Oy vey! Sarah (11) is having the infamous ‘friend trouble’ both at school and with the girls in the neighborhood. In both cases she finds herself one of three and this triangular number doesn’t add up to cohesion and equanimity when it comes to pre-teen girls. She told me Friday that things are not going well at school and on Saturday, there was a blow-out in the neighborhood. I received a text from her mid-afternoon saying that the mother of one of the girls had just yelled at her, telling her she was a brat and never to darken her door way again, or words to that effect!
Well, what would you do with that? Skulk in the bedroom, or head off into combat? I put on my shoes and marched off round the corner before I could think on it too much and wimp out. The aforementioned mother and I met in her driveway, guns drawn like Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday at the O.K. Corral. Actually joking apart, it was a very constructive conversation. I said my piece, she said hers and we both got teary. We were civil and forward thinking, she offered an apology and we agreed to keep talking as neither of us want to deal with the girl drama.
However, I continue to be struck with a couple of things. Firstly, even if Sarah is a brat (there is no denying she can be!), why as adults do we think we hold the high ground and then act like children ourselves? What are we modelling for our kids when a mature (in age) woman says that to an 11 year old? And secondly, whose baggage are we talking about here? Mine or Sarah’s? Her’s or her daughter’s? The answer of course, is both. In any situation we have hot buttons that get us going. We can feel the emotions rising strong and true and we know we’ve been triggered. It’s not so much this triggering that’s at issue, it’s what we do with it afterwards. I read an article years ago that basically said the world is full of kids walking around in adult bodies! We still act out the old crap in our lives, reliving the beliefs we created about ourselves from the playground all those years ago. I knew that this was as much about me as Sarah due to my heightened level of emotional response. Luckily, being the oh so evolved person that I am (!?), I could appreciate what was going on for me before I acted it out. But the truth of the matter is, you reject Sarah, you reject me too and yes, lots of playground flotsam and jetsam surfacing at this point!
I have been pondering this issue of holding old beliefs as if I were still in grade school quite a bit over the past 6 months due to my weekly trips to Al-Anon and my course on Transformational Evolution. I am not going to regurgitate all that I see right here but I can assure you, it’s in there. I am getting more adept at noticing the reaction in my body, the flushes of anger or fear that arise. I take a step back and take stock of what’s been triggered, although I don’t always know in the moment. Giving myself space to be curious about my reaction allows me the potential to adjust course and instead of pushing someone off the swings, writing mean things about them on the bike sheds or gossiping about them with my best friend, Tracy King, I can decide that yes, maybe, just maybe, I can act like the mature adult I aspire to be.
And of course, Sarah came home today and said that although Sxxxxx (name hidden to protect the innocent!) says she hates her, her once best friend at school, Exx wasn’t really talking about her behind her back on Friday and they’re best friends again now. As I said, oy vey!
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