Adults Have to Take the Lead

This is a rant, but one that needs to be expressed.

I cannot understand adults who are mean to children because of social difficulties their child is having with another.  Seriously!  My child is not perfect, far from it.  She also has extreme difficulty with social interactions and does not understand how other's perceive her and often has difficulty perceiving social cues from others.  She does have feelings and she does want to have friends even though she has struggles in social settings.  If any parent would talk with me I would happily explain and help them understand.

Two recent experiences have me bewildered at the fact that adults are acting in this way toward children.  Shouldn't we be mentoring our children and helping them navigate their social world?  Shouldn't we be coming along side them and helping them sit down and productively problem solve with their peers so they learn to be positive social citizens of the world?

When my child invited a neighborhood friend to come and play the mother stood there calling my child names and telling her daughter she can't even be friends with mine.  These girls are not even 10 yet!  Another walked through a public setting obviously glaring at my child and then at me, like we were the scourge of the earth, only to find out later that her child has been picking on mine.

It breaks my heart to sit with my child as she cries her eyes out at night wishing she had friends and not being able to understand what is going on.  You know when she tells me she has a note on her desk from a classmate saying she hopes she dies, I am irate inside!  But, I don't go tell the other child she is worthless and no one should ever be her friend.  I tell my child that anyone who would say that must really be hurting inside.

How does this get better when the adults refuse to act like adults and build up the human race rather than tear down innocent children before they reach double digits in age?

Enough Said

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Truth

I don't know much about the Russians or their Proverbs.  However, I do know a great deal about what is represented here and the cost of believing this and living such a standard.  It all comes down to whether or not a person wants to live in some false sense of comfort (kissed with a lie) or have a real life experience.

My fear is that way too many people are satisfied with a lie and paralyzed by fear of truth.  No one is everything to everyone and even the most enlightened person will have legitimate criticisms from time to time.  I am guessing that virtually all humans find criticism, even constructive criticism, unpleasant.  The questions then is why can some accept the inevitable unpleasant feedback and take it in stride, taking what is useful for personal improvement.  And why are there others who would rather cut off every limb than hear that someone didn't care for a choice that they made or the way that they behaved.

The answer to that is likely way more in depth than the lay person can go.  However, I believe that a few key components are self-esteem, parental leadership, stability of relationships and personal beliefs.  If someone has low self-esteem they will not have the ability to withstand criticism in any form and will fight against hearing feedback.  Perhaps a person would fight this as if it were a battle for life and in some ways it may be just that important.  I believe that parents play a key role in teaching children to take feedback and make something useful out of it, but it must also be accompanied by assurance that love is not founded in perfection.  This leads into stability of relationships.  If a person has stable relationships and can be assured that it is possible to have areas of growth and still be perfectly loved then criticism is simply feedback for growth.  Many of the questions to be asked center around whether or not a person wants to grow and finds value in feedback.

Certainly without these elements strongly in place a person would much rather be kissed with a lie, because the illusion is that it is more comfortable.  Is it though?  Isn't it uncomfortable to know you are living in a hallow lie that is dependent on perfection, because we all know that eventually the gig will be up and someone will find out we are not perfect.