Hands Full of Rocks

Draining the Quake Lake

I don't know how much attention other people put on the earthquake in Sichuan, China. I pretty much searched the news compulsively, as I'd spent three weeks there when I was 19. I knew that someone I remembered, someone I had developed a fondness for, was almost certain to be hurting. So many children died, so many families shattered, one whole village swallowed by mountains that moved closer together... The disruption of quake after quake, aftershocks measuring into the serious quake numbers, hundreds and hundreds of them...

One of the non-tragic stories was the forming (by earthquake) and draining (by strategic use of anti-aircraft weapons, I think) of a 'quake lake' - a lake formed by the blockage of a river because of rock and mudslides. The water flow out of the lake when they finally broke through the dam of rock and debris and mud was powerful, but a controlled release, and one that did not put hundreds of thousands of people downstream at risk. Hooray all around!

Last night, we had our own version of this.

I've been working at using the respectful communication, as I've noted. I'm focusing on the non-violent communication method, because it details exactly how to phrase what is a need, what is a choice, what is a feeling, what is a desire/want, etc. And it details how NOT to... rather mortifying to realize that I've been following the how NOT to, almost to the letter! And funny, when I read that saying, 'I feel that ...', is a cue that the following words will be thoughts or analysis and not feelings, I flashed back to probably hundreds of disagreements between me and epeepunk where I was sure I was communicating well and cleanly, and yet he felt blamed, guilted, or otherwise angry despite this, um, fact. I could hear me saying 'I feel that ...' over and over and over and over. Oops seems too small a word, here. (Fortunately he took my apology with only a little gleeful rejoicing that he was indeed right that I wasn't sticking to my side of the problem, even if he hadn't been able to identify why it seemed that way.)

Properly chastened, I started up again, working on doing it 'properly'  - which sounds awkward at times, but seems to work, so... effective, prudent, true. Going to use it, even if it seems odd for now.

And then last night, on the heels of this understanding, I was alerted to a problem. Mr B was screaming at the top of his register, the scream of hurt and fury and retaliation, the scream that is meant to cause pain.

I found Mr G lying on the floor, and Mr B screaming and holding the side of his head. I (um) demanded to know what happened, and (crud) ordered them to tell me (argh!) whose fault it was. Can I start any worse than that without hitting them? Oh, and don't forget the intense expression and loud voice - not quite yelling, but close enough.

And of course, having done so, I set off another round - Mr B said that Mr G had thrown him into the sofa, and he'd hit his ear, and it wasn't his FAULT. I snapped my attention to Mr G, who then went straight into wounded fury.

It turned out that Mr G had built a small lego creation, and Mr B had accidentally knocked it off the stool and shattered it. Mr G had glowered at Mr B, who had wailed, 'I didn't MEAN to,' and when this was not met by instantaneous forgiveness (continued glower), Mr B leapt at Mr G, attacking him in fury. Mr G then pushed him off, where he then fell and hit his ear.

Oy.

I apologized to Mr G, and followed him into his room (where he'd fled in despair and rage). And started over.

Listened. Asked for the emotion. Worked on identifying the need under the emotion. Coached him through it. And again. At first he didn't quite understand, but when he got that I needed to hear the real, deep, intense, NEED under the pain, and not just have him reiterate the pain alone...

Well, a surface-to-air missile was a close approximation to the impact.

His pain poured out in floods.

He poured out pain he's carried for years.

Pain of feeling supplanted by younger siblings, and needing to be valued.

Pain of feeling lonely and lacking friends, and needing to have community.

Pain of living far from the people he likes best, and needing to have choice and power in meeting his need to spend time with them.

Pain of being promised, and having the promise forgotten (that one TWO YEARS OLD, but still there, from a single event).

Need to be valued and treated as integral to the family at mealtimes, need to be valued by his cousin and not feel like a target for her own unhappiness about not having choice over where she spends her time in the summer (nothing drastic, just little niggling irritations constantly - he feels a lack of skill for handling this, too.).

Need to have choice over so many areas that really, he SHOULD have choice over, and often by the nature of life in a large family, he doesn't.

Need to be accompanied, to be in community, while working.

He feels alone and isolated in his own family.

It was pretty painful - for me. Hearing it and being open to the pain of all our errors, and the pain of all the circumstances beyond our control, of all the situations we chose and would not go back on but that come with uncomfortable edges or aspects... where we chose to live, how many kids we have, what we're doing for summer care, and so forth... hard work not snapping back into lecture, lecture, react, knee-jerk, hurt-back, and more lecture.

But, I did it.

I rode the wave. Kind of a crashing bumpy ride, like kayaking the surge out of the quake lake. Dangerous, in that tipping too far in any direction, losing the balance and flow of the outpouring, was likely to cause a lot of damage. Painful, like the amount of muscle strain working to stay upright while riding the flood would be. And, at the same time, exhilarating, powerful, awe-inspiring, humbling. Staying in balance through that flood left me feeling whole, competent, and true to myself, as well as aching with knowing how much my beloved son had been hurting without speaking.

It finally drained down to the steady pour of release, past the rage and sobbing, past the face flushed and body rigid, past the blame and anger and lashing out. Lake not empty, but now low enough to release over time (provided the spillway remains open), gently, steadily.

Then we could talk about my feelings and needs - with me asking if he could hear them, first. He agreed, and we discovered that his need for fun attention was intersecting badly with my need to maintain house, bodies, property. His resentment came out in the form of 'how come you care about perfect neat and tidy, and not US?' - um, perfect neat and tidy? Hello, that is so NOT what I care about! I care about usable space, some room to work, far from perfect! But to him, my need to put away clothes instead of sitting with him while he takes a bath, means 'put away' is more important than being with him. OUCH. YET, when I expressed my need to have a maintained space, property, and health, not perfect, and that I was working with many tasks that needed to be completed and limited time, he immediately understood that by helping more with the maintenance, he could free up more time and energy from me for fun stuff. He agreed that he would be willing to work out strategies for how he could help make that time for us. Openly, and looking more mature and thoughtful than I've ever seen. (Whoa.) I caught a glimpse of the young-adult in his face. Love those moments.

We also talked about strategies for solving the long laundry list of issues. He thought a family meeting might work (which always seemed like a really challenging concept to me - granted, two 3 1/2 year olds and anything related to serious discussions is challenging... we've tried them, but they haven't stuck. Maybe we didn't express well enough what they were for, how they'd help meet the kids' needs?).

Meanwhile, having left Mr B to his own devices, he spent the time I was talking with Mr G writing out, very carefully (two separate times), I'm sorry, I lied. About what? About it being your fault that you hurt me, and not my fault that I caused it.

Again, WHOA. He expressed it humbly, openly, and with sincerity. He then rebuilt Mr G's broken lego creation (in his own way). Which also brought up that we've been celebrating Mr B's talent with lego, but not Mr G's talent - smaller talent, but not insignificant, and really, we TRY (sigh) to celebrate their JOY with lego, their creations no matter what size or drama need to be valued. I don't want him to start declining to play lego because he can't compete... RIGHT smack back to the Siblings Without Rivalry book. Time for a re-read on that one, too.

Nobody had eaten, the girls were rambunctious (seeking attention for themselves), and it was getting late.

When I asked Mr G what he wanted for dinner, he didn't answer. (ARGH) I asked if he wanted pizza. He said yes. I made pizza. That wasn't what he wanted.

But instead of being grumpy at each other, I noted the facts of what happened. He realized he'd mis-heard me (thinking I'd asked him if he wanted to eat something with us), I'd therefore gotten the wrong message, and had acted on it. He winced ruefully, holding eye contact, and said, okay, he'd eat pizza then. Thanks.

Again, whoa. No grumping. Just acceptance. He wanted to have waffles along with pizza, too... I wasn't comfortable with this, and (woo, practice helps!) expressed it clearly as a concern (though still imperfectly overall - skipped the need to preserve our resources by not wasting food), and he shrugged, and said okay, he'd eat as much pizza as felt good, and then if he still wanted waffles, we'd go from there. He decided he didn't want waffles, half-way through the pizza. Again, no resistance, no internal pressure. The flood gates were already open.

I ended the day regretting deeply that I hadn't realized I wasn't using the method properly from the start. I was exhausted, though still feeling good, and despite the realization of soooo many mistakes on my part, not defeated. Still, exhausted is exhausted. I fear that I'm going to have to blast open a few more quake lakes before we're down to just the regular checking of the channels to make sure they're clear.

At the same time, I don't have any fear about the 'downstream' effects in the future - the flood of pain has been averted, it will not be able to build up to that extent again (I hope).

And many of my own needs (including to just have time to have fun) may find their way to being met. With willing assistance.

Cool.

The Beauty thing

We've been talking on Ask Moxie about body image.

It's an interesting topic. I think I've written three or four post-like emails to myself, thinking I had a grip on what I am doing 'wrong' and what I need to do more of, less of, or just plain different. And then I'll digest a bit more, and my thoughts will change, and... sigh.

I've been reading Po Bronson's stuff on praise, the issues that come from focusing on the inborn trait instead of the effort and work that makes what is inborn into a success.

I have been trying to make a leap based on the research that shows that telling a child just once that they're smart can reduce their confidence and change their choices (for more than a week) to less challenging, safer, less useful decisions, more fear-based and status-based, more likely to cheat, more likely to shortcut, less likely to be realistic, rational, or willing to try... Just one statement, a single sentence, creates a change in behavior, choices, attitude. (Fortunately, the alternate statement - focusing on effort - creates a parallel change in the other direction, for the same duration. Words are POWERFUL.)

Thinking about it, though, I realized that the same patterns of outcomes are true with women in our culture - we don't trust that we are beautiful, we avoid the effortful activities and go for the easy answers, we cheat (surgery), we watch others for their performance and measure ourselves against them, we neglect focusing on ourselves and our own choices, discipline, or decisions. We're culturally weakened, made insecure.

It seems to be a one-to-one match for the 'you're so smart' reactions. So maybe there's a link here to saying 'you're so beautiful'.

And yes, I tell my kids they're beautiful. All the time.

So, now what? Po advocates (from the research) NOT giving them that blanket, generic praise. Or yes, praising, but praising effort, work, dedication, patience, trying, whatever skill was employed, timing it to the effort. Praising in detail, in specific, even if it sounds dorky when you start trying it.

Now, we do this a lot for the smarts stuff already. I read the same research he did, when it was first coming out. Being specific in the praise is important, and we leaned on that.

Plus, I remember being a child. I remember not trusting the generic praise, and feeling good about the detailed stuff. I remember thinking - quite clearly - that 'you're talented' or 'you're smart' were just stand-in phrases for 'I love you' and didn't mean anything about smart or talented - I knew I was neither, I'd had moments when those attributes were clearly lacking, so 'inborn' was really kind of a random thing, not a real one - loved, I knew I could count on, at least.

I also remember being aware that sometimes the generic praise was more praise for the parent (because we were alike, so if I'm beautiful and I look like you, saying so is just saying that about yourself) than it was praise for me.

I also remember feeling horrified and mortified when I was praised for something that I knew I didn't work hard on, that was a half-assed effort. I can still feel the sick feeling I had when my dad carefully packed up the dumb paper towel I'd colored in (with one color of pen just filling in the pattern) and took it off to WORK. Where people would see it. And they'd think that was my best effort! Mortifying that he was proud of that. I knew why he was doing it - he loved me, and he liked to show it. But boy that wasn't the way I wanted him to show it. I wanted him to say 'that's really an interesting idea, let's see what you can do with it - explore and try some things with it. I'll take the one you like best, your best effort, the one you are proud of, and put it up in my office.' I wanted him to give me a reason to try my best, to feel proud myself of what he was honoring with a place of pride in his office.

So, yeah, with the smarts (and - sigh - to a way lesser degree with musical talent), we talk about the details. I like how you focused, I like how you stayed on that problem until you figured it out, and even I like how you tried it yourself before asking for help AND that you asked for help when you realized you didn't understand how to proceed. We praise them with the real words, the detailed words, the words with the most accurate and specific meaning - considerate, considered, effort, focus, determination, patience, generosity, observation. All things they can do, that take skill even if they had some kind of baseline talent there.

But with beauty? They're just beautiful. It's generic.

Now, to give Ep credit, he realized that we were doing this several weeks ago, and started being more specific. I like this about you, I really love that exact thing. And that's a big part of it - I know that I never believed my mom when she said I was pretty or beautiful. Moms are supposed to say that stuff. It doesn't make it true. It's another blanket statement that really just means 'I love you'. But my eyes being beautiful, that I believed. It was detailed and specific. I knew that the beauty was found in their color, the way the pattern of the iris was kind of like the patterns light makes going through water, the way the blue was the same color as a fresh blueberry, before the white dusting is washed away, and the way my pupils tended to stay larger than average. Even the shape, tilt, eyelid form, and lashes played a role - they were details my mom gave me as to why she loved my eyes. Others said the same thing - my sisters, my dad, strangers, in detail. I love my eyes (though they're now green rather than blue). Always have. The rest of me? Eh. Not beautiful. I could look in the mirror, but could not see my face.

But there's more to knowing ourselves as beautiful than just the detailed description of why. That's got some traps in it, too - because we change. My skin and body and hair are not like they were before. I know people used to praise and admire my hair, back when it was straw-blonde, before it went mousy. I hated losing that, and didn't learn to love my hair again until it was dark brown, though I don't think I really loved it even then.

So, what else to do?

I think some of the clues are right here: Swiss program for long-term weight loss; It's really hard for people who are obese to lose any amount of weight and keep it off. 5% succeed at keeping it off for a year, if they even lost any to start with. But this program succeeds for 5 years with 70% of the participants. That's great, an amazing success!

But the goal, for me, is to prevent the problem in the first place - and hey, the issues here are preventive as well, if they're working on the long term. So, what did they teach there, in that program? What worked?

Yes, they taught proper self-care - diet, exercise, how to eat, what to eat, when to eat, how much. How to exercise, how much to exercise, all that. (And I'll add in, getting enough sleep, since sleep deprivation not only increases appetite, it decreases our ability to see the positives and increases the focus on the negatives.)

But they did three other things that aren't part of most programs (or in some but not others, and not all together).

1) They taught the people to be in touch with their bodies, to be IN their bodies. Dance therapy, for them. But movement therapy of any sort, dancing, playing, being joyfully present in our bodies, that's important. I was separated from my body by being abused - I blamed my body for being attractive to predators, and was angry at it  -  it was too dangerous to be angry at the adults involved.  I remember the exact moment that I re-entered my body, when I felt the full range of sensation from my knees for the first time since I was a child. The sweetness of the sensation of movement was something I could nearly taste - it was as potent as a hug from my mother, as sunshine on my skin, as the scent of dew on grass. I sat and wept for missing that, when I felt it again, wept for sorrow and for the joy of knowing I didn't have to be apart from my body anymore. And that was even though I'd been a dancer, and not a 'control my body demand it to do what I say' dancer but a hip-swinging, swaying, undulating (middle-eastern/beledi) dancer, since I was NINE. So, yeah, I can say that being in the body, feeling it, inhabiting it from bones to skin is a powerful and important lesson.

2) They taught them to listen to their body, be in conversation with it. Hear the hunger JUST from the body, not the mind. Hear the fullness JUST from the body, not the emotions. What does my body tell me? This one, my mom got pretty well. Poverty at times overrode that - fear that there would be less to eat later drove me to eat more, and faster, even though I had eaten enough. Competition from many mouths meant there weren't always leftovers, and sometimes not enough for what I wanted - so I ate fast, and got my seconds before I even knew if I wanted any. I didn't gain weight from that, fortunately - I burned it off, kept the balance equal somehow. But I also was definitely over-eating, even if I was hitting the mark on the total calories - I was eating without listening to my body. We work that angle a lot, with our kids - having had a child in a feeding clinic, a child who was unable to register hunger AT ALL, who hadn't felt it for years because feeling anything from that part of his body meant feeling pain constantly. He'd cut off all sensation, not consciously, but protectively. Having your heart break - both in sorrow and joy - the day your child cries from pain and discovers that it is only hunger, that this new feeling in his belly is his body talking to him, and he can finally, finally hear it... yeah, that teaches a strong lesson. We listen to our bodies. They tell us things. The things they tell us may not be easy to understand sometimes, but they're not lying. When his body said 'stop eating' and he listened to that, it was RIGHT - eating made his body hurt, it wanted him to stop. So he stopped. That was good listening. We'd just missed the next step, which was figuring out why it hurt, and stopping the hurting, so he could hear the message from the rest of him saying it was hungry. He was six before we got that part. But we did get it, and so it is a great satisfaction for me to have him say, 'hmm, I'm still hungry, I'll get a bowl of cereal' after he's finished the usual portion of dinner. We have him 'call' (on a 'hand phone') his belly when he doesn't know what he wants to eat, or how much - stop, listen to your body, start the conversation, work together and figure it out. And they do. They know, and it changes daily, but it works.

And 3) The program involves regular and frequent support. Hearing the problems, listening to the fears, encouraging the successes, in relationship. We do that part pretty well, I think. I hope well enough.

I'll add on from the discussion at Ask Moxie, the things that people highlighted there that I saw as important... once I saw them in writing.

1) Modeling self care and love of our bodies. If we're self-critical, even with a frown in the mirror, the extra body turn to look at our backside with a dissatisfied sigh, they see that. They suck it in, they learn that this is how we're supposed to respond to our bodies.

2) Letting them try it on. Playing with their look is something we've supported for the boys, way better than we've done for the girls. I'm so much less comfortable with girls being feminine than I am with boys being ANYTHING. My boys can paint their nails or play with swords, and I'm fine with it. Go for it, explore the world, explore with curiosity and impulsiveness, do it all! But the girls... um, stick with the non-feminine world... um, no, okay, so yes, you can paint your nails but don't, um... okay, yeah, jewelry is okay for the boys so it's okay for you, and ... dang, yes, you can wear pink frilly dresses if you want to. Sigh. I've come a long long way in accepting the feminine stuff, since having rejected it all-out as a child as a fast track to zero freedom and all power being through manipulation. Feminine to my child mind meant dishonest, bound by the limitations of crinolines and white tights that might get dirty, and shoes that slipped on every surface, and playing up to the desires of others for the sake of the power it granted. Not for me. Now, though... I have to accept that there's nothing wrong with a pink dress that is comfortable, that allows for running and playing and getting muddy. It's just pink, and if they can climb in it, do I really care that it is a dress instead of jeans and a tee shirt? Well, yes, I do, but they don't, so I have to let it go.

3) Balance and moderation. Not saying they're beautiful may also have some pitfalls, though perhaps the problem may be more in the 'it means I love you and I don't say it so I don't love you' aspect. Not being certain where the lines are, I'll lean toward moderation. I know that with the smart stuff, praising effort causes as much change for the positive as praising intelligence causes for the negative. So maybe it's wussy of me, but I'll play the balance, but I'll also recognize that there are many times when I need to step back and let them discover for themselves that they 'are smart' or 'are beautiful' instead of jumping ahead and giving them the answer before they've even finished asking the question.

4) Rely on many roles. Dad's words can be powerful. I am not the only player here. I need to make sure that others are supporting the direction of the process. Fortunately, in this, ep is waaaay ahead of me. Grandparents play a role. Aunts and uncles play a role. Strangers in the supermarket play a role. And I need to play a role with my younger relatives, too. And oh, might want to think about how I address the adorable child in the supermarket. Yeah, that, too.

 

Many ideas.

We definitely need to be more detailed with the beauty and talent stuff - to talk about the self-care, to praise the efforts made, to specify the exact thing that made our heart sing and our mouths open and the words spill out along with our pride. Because those are the things that encourage action, that say that no matter how beautiful or talented I feel at any time, the difference in results is not talent but action, effort, taking risks, trusting ourselves, and learning new strategies. Trying, and then trying again.