan, I returned my son’s computer so that his nerves could reset and we back-burnered everything else.
At this point I sat with myself and tried to think about my own behavior. What was underneath my behavior?
Why couldn’t I have communicated with my son in advance about the construction that was going to happen?
And I realized this is a lagging skill of mine—difficulty planning ahead of time. Difficulty adjusting environments beforehand so that there’s extra support for everyone to better cope with the new changes to the environment, instead of forcing everyone to just adjust their behavior in the moment.
One way I like to understand what’s underneath my behavior is to go back to upsets that happened in my past and see if any of them are still unresolved.
And at that moment, when I looked inside myself, it wasn’t too difficult to find a bunch of unresolved upsets.
Growing up with my father and two stepmothers, back-to-back, I was always expected to do what I didn’t want to do. And when I did do what I wanted to do, I felt I had to sneak it, because I was sure it wouldn’t be allowed.
Life seemed to be about suffering and muscling through tasks I wasn’t excited or prepared for, but because I was a people-pleaser and deeply afraid of criticism, I did what I was told and then rushed through the things I actually wanted to do, because just as no one seemed to value my interests in life, I also didn’t think my interests mattered. In fact I felt guilty for having them.
Definitely Not the life I want for my child.
And I think this is why learning about conflict from different perspectives has been so healing for me, because for the first time, I am beginning to feel empathy for myself—acknowledging that I have a right to express what hurts me and a right to pursue my interests. And when I’m really present to these things, I look at my son and all I see is someone who also deserves these things.
I grew up around so many authoritarian people that I think I’m allergic to even the slightest hint of its tone—it’s critical more than curious, has the answers instead of the questions. It’s quick to challenge instead of perceiving with flexibility. And it rarely asks the question: how can I see this according to my child’s perspective so I can connect and understand him first, before I’m so sure I know what he needs.
This doesn’t mean that I didn’t have a talk with my son later after our nerves were reset, about what happened. We talked about it instead of sweeping it under the rug.
We talked about what happened from his perspective and then we talked about what happened from my perspective.
He’s not a very skilled communicator yet, but he sure looked at me with gratitude when I accepted my role in the matter and asked if he would have handled the transition better if he could have prepared for it earlier. “Yes,” he said. “I love you mama.”
These are the kind of conversations that inspire me.
Because just maybe, because of the effort I’m trying to make more and more, my son will know how much he matters, and he’ll extend that knowing to the other people in his life.
And instead of judging their behavior when they’re upset, maybe he’ll have the skills to ask, “Hey, what are you so upset about? Can you tell me what happened? I’d like to understand.”
I’d like to end this episode with a poem of sorts that I compiled from things my son said to me during our many conversations around screen time:
Get off the screen, you say
And do what?
You say there’s a pandemic
That I have to wear a mask
Not go too close to people
That there’s fires
And war
And racists
And unregulated people who yell and spit at each other over parking spaces
I hear you talking about how people are dying
And lonely
And miserable
But then you tell me to get off my screen
Where I’m happy
And you have no better replacement
Than your world.
Well I like the world of Minecraft
We help each other get what we need
We can handle the bad guys
I built my own house there
With bridges
I don’t have to be careful
Or wear a mask
You grown-ups ruined the world
And this world isn’t ruined at all
But you want me to go to yours instead.
Makes no sense.
I know we have a lot of important things to share with our kids. But our kids also have a lot of important things to share with us. And if we really listen to our kids, to the point where they feel reflected, maybe they won’t have to search their whole lives for validation, like some of us have had to. Because they’ll have learned from our listening that their voices matter.