MAKE A DIFFERENCE

Dear Difference Maker,

We all make a difference. The question is: what kind of difference do we make?

When we see children or adults around us behaving unskillfully or unproductively, with actions that are intended to affront or cause harm, they need our understanding and compassion.

This is the fork in the road, where we find we have a choice of either compassion…or judgment. It’s important to understand that compassion does not mean that you condone hurtful or unskilled behavior. Instead, it’s reaching into yourself to relate to people with a heartfelt energy of compassion that they can hear and assimilate.

Everything that irritates us about others
can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
– Carl Gustav Jung

Every time I’ve chosen compassion, I find I am deeply astounded, not only at the power of this force, but that it really works to shift and change a situation.

We often miss an essential point. When you go to that compassionate place that’s deep within yourself, to look at the person who is doing something upsetting, you are not only giving compassion, but you are also receiving what you’ve just given.

You simply cannot launch a negative attitude or a judgment at someone and still feel peaceful and good about yourself. During those moments, it’s impossible to feel lovable or safe.

There has been a significant amount of research about compassion, in the areas of human development and behavior.

In the most current research-based assessments, psychologists have observed that a compassionate response to challenging individuals and situations yields a positive reaction 70% of the time. Whereas, responding with resentment or anger produces a negative reaction 100% of the time!

As I’ve discussed at length in my Academic Success 101 Online Course, if you want the problematic situations in your life to dissipate and improve, start “throwing compassion” at the person or at the problem behavior. I know it sounds too simple, but try it. The next time you are upset, throw compassion at the problem and see how the situation changes before your very eyes.

Stories like Jamie Lynne’s are small but powerful reminders of what the highest and best part of you already knows: that compassion makes us protective rather than controlling. The difference is crucial in creating long-term, life-enhancing results.

To get what you want, you must give away what you want.

My first experience of putting this principle into practice was when I was thirty-something and had just transferred to a school whose guidance counselor had to take an extended leave. A third-grader named Jamie Lynne was on my individual counseling schedule and her teacher described her as very angry and highly volatile.

Give Away What You Want

Jamie Lynne was pointed out to me in the lunchroom my first day, and what I observed hurt my heart. She was sitting at the end of the table with her little friend Anne, when five other girls approached them. By their demeanor, it was apparent that these five girls considered themselves the elite of the class. They sat down at the table and began taunting Jamie Lynne. Anne tried to stick up for her friend, but the girls continued their harassment.

Jamie Lynne became verbally volatile and the girls made fun of her. A teacher on lunch duty came storming in from across the room and started chastising Jamie Lynne for disruptive behavior and for yelling obscenities at the five “innocent” girls.

I moved in quickly and lightly touched the teacher’s shoulder and asked if it was all right with her if I addressed the taunting behaviors of the five. She stepped back, and I proceeded to let the five girls know that I had seen everything they had said and done to Jamie Lynne. But Jamie Lynne was not able to hear my defense of her.

Since she was so used to taking the fall for other people’s attacks, she didn’t stop to hear that I’d just stood up for her. Instead, she jumped up and ran off with her tray, refusing to stay and hear what I had to say to the other girls.

I did not feel the need to control Jamie Lynne’s behavior at this point. It was painfully obvious that she was on her own when it came to dealing with her classmates. The teacher who had come up to discipline Jamie Lynne quickly saw what was really going on and shifted her attitude.

My first meeting regarding Jamie Lynne was with her teacher and mother. Both related only negative accounts about her increasingly volatile behaviors. She had been a sweet and wonderful little girl who suddenly turned angry and hateful in first grade. Nothing happened, of course, that could have caused this turn in her behavior according to the mother. Her conclusion, in her exact words, was that Jamie Lynne was just a “good seed gone bad,” and she was learning to reconcile herself to this fact.

I sat and listened, but elected not to say anything to try to turn their thinking around at this first meeting. I knew, being the new counselor in this school, that I did not have any credibility built up yet, and I needed to have success with Jamie Lynne first.

Later that day, when I met Jamie Lynne coming down the stairs, I said, “Hello Jamie Lynne, I just visited with your mother today, and I’m really looking forward to having you visit with me soon.”

Jamie Lynne took one look at me and screamed, “I hate you! I hate you and I don’t want to come see you. You will never be as good as our real counselor. I hate you. I hate you. Leave me alone; don’t you come near me. I hate you.” And with that, off she went, as angry and as hostile as she could be.

My thoughts assailed me. My first thought was: “Oh my gosh, I hope nobody saw her speak to me that way. My credibility will be destroyed before I’ve even begun.” My second thought: “Wow, how am I ever going to reach this kid?” Then my third thought: “Give away what you want.” My fourth thought asked: “But what do I want?”

And finally, it came to me. My fifth thought was: “I want control.” I went back to my office shaking. I sat there and pondered this most profound experience I realized that first I needed to let go of what someone else might think of a child being so disrespectful of me.

I did that quickly. I knew the name of the game I was in. I was modeling a new way of treating all children, and with any new approach comes adversity and making the most of an opportunity. But where did I go from here?

“Give away what you want. I want control. Now, how do I give that away?”

I sat quietly at my desk, mulling over these thoughts, and then I put myself in Jamie Lynne’s shoes. My gosh, what a painful place for a third grader to live! In her shoes, I realized that the message she’d been getting from the adults in her life was that she was a “bad” girl that needed to be “fixed.”

I decided to try a new tactic with Jamie Lynne. I would not position myself as someone who was going to fix her. So with that in mind, I wrote her a note:

As I headed out my door to find Jamie Lynne, she saw me coming and jetted into the girls’ restroom. I followed her in. I looked under the stalls and there were no feet on the floor. She was hiding from me! I reached for the door that I thought she was behind and gently pulled it open. She reacted as if I were going to hit her. I quietly handed her the note then gently closed the door and left.

The next morning, she was at my door with her demands. She would come, but only with her friend Anne, and all they were going to do with me was play games. That was it!

I said, “Deal. When do you want to start coming?”

With each little success, she became eager to learn more.

Jamie Lynne and Anne came once or twice a week. She was initially very resistant and distrustful of any connection with me. Through the board games we all conversations gently unfolded and she connected to me as someone who cared about who she was and how she felt.

Eventually she began trying some “techniques” for dealing with her classmate with each little success she had, she became eager to learn more.

The day I transferred out of the school to another position, she opened her arms to me for the first time, and gave me a big, long hug. I told her how much I loved her and knew she was going to keep doing a great job managing her feelings.

I fought back my own tears as she cried and said good-bye. In giving away the need for control, control is no longer what’s needed to remedy problematic behaviors.

This little story is a small but powerful reminder of what the highest and best part of you already knows: that compassion makes us protective rather than controlling. The difference is crucial in creating long-term, life-enhancing results.

Jamie Lynne’s full story is included in my Academic Success 101 Online Course

Reaching out …

 

 

 

MakeADifference.com/Education

Dear Difference Maker,

There is a common sense principle that I think applies beautifully to today’s true story …

Whatever we focus on—put our attention on—expands.

The power of connection is played out through how we label a child, and then is transmitted directly to the child through our attitudes. When we get in touch with our own attitudes, beliefs and resistance about any challenging situation we may be dealing with, we, ourselves, will be transformed.

And when we are personally transformed, we set new energy in motion that will instantaneously affect the lives of those children in our care.

Here is a heart opening story that illustrates the transformative power of relabeling from my book, Make A Difference with the Power of Connection and companion Online Program, Academic Success 101 for Professionals & Parents.

“We all know that good teachers make a positive difference each day. Sometimes we just need to be reminded through success stories.”
– Doris Voitier, Superintendent, St. Bernard Parish Schools; recipient of JFK Profile in Courage Award

R e l a b e l i n g

All children come with kindness and compassion built right in. Our job is not to instill it, but to nurture it and watch it as it grows and blossoms.

You may be wondering how a compassionate act could possibly work with children who appear to be born bullies. Here is a tr ue story about a serious situation involving a hard-to-manage first grader. Through compassion and a conscious choice to understand what was really going on, I discovered his innate goodness, while completely eliminating the need for punishing consequences.

Chip was in first grade when I arrived at his school as counselor. As with any new person on staff, I was brought up to speed on the students I’d be working with, the most troubled children in the school.

The words that both the teachers and the social workers used to describe Chip were heartbreaking: they labeled him a bully, abusive, angry, uncontrollable and evil. It was shocking to me that they felt it was perfectly acceptable to label any child “evil”—let alone a first grader.

How could this little boy, after being in school only two years, have warranted such criticism and disdain?

When they said “evil,” I knew immediately that it was all about…

…that he felt the need to strike out and to hurt others.

Over the next several months, in my support group for boys, I came to know Chip well enough to know that he was neither evil nor uncontrollable. Then, one day, he threw a chair at his teacher. Since the principal was out of the building at the time, Chip was sent to my office. I knew that he had never previously acted with this much violence.

I sat down on a small chair which put me at his eye level, and I asked him what had hurt him so much that made him decide to throw a chair at his teacher.

He replied that his teacher hated him and always had. He felt there was no way to ever get her to like him. So I asked him if he would tell his teacher this, with my help. He agreed, and we called her into my office.

As we talked to the teacher, still seated in the small chair next to Chip, I supported him in expressing his feelings. His teacher responded to his accusation with heartfelt compassion.

She said that she didn’t hate him and, in fact, she actually cared very much about him.

It was clear to both Chip and me that she really meant it. I also knew from having talked with her on other occasions that Chip’s behavior really scared her, so she was often responding out of fear, rather than from the compassionate connection she was now offering him.

Then I asked Chip why he felt that she hated him, and he replied that he knew he was a very, very bad boy, and he didn’t think anyone could ever like him. I was impressed by his ability to articulate his deep-seated belief about himself.

Still sitting on the little chair, I put my left arm on his shoulders. Then I put my other hand on his heart and started affirming what a wonderful, delightful, lovable child I saw him to be.

I explained to him the truth about himself. I told him that it was not about being bad at all, just that he sometimes tried to hurt other people because he hurt so much himself.

Chip’s behavior scared his teacher and she responded out of fear.

I complimented him on just how well I saw him doing in group, and how I saw him taking some risks as he was learning to express his hurt feelings. I affirmed that I knew he would be able to express how he was feeling even better and better as time went on. I told him that being able to say how he felt instead of throwing things would make it easy to be friends with the other kids and his teachers.

I wanted to instill in Chip new, positive thoughts about himself. So I continued to affirm over and over what a wonderful, sweet boy I considered him to be, as I kept touching his heart.

I pointed out how special and brave he was for the work he did with me in learning how to express his hurt feelings.

I told him how proud I was of him for all the efforts I saw him making on the playground and in class, and that more and more children were liking him. I affirmed my belief in his ability to ask for what he needed.

As I was speaking to him, I gradually felt the weight of his entire body coming to rest on my right hand next to his heart. It was a moment in time unlike anything I had experienced before. Like a dry sponge, he was drinking the affirmations into his entire being.

Up to this point, his teacher had feared having him in her classroom because she believed he was an evil boy. Chip’s emotional interpretation of her labeling and her fear of him left him confused, powerless and hurting. It’s natural for children to strike back when they feel they have been hurt. An adult must take the responsibility to help shed light on what has been causing the hurt in the child’s life. Any aggressive act warrants immediate investigation.

When I was finished speaking, Chip’s teacher gave him a big war m hug, told him she loved him and took him back to class. It is my belief that this approach allowed Chip to actually become “a good boy with some hurt that just needed to be worked out.”

Compassion and relabeling had everything to do with the dramatic improvement in his behavior which, I’m pleased to say, followed this incident through the remainder of the school year.

We are a society that labels, so why not select labels that will heal and advance a child’s life experience. Certainly schools will continue to label children to identify additional needs.

You can accept the diagnosis while intending a preferred prognosis.

Labels define our attitudes. You simply cannot have an attitude and keep it a secret. We radiate our thoughts, and others feel this and respond to it. Children by far are the most susceptible to adverse labeling.

A child’s mind is a clear, sensitive palette that receives impressions without protection. Until children are fourteen years of age, their psyches absorb the suggestions and impressions of the predominant adults in their lives.

In my program, Academic Success 101 Self Paced Online Course — I’ve discussed a variety of case studies – success stories – about students who excelled because I relabeled them.

Real life stories will give you more confidence in your own ability to accomplish relabeling for yourself. A new label doesn’t have to be true yet, in order for you to plant the seed. Instead of talking about what you don’t want, shift gears and simply describe in detail what you’d prefer to see happen with this situation. It’s as easy to label someone hopeless as it is to label them capable in their own special way.

Think about it.  What’s the best that could happen?

Reaching out …
Mary Robinson Reynolds, M.S.

MakeADifference.com/Education

PS … To get the full story and subsequent trainings about students with similar behavioral issues like Chip’s I encourage you to invest in my Academic Success 101 Online Course.  As you can hear from the audio clip testimonials, what I have provided is highly transformational and is simple and straightforward to apply immediately to any situation you may be finding yourself in.