Living Powerful Lives - Learning Forgiveness or Offense
In our early childhood we all learn how to relate to people. Your parents, authorities, peers, all influence and help frame out your understanding of human interactions. Your early years are critical for your brain - its firing away at an incredible rate, neural pathways are getting built and established quickly and in force. The patterns of our way of thinking and interacting are getting cemented in. What exactly is getting established?
Is there any intentionality in how you are helping your kids (if you are a parent) or in how you learned how to relate to people?
While there were probably some subconscious tendencies, there are very few people that get intentionally trained in social interactions. Many people actually get either hyper concerned overwhelming parents whose highest core value is to keep you 'safe'. So much so, that nothing ever happens. While others get either one or two burned out exhausted parents trying to make it pay check to pay check. And very little positive learning ever happens.
We as youngsters are then facing the social challenges of life based on the strongest personality or influencer in any given situation. That could be at daycare, it could be in an elementary classroom, could be at your house with your siblings or at a park. They are learning from every interaction. Generally that strongest personality or influence has just as little intentional framework as anyone else in regards to relating to others, yet they have they can have incredible impact on our brains.
In many ways our hope of learning healthy social skills is a crapshoot to what sort of environment we are subjected to, and what sort of family we are born into.
I found that we fall into one of two significant categories. We either learn to forgive or we learn to be offended.
Obviously, these are pretty broad. Essentially, those learning to forgive have some authority figure (generally a parent) helping them navigate moments of rejection. They come a dime a dozen early on. It could be getting a toy taken that you were playing with, getting hit my another kid, getting called a name at school or trying something new and failing in front of other kids. A kid that learns to forgive has someone helping them reconcile relationship by forgiving them, telling them not to be mean etc. When a kid has some of this basic scaffolding it helps to develop an internal framework that relationships are malleable and repairable when damaged.
A kid that learns to be offended is a kid that has authority figures that do not care enough to step into these moments of rejection when they see them. They will instead be either ignored or subjected to the distraction strategy. When the authority sees it they will drive and direct the kid to something else in an effort to distract from the situation at hand. While this is not always bad, the majority of the time it is teaching the kid that those moments of rejection are just 'the way it is'. This is terrible for their little brains because they are learning that relationships are strict, rule oriented, and based on their performance.
My wife and I have watched time and time again. Our second kid is currently trying to navigate this on the playground. He will come home and not want to talk about recess, which is where the majority of the rejection is happening. After some prompting and sitting with him, he will begin sharing his experiences. There are already several kids that he labels to us as being 'mean', 'loud', 'cheating' or whatever.
We then have the opportunity to help my son go back to the battleground the next day
the options are:
- Ignore the 'mean' kids and do something else
- Press into the situation and do relationship
Most 7 year olds will tell you they don't know how to do relationship because its scary (which it is) or hard. What would happen if I just let my son move on and not deal with his pain?
This face would lose his sense of life! He would learn how to avoid people that are 'mean' or 'loud' and would probably start tending toward passivity. Growing not into a powerful life but into a powerless life.
We have encouraged my son and tried to give him the tools to go back into recess on the daily with the expectation that he will not only include himself but will let the 'mean' kids know what he wants to do as well.
As it turns out most of the kids were not really 'mean' as my son relayed them. Actually just very opinionated on what they wanted to do at recess. Not a big deal for a kid that knows how to do relationship, a massive deal for a kid that learns offense.
As we age, for us to live powerful lives in any situation there is an ability to engage in healthy relationships that will make or break any situation and any context. In the era of social media its becoming easier and easier for those of us that have learned the way of offense to hide. We can post whatever we want and portray whatever image we really want to anyone. Never really having to come do real relationship. Unfortunately, that creates an incredible void.
Social Media and technology are obviously not the cause, but I am becoming increasingly alarmed at the number of young people who have learned the way of offense in regards to their personal relationships, and are burying themselves in social media. Very few people value their parents, and outside an outlier of one coach or teacher have really no regard to any authority figure. Friendships come and go around social activities but very few have friends that know the deep secrets and desires of their hearts.
This is Alarming
The reason I am so concerned is not only the rise in personal depression/isolation for young people, but also the inability to really accomplish anything. People that have minimal ability to maintain relationships and are generally powerless to really contribute anything to society. 1. Because they do not really know anybody, and are therefore limited to their capacity and 2. Because they do not really care about people.
My question for you is - are your relational patterns prone to forgiveness or offense?
Live a powerful life by refusing to allow other people's behavior to dictate yours. Forgive. Press into people when needed, and move on from people when needed - but don't let offense dictate your behavior.
Thanks for reading along - Live Big Today and Dominate Life
Wow another deep topic. There are so many important points you touched upon. I completely agree children should be taught to deal with the challenges in life including something as small as what happens in a playground or school. Like you put it, it's about preparing to them to have a powerful life. To answer your question, I personally don't allow others to have power over me or my emotions. Even if someone disappoints or offends me, depending on the situation, I would either confront the person (if I care about them enough. Otherwise they don't deserve my energy!) or in the case of disappointment, I would not allow that to consume me. Things happen, and if someone did that, I treat it like it's their burden to carry, not mine. I am not sure if that makes me sound selfish!
Thats awesome! sounds like you were taught to forgive people no doubt - Learning to not allow peoples junk to mess with me has been really challenging through my upbringing - I learned early on that I wanted people to like people and would be an emotional mess when I perceived rejection...I have been un-learning that the majority of my adult life!
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