Reciprocation

The thing is, reciprocation is desired, but it is not required.

A few weeks ago, my daughter was in the middle of math homework when she had a massive melt down. You know those meltdowns that start over something seemingly benign, like math homework, but by the end of the spiral you are in a puddle of tears because in your own head you can never do anything right, the whole world is against you, and nobody likes you. When she gets like this, I try to let her vent for a while before asking if she wants me to help or if she just wants me to listen.

In this moment she is so worked up all she can say when I ask if she wants help is a pitiful “I don’t know.” So, I try and walk her through her emotions and see if we can somehow get to the root of her issues. As things unravel it becomes more and more clear that she is really upset about a situation between her and a friend in which she feels like her friend is not being considerate. To be fair they are only nine and ten years old. Kids are not always the best at looking at things from other people’s perspectives.

My daughter gets to a point where she can finally articulate the core of her hurt and anger. She says “I just don’t understand why she would do that. I would never do something like that to her.” At this point, I am thinking, great! This is something I can work on.

I dip my toes into the water by saying “Ok. Well, we continue to be kind and good even when other people are not.” I even pull out the old “We should treat others the way we want to be treated.” And I’m feeling like we are making progress. Yay me, this is a good parenting moment.

Before I can go any further into my explanation my daughter flips the table, and with her every frustration filling her words she asks, “So when my friends are being mean to me to me does that mean they want me to be mean to them?” And that question took all the wind out of my parenting sails.

My brain is momentarily frozen half in admiration and half in fear at how quickly she was able to flip that logic. Shaking off brain fog and fighting a smile I said, “You are never going to find a friend as good as yourself.” Now, hang on and stay with me here there is more. “If you go through life constantly expecting people to treat you the exact same way you treat them then you are going to be forever frustrated and disappointed. Every person communicates differently. Every person shows how much they care and love in different ways. Also, every person wants to be shown care and love in different ways. All these differences are a big part of what makes any relationship complicated.”

My daughter isn’t fuming anymore so I decide to press on “All we can do is our best to treat one another with kindness, compassion, and communicate when we get our feelings hurt. Everyone has bad moments, days, and weeks. No one has the best version of themselves all the time. Wanting people to forgive us at our worst means doing our best to forgive them at their worst”. I know, that is some fabulous advice.

The truth is this is one of the hardest things we deal with. Communication and understanding are things we always want, but our moods and external factors wear on us. Before we know it, we are in this cycle of ‘matching energy’.  We begin treating people the way they treat us rather than how we would want to be treated.

The thing is, reciprocation is desired, but it is not required. We can meet someone at their most sarcastic, condescending, snarky worst and choose to treat them with the same understanding we would want in that situation.

I will be the first to admit, understanding sometimes looks a lot like holding your tongue and walking away.