Taylor Swift’s song “Anti-Hero” was the theme of my first nine weeks of school.
It’s me, hi. I’m the problem, it’s me.
Yes, the kids today are different from the way I was in school, and yes, a tough class is overwhelming.
But the problem with my kids is that I was the problem.
And as soon as you can figure out that you’re the problem in your life, you’ll move mountains in getting what you want.
Respect is a Given, Listening is Earned
It’s great to tell kids to respect adults, but respect doesn’t mean listen to. The same remains true with adult-to-adult interactions. You earn the right for someone to hear what you’re saying.
You need to give people a reason to hear you.
I learned this at a conference, listening to one of the most riveting speakers I’d ever heard, and yet, people scrolled through their phones and barely batted an eye at the complete bombs this guy dropped.
So instead of simply blowing it all off, and yelling at kids (or your spouse) to listen to you, you have to capture their attention.
Yes, direct their eyes to watch you. Ask them to focus, but give them a reason to give you the time of day, a reason to care other than the fact that they should.
It simply isn’t enough anymore, especially when you’ve got TikTok videos and Cocomelon to compete with.
You Can’t Force a Behavior
Whether working with kids or working with adults, you soon realize that you can’t force anyone to do anything.
A great friend of mine is also my coworker. Technically, this year, I’m the lead of our team. And the principal talked to us very aggressively about being on time to work.
But my friend can’t be on time to save her life.
My wife thought I would give my friend a talk about showing up on time. But I didn’t. Doing so would be talking into the void, especially because it’s a talk that she’s already heard by someone with more authority than me.
Just like I can ask my class to get in a straight line, but I can’t pull and push kids to get it together. I can ask and hope they listen and redirect the kids that are struggling, but I can’t physically make them face the front.
There’s nothing that you can do to make someone listen to you. You also can’t make people do whatever you want. They listen to your request, and they have every right to reject it.
So What Exactly CAN I Do?
I’m so glad you asked.
You can control yourself. You can check in and see why you’re raising your voice if all of the universal truths we listed above are still in place.
If you can’t control someone else, what’s the point of screaming at them?
We all get frustrated, lose our temper, want to hurl a kid out of the room, want to shove that one coworker down the stairs, but we just can’t.
Instead, we have to change our inputs if we want different outputs.
Like they say, killing them with kindness will make them wonder why they actually hate you. And with children specifically, you have to get creative.
My mom had to do that with my sister. Spankings wouldn’t work on her. She’d still run her mouth in class. So she took away her favorite toys, returned Christmas gifts, had her pick up trash outside of the school, and found other ways to work on her behavior.
Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity according to Einstein.
Ask for Help
I recently wrote another story about a teacher asking me for help even though she had more experience. More than the conversation surprised me, it brought up the fact that I need to ask for help if I feel overwhelmed with my class.
I should try the strategies I learned on TikTok and then equip them whenever necessary.
For example, a teacher on TikTok talked about going back and forth with a student. He said to never enter a power struggle. Provide two options that you feel good about and follow through on whichever one the student picks. But don’t struggle.
Struggling ends badly no matter what.
Going back and forth with my wife isn’t productive unless we can find a meeting ground of mutual understanding.
So why do I try it with people who don’t even have a fully developed frontal lobe? Not a great idea.
Look Within
As Taylor says at the end of her chorus:
I stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror.
The reason why is because sometimes looking at ourselves is more painful than glaring at the sun. We can’t face the fact that we messed up.
It’s a hard pill to swallow when I lose my temper. I get embarrassed and beside myself but that’s because of how I reacted, not how they reacted. My kids are 10 and 11 and 12. It isn’t fair for me to try to control them, and I can’t. The better thing to do is to control the one thing that I can–me.
Trying to fix other people is an outer solution. We work on what everyone else can see, but we can’t address what’s inside. The only person’s inner workings that we can change is our own.
The sooner we learn that, the freer we will be.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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Photo credit: Guilherme Stecanella on Unsplash