Sunday, August 22, 2010

Things They Should Invent: standardized, widely-known way for children to make clear that they're just being cheerful to be polite

(This actually stems from another blog post that I'm hoping to get up today (the one about the secret to unhappiness, if it's up by the time you're reading this). I started composing the other one first but this one just came barging in and wrote itself beginning to end.)

I dislike the word "sulking" and similar concepts. They trivialize a person's emotions by implying that they're feeling those emotions for the sole purpose of annoying other people. Think about your own life. When you feel a negative emotion, is it in any way about how other people will feel about it? Of course not! Your emotion is your emotion, and you're expressing it because it's what you're feeling.

(I always find it especially bizarre when parents say their child us "up sulking in their room." Remember when you were a kid and, for whatever reason, weren't interested in being downstairs where everyone else was, so you went up to your room? Think about what you were doing. Were you sitting there with arms crossed and a sour face grumbling about the goings-on downstairs? Of course not! You were reading your books, playing with your toys - living your life, basically, rather than doing stuff you didn't want to. It was the childhood equivalent of whatever you're doing at home today on this rainy Sunday.)

I've been reading Miss Conduct's book (which is very interesting - a lot of examination of people's motivations, which I find useful), and one thing she mentions several times is "People aren't [X] at you!" The guest at your dinner party who doesn't eat shrimp isn't not eating shrimp at you, he's just not eating shrimp - just like that other guy who doesn't have a shrimp on his plate at the moment. The girl in the bar who looks hot isn't looking hot at you, just like how you aren't being tall at her.

Similarly, a kid who's feeling a negative emotion isn't sulking at you. They're just feeling a negative emotion. The real issue is the parent would like the kid to hide the negative emotion and pretend to enjoy the situation, and the kid isn't doing that.

So at this point we have to ask ourselves: why do people hide negative emotions? Think about your own life. You hide negative emotions when you have something to gain by doing so. What do kids have to gain by hiding negative emotions?

Let me remind you of another phrase you probably heard in your childhood: "See? That wasn't so bad!" When you're a kid, if you get through a situation you dislike without expressing a huge amount of negative emotion, you parents get all smug and told-you-so about it. Then next time you don't want to do something, they completely dismiss your feelings "Oh, don't be silly, you'll like it." Or, if it's the same thing, "What's the matter? You LIKE X!" And not only do they dismiss your feelings to your face, they also convince themselves that you actually did like the thing, to the point that they truly believe that your word on what you do and do not enjoy cannot be taken at face value.

Therefore, there's absolutely no motivation for a kid to hide their feelings. If they do, their feelings won't be taken seriously next time and the parents will truly think that the kid likes the things they say they didn't like. Their only possibility for being taken seriously is to express their feelings as vociferously as possible. (And even that often doesn't work because parents think they have to instill that kids won't get their way by "whining".)

So what is needed is a way for kids to express to their parents (before the fact, after the fact, or both) that they don't really enjoy something but were just trying to make the best of the situation to be polite. The parent would need to communicate this to them explicitly, as well as talking to them about why and under what circumstances and to what end people might hide their negative emotions. And then - this is the important part - the parents need to praise them for being good, and believe and remember that the kid actually dislikes the thing in question. If the kid doesn't like going to church but was good and sat quietly through the whole mass last week and then does the same this week, the parent needs to be thinking "They were so good and polite and helpful to sit quietly through mass!" It is absolutely imperative that the parent not start thinking "Oh, I see little Johnny likes church now. I knew he'd come around!"

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