Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 12:10 — 7.4MB) | Embed
Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell. Today is my son’s birthday! And I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living.
Let’s play a quick game of name that movie. I’ll bet some of you have already figured it out by the episode title, but which movie made this quote popular: “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.” Pat yourself on the back if you said the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke.
George Bernard Shaw said, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” Communication is tricky. On one hand, we are all communicating something, verbal or non-verbal at all times. On the other hand, I think most of us have significant room to grow in this area. Or maybe it’s just me that has significant room to grow. I think most communication issues arise not from things said, but from things unsaid.
After our daughter, Addi, graduated high school she found herself in an odd place. We go to a fairly large church with multiple campuses. Our campus doesn’t have any classes tailored for twenty-somethings and she really didn’t want to join a class with older adults. However, one of our other campuses does have a weekly service for her age, and that location is about 20 minutes away.
We encouraged her to attend the service but she resisted. Addi has social anxiety that deeply affects her in certain situations, and going to a new environment surrounded by total strangers where she feared she would have to talk to people is definitely a situation which would cause her anxiety to be an issue.
We wanted to be sensitive to her situation, but were also confident that once she attended 2 or 3 times, she would make relationships, get acclimated to the environment, and her anxiety would subside. We felt strongly that she would ultimately benefit socially and spiritually if she’d gather the courage to go. We also offered several options where we could go with her to help her feel more comfortable, but she still refused to go. As an adult, the decision was hers to make, so we eventually let it go.
Last summer our son, Colby, came home, so we thought this would be a good time to approach the subject again. I pulled him aside and told him that I thought it would be good if they attended the service and he helped her make friends and get acclimated. Then once the summer was over, she’d feel comfortable continuing to go without him. I let him know that the choice was his to make but I thought that going to the service was the best choice.
They talked about it and decided to go. But when Tuesday rolled around, they stayed home. When we asked why, they told us that they thought it made most sense to wait. Colby was leaving the following week to play trumpet in Greece and Italy for two weeks, so they decided to wait until he got back rather than go one week and then be gone for two weeks. We understood the logic and agreed with their decision.
Once Colby returned, however, they didn’t go. Then the following week they didn’t go either. And the week after that they didn’t go. When we brought it up, we were met with resistance. It was clear she didn’t want to go and he had been unsuccessful in talking her into it. We were frustrated because as I said before, we were certain she would find growth if she’d just gather up the courage to do it. Said differently, we felt she was hurting herself by allowing herself to be controlled by fear.
But they were adults and responsible to make their own choices, so we dropped it. At the end of the summer Colby went back to college and they never once attended a Tuesday night service.
This wasn’t the first time we’d faced challenges with Addi and church. Throughout most of her high school years we’d struggled on quite a few Sunday mornings. Addi’s anxiety caused her to get physically ill quite a bit. It’s an issue that her mom also struggles with, so we tried to give her grace on those mornings, while also trying to help her push through like her mom has learned to do over the years.
But for me the biggest issue was her behavior while at church. Like most churches, ours has times where the congregation stands and times where the congregation sits. Different church denominations and their traditions have different purposes for this and different things that are said and done during those times. For our church we stand during most of the singing portion of the service. We stand for 5-10 minutes, then sit for about 5 minutes, and then we stand for another 5-10 minutes. So this means you’re never really standing longer than 5-10 minutes.
During these moments, Addi would often sit after a few minutes and then refuse to stand once the congregation stood again. When I asked her about it, she said her feet hurt and she was too tired to stand for that long. Addi is a physically healthy person and a teenager at the time. To me, there was no reason any able bodied teenager couldn’t stand for 10 minutes. I’d seen her stand for much longer periods of time at theme parks.
So I really struggled with this and often got very frustrated. I felt like she was being lazy and lacking discipline. Those were issues I saw in other areas of her life, and I saw my job as her parent to help her establish better habits and mindsets that led to better behavior. This became an ongoing struggle for us.
What do you think? Based on what I’ve told you so far, how are our communication skills? There are definitely some issues with all parties here and I’m certainly not looking good. It gets worse.
When Colby was home for winter break last year these two stories came up. I don’t remember exactly what sparked the conversation, but it was eye opening for me.
As it turned out, both of our kids were upset with us about the way we handled the Tuesday night service situation. In fact, they thought we had been very immature. Remember earlier I said that once Colby got back and we talked to them about it again, we let it go. They were adults and it was their decision to make.
Unexpectedly, our kids both saw this differently. To them, they had chosen not to do what we wanted them to do, so in response we gave them the silent treatment. So as it turned out, what we saw as dropping it and letting them make their own decision, they saw as cutting off the conversation and ignoring them.
For six months our kids had been upset with us about this issue and we had no idea. Once the situation got brought to light and we talked it out, we all recognized it was a big misunderstanding. We each understood the other’s point of view and all was good.
As for the other story, it also has a detail that took a while to reveal itself.
Remember that I told you Addi struggled with social anxiety on Sunday mornings. She’s also the type of learner that takes in information better if she’s doodling while she listens. So she would bring a drawing pad and pencils to use during the sermon.
For years she told us that she had anxiety on Sunday morning because she felt like people were looking at her and judging her when she sat or when she doodled. And for years we encouraged her not to worry about what other people thought. We thought that if we could help her not focus on what others might or might not be thinking about her, that it would go a long way in helping her overcome her anxiety.
Last year she revealed that I was the one giving her anxiety. She felt like I was the one judging her for sitting and doodling. It was never about other people around us, it was always my judgement that was keeping her from feeling comfortable on Sunday mornings.
I was shocked and devastated to learn this. All this time I’d been causing more harm than good. My motives were good. I wanted to help my daughter. But she never saw it as help. She only saw it as judgement.
Here’s what I learned.
What we have here is failure to communicate. The Tuesday night situation could have been easily resolved if we’d simply told our kids that we’d decided to let the decision rest with them. I mean, I did tell Colby up front that it was his decision to make. So I thought this was good enough. But once Kari and I had decided that we weren’t going to bring it up again, we never communicated that to them or told them why we’d decided that. If we had, the whole situation with our kids being upset with us for six months thinking we’d given them the silent treatment would have been avoided.
The issue with Addi feeling judged by me is much more complex. On one hand, I did tell her several times that I didn’t like her sitting because I knew the excuse she was giving me was poor. I told her that I’d seen her stand many other times in other situations and she could do it at church too. So I felt like she was simply being lazy. She may not have liked hearing me say that, but I didn’t hide my feelings from her.
Is that judging her? Perhaps. Is it possible that a teenager would see that as judging? Of course. I see that now, but it never occurred to me at the time. She told me several times that she didn’t like going to church because she felt like people were judging her, but she never once told me that she meant me.
She should have told me that. Much conflict could have been avoided if she’d told me directly instead of beating around the bush or being passive about it. Clearly she didn’t feel comfortable telling me even though we’d had lots of great conversations and we’d always told our kids they could talk to us about anything.
The most frustrating thing is I’m not sure what I could or should have done differently. I think part of it is teenage immaturity and part of it is her lack of being clear with her communication. But still, I was the parent, the one in charge, and I failed to create an environment where my daughter felt comfortable telling me the truth.
We should all be on the path of seeking to be better communicators. That means being better at vocalizing our points of view, seeking to better perceive when we should speak up to ensure clarity, speaking up when we feel we are being mistreated, and checking ourselves to make sure we receive communication with an open attitude. None of these are easy but their fruits are better relationships and peace.
Remember the words of Lisa Kleypas who said, “Many times in life I’ve regretted the things I’ve said without thinking. But I’ve never regretted the things I said nearly as much as the words I left unspoken.”
I’m Darrell Darnell, and this has been Stuff I Learned Yesterday.
I want you to be a part of the next Monday Mailbag on December 29th! Monday Mailbag is your opportunity to Share what YOU’VE learned, so that other listeners and I can learn from YOU. It can be a message as short as 30 seconds or several minutes long. It really doesn’t matter just as long as it’s something that will benefit others. You can send in questions or responses to my SILY episodes, and I’ll respond to them via Monday Mailbag episodes. You can participate in Monday Mailbags by visiting the Golden Spiral Media listener feedback page.