When I’m Up Close But I Still Don’t Care For You
Last week I wrote about how it’s “hard to hate up close.” It breaks down walls when you don’t judge someone based on the color of their skin, religion, or culture. The world will be a better place if we can teach our children to respect diversity and allow themselves to learn from other cultures. After putting out last week’s blog, I got a response from a reader that changed what I chose to write about this week: “what if I get up close to someone, and I just don’t like him?”
Yes, I want my kids to choose their friends based on loyalty, kindness, mutual respect. But starting at a very young age, our children will also have to interact with people that they are “up close” to and don’t like anyway. Learning how to deal with people they don’t like is a very important life skill, and it is ours to model for them. It is nice to think they will like everyone, but they won’t. Just like we don’t.
In my practice, I often ask children how they are doing socially, as it’s an important part of their annual check-up to make sure they are not being bullies or being bullied. Almost always, kids will say they are doing OK, but it’s fascinating to hear and remember the conflicts of being 5, or 10, or 15, or even 20.
A 3-year-old will say, “he wanted to play dinosaurs and I didn’t want to play that, so he’s not my friend.” In his 3-year-old world, this is a grave offense, and teaching this child how to handle the situation and to notice how it made him feel is very important. What seems like a laughable offense to me at 45 should be validated to the 3-year-old as he learns to deal with interpersonal strife. If the friendship is worth salvaging, teach him to talk it through, playing dinosaurs this time so he can play trains the next. If it is not, teach him to respectfully decline the dinosaur game and move on.
I still remember the day my shy, quiet 4-year-old pinned down a “friend” and hit him for throwing wood chips at him. The classmate had been throwing wood chips all year, and my child snapped. It was one of many life lessons in dealing with the wood-chip throwers in his life. The experience provided an opportunity to discuss how my child had limits for how he wanted to be treated (not being friends with someone who throws wood chips) and also less violent ways he could have handled the situation.
The younger elementary years will provide a broader range of offenses. A little girl will passionately tell me about how a classmate told her she couldn’t play with the group at recess. If you could watch her face as I can, you would see how she is trying to process what to do with the situation. “You can’t be my friend if you’re going to be hers” is a common theme and can feel like the end of the world to a child. A grown-up lesson to teach at that point is that there might be others to play with, not in the circle of well-known friends but someone else who is available and also needing a friend.
One of my children was in the lunch line as a 2nd grader when a line of older, “scary” 5th graders passed by like they owned the school. One of the 5th graders said something rude to my child, and another 5th grader he knew punched the offender and said, “shut up. I know that kid.” My child relayed the story to me in the evening, and it was interesting watching him process how he felt when he was ridiculed and how he felt better after someone took up for him. He also tried to balance the confusing situation that “‘shut up” was a forbidden phrase, but he felt the 5th grade friend was “right” to say it.
And God help the middle-schoolers. Almost daily, patients tell me about something a friend said or - even worse - posted on social media about them. In general, they are tribal and clique-ish in the early years of adolescence as they try to figure out where they belong and who they are. I try to tell them they don’t have to be treated In a way that makes them feel insecure; they can choose other friends, and they must learn to rise above and walk away from friends who are hurtful to them.
A proud moment for me was when my daughter had her feelings hurt multiple times by a friend in middle school and finally said, “I think I’m going to be friends with people who make me feel better about myself. Not worse.”
The middle- and high-school conflicts can feel like the end of the world, and can be even more complicated with social media around. We are not going to be able to (and should not) solve our children’s interpersonal problems. We can’t protect them from the mean girls and boys of the world, any more than we can always avoid those same people ourselves.
What we can do, however, is listen to them. Let them tell you how they’ve been insulted, and why they don’t care for someone. And then teach them to be respectful. They don’t have to like everyone. They most certainly won’t like everyone. And that is OK. The world is a big place, and there are enough people in it that you can help them find people they do like.
Learning to handle a boy who only wants to play dinosaurs prepares your child to handle a future coworker who won’t listen to anyone’s ideas but his own. Watching an older child take up for him will hopefully encourage my child to speak up when he sees injustice or bullying.
We can teach the next generation it’s OK to say “I hear you but I disagree with you.” I have friends with whom I disagree about some pretty heavy topics right now. But I can almost always find at least one positive thing to think about them. And when I can’t, I have been taught by my own parents to walk away when possible, and stay respectfully distant if I can’t. Because sometimes you get up close and you don’t like people anyway.
The advice and opinions herein are by no means meant to be a substitute for professional medical advice. Please contact your personal physician, mental health provider or health care professional for medical advice.