Some Conversations Are Hard – Even For Adults
By: Lisa Cavallaro – Confluence Daily is your daily news source for women in the know.
We Don’t Want To Hurt Anyone, So We Speak To Everyone.
I noticed a weakness in adult communication back when my kids were in grade school. It angered me at first but now each time it happens, I become increasingly fascinated.
It started with one very opinionated parent who was a good friend of the school principal but disagreed with the principal on a particular issue. This parent then shared his view with a couple other parents and word quickly got back to the principal. As you might guess, the principal didn’t like this guy trash talking how she was running her school. So she did something about it.
The principal wrote a letter about how she didn’t appreciate the things this parent was saying. She defended her decision and her right to make the decision without anyone else’s approval. She continued on about how she does the best she can and that while she doesn’t expect everyone to agree with every decision, she does expect parents to talk respectfully about her. Then she put a copy of her letter inside each student’s backpack so that every parent in the school would read it.
So I read the letter… and then I had to call my sister to ask what in the world that letter was about. It made no sense to me. The parent wasn’t named. The exact situation wasn’t given. How was I to know what this letter was about?
Honestly, I don’t think I was supposed to know what it was about. I think that letter was the principal’s feeble attempt to stand up for herself. But seriously, she could have done so much better. She could have called the guy she had the beef with and discussed the situation one-to-one with him.
I received a similar letter today. All of my neighbors and I received a letter about the vandalism that’s happening in our neighborhood. It’s been happening over the course of several weeks and management wants us to speak with our kids about it. If the vandalism doesn’t stop immediately, then management will “unfortunately be required to identify the individuals responsible and press charges.”
Now I could be wrong, but given the number of cameras in our neighborhood and how I understand the quoted wording above, it sounds like management already knows who’s responsible. So I don’t really need to “visit with my children and help bring these events to a close.
What might bring these events to a close is for management to have a face-to-face chat with the parents of the kids spotted in the videos. Or depending on their ages, maybe even with the kids themselves?
I get it. Some conversations are really, really hard. We don’t want to say the “wrong” thing. We don’t want to accuse someone (or their family members) of doing something they may not be proud of. But mostly, we don’t want people to think we’re “not nice.” So we play nice.
We don’t want to hurt anyone, so we speak to everyone.
We speak up without getting too specific. We play it safe hoping the people who need to hear our message will get it, and they won’t be embarrassed by the delivery.
But honestly, is all this beating around the bush really necessary? These challenging conversations can be so much easier than we make them out to be. For starters, we could preface our remarks right at the beginning, letting them know how difficult this is for us and how vulnerable we feel.
We can tell them why the conversation is a hard one to have. Throughout the conversation, we can tell them how much we value, respect and don’t want to offend them.
I’ve been both successful and unsuccessful in these types of one-to-one talks and I can honestly say that regardless of the outcome, I’ve always been proud of myself for having initiated them.
Two things for sure are that the ability to have respectful direct communication with another human being is not something that’s learned in school AND it’s definitely not something everyone else is doing.
It’s something that feels impossible at first… and steadily improves with each conversation.
Given how hard this is for educated professional leaders, imagine how good kids can get at this if we start teaching them now… one difficult conversation at a time.
Lisa Cavallaro, The Confidence Coach, is an LOA Coach with a solution-focused spin on bullying. She helps parents leverage Law of Attraction to raise kids who are self-confident and have a positive outlook toward peers, school and life. Lisa is the author of No More Drama and ADHD The Natural Way.
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