Family MADders

As I am entering early adulthood with both my daughters I’ve recognized whole conversation changes. Often times after conversation we’re all left frustrated and feeling like the other person hasn’t heard us. Through no fault of our own we all hear and feel things different in the midst of conversation, and have a different perspective as to how The conversation went. In my upbringing I was taught that you don’t simply take the truth as truth but you have to rattle it round and Present evidence as to why it’s true. The answer”I don’t know” was never acceptable. We could throw out that one group or one ethnicity or one religion or even one sex has the better way of solving these problems, but I’ve come to realize that the only way to truly deal is to recognize how someone else may process and meet them somewhere. The major problem? One group held power and if you didn’t address issues in the same way they did you were dismissed as belligerent, that angry dude, or just stupid. So I’m sharing how I process. Once again when presented information I tend to want to shake it up, fray the edges like A rope, not only fraying the edges of my thoughts, but those that are coming toward me. Once I’ve heard I’m able to move them together and combine them, in hopes of a unified and more informed thought. If Anyone was to ever watch me work with young people in the gym on the tennis court they would truly notice one thing, that I rarely allow youth a straight line to the truth, but I challenge them both with tone, inflection, and questions that forced them to come up with an answer. Do I challenge the answer, absolutely! But in that I also teach them to stand on solid principles and practice. Most of them are able to cope with this because there is not nearly as much emotional content as there would be if they follow the same process with their parents. In conclusion I hope that this gives you a little more insight into why a relatively benign conversation means so much more to me. It means more because I truly want to absorb and take in the information you may have not just because it’s information, but because I took the time to have this conversation with you I must have valued you as a person.