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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, my grandma makes a fantastic dessert called lemon delight, and I believe if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share a story about communicating with my grandma.
Today’s Fun Fact of the Day is: If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.
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What I Learned Yesterday:
I love my grandma. Some of my favorite memories include the time I spent with her and my grandpa growing up. I spent entire summers at their house, and they have had a tremendous influence on who I am today. Even though my grandma can be one of the most frustrating people in the world to me, I wouldn’t trade her for anything.
Today I’m not going to tell you about her fantastic cooking, the time she had to rush me to the emergency room, or even tell you about I saw her and my grandpa french kissing. Today I’m going to tell you about trying to communicate with her.
You see, my grandma is probably the most stubborn person I know. For example, one day several years ago we had our extended family over to our house for one of our kid’s birthdays. I was sitting on our couch next to my brother. On the other side of him was our grandma, and on the other side of her was our grandpa. My brother noticed that grandma was wearing brown pants and black shoes, something that she’s not really known for doing.
My grandma looked down at her pants and corrected my brother. She told him that her pants weren’t brown, they were black. He insisted that she was mistaken and asked me my opinion. I looked at her pants and it was clear that they were brown. Unmoved by my opinion, she declared that both my brother and I were wrong. We then enlisted the help of our grandpa who then looked at her pants and declared that they were brown.
Finally, with the opinion of a third person that her pants were brown, she decided that there must be something wrong with all three of us. Her pants were clearly black. You might think that it was her eyesight that caused the confusion. I don’t know, perhaps it was. However, what it undoubtedly evident is that she stubbornly refused to admit she could be wrong. Everyone else was wrong, and her opinion was the only one that could possibly be right.
Realizing that there was no way we were going to convince her, we finally just shook our heads at her and gave up.
I’ve had many conversations with my grandma that have gone this way. She will refuse to look at simple facts and allow silly things to turn into major issues. She is the biggest worrier I’ve ever known…by far. She worries about it being too hot, too cold, too wet, or too dry. She’s almost never content, and she seems to always find the faults or bad sides of any situation.
When I was dating, she never liked any girl I dated, until I was no longer dating that girl. Then she would insult the current girl and tell me how much better the previous one was. Fortunately, after 15 years of marriage, I think she actually likes Kari.
Still, I wouldn’t trade my grandma for anyone else. She’s stubborn, negative, argumentative, and a worrier. She’s a glass half empty type of person.
Over the last few years my grandma has been increasingly unhappy. I know it’s been hard on her. I also know that I can’t fully understand exactly how hard it’s been. I try to relate and put myself in her situation, but that’s just not fully possible.
A few years ago we moved her to a retirement community on the southwest part of Oklahoma City. Almost immediately she began complaining. The manager was mean, the maintenance man was a thief, the apartment was dirty, etc. She complained enough that we finally moved her to the place that she’d been begging us to take her to. She moved into that place almost one year ago, and she’s been complaining about it almost just as long.
And her complaints are the same. The manager is mean, the maintenance man is rude (but not a thief), there is too much dust, and she once saw a snake. She started these complaints about 1 month after she moved in. It also took only a month for her to tell us that she wish she’d never left the other place.
It’s frustrating for me, my brother, my dad, and my uncle. We’ve tried to make her happy. We’ve tried to give her what she said she needed. We’ve sacrificed time and money to move her 3 times now, and yet her complaints are always the same. Just like my ex girlfriends, nothing is good enough until it’s gone.
It’s gotten to the point now that I’m really impatient about it. When she brings it up, I lose my cool. I’ve raised my voice numerous times while talking with her about it. It does no good. She’s stubborn and impossible to reason with. Even when I don’t raise my voice, I will usually try to shut down the conversation. It’s a conversation we’ve had dozens of times. It goes no where. She’s not going to be happy, and I’m not going to be able to convince her that the place she’s living is actually very nice. Why bother having the conversation. It’s pointless.
Last week I shared another story about my grandma and her desire to move into an assisted living community. Let me tell you how that conversation happened.
One day she called me and she started the conversation off in an entirely new way. She told me that she had something important to talk to me about. She wanted to talk to me privately and in person. A few days later I stopped by her apartment to see what she had on her mind.
She started the conversation by telling me that she wanted to have an open and calm conversation. She asked me not to get upset, and told me that she would not get upset. She then shared her perspective on why her current apartment is working. Like I mentioned last week, she told me about some of the things in her life that had changed, and how those changes had affected her opinion of living there. She also mentioned that the manager is mean, the maintenance man is rude, and there’s too much dust.
However, this time those statements didn’t cause me to raise my voice.
Here’s what I learned.
Sometimes it’s not the words we say that matter as much as how we say them. Much of the message she shared with me that day is the same stuff she’d been saying for months. The biggest difference was the approach she took to communicating her message.
By sitting down face to face, it made it easier to read body language and have fuller communication. By stating that she wanted to have a non-confrontational dialogue, she prevented any preconceived walls that might have been put up. By acknowledging that there had been life changes and assumptions made on misinformation, she helped me understand that it was just her lack of discontentment that had brought her to this decision.
She had carefully thought through her situation, and even had somewhat of a plan on how to move forward. She had already spoken with my uncle about the situation, and had managed to get a positive reaction out of him as well.
For me, this changed everything.
I don’t cooperate with whiners or complainers. I don’t put up with that behavior with my kids, I didn’t put up with it when I oversaw dozens of employees, and I won’t put up with it from my grandma. If there’s something you think you need, you are welcome to talk to me in a respectful and appropriate manner. Whining and complaining do not meet the criteria of respectful or appropriate.
In addition to that, I enjoy dialogue and problem solving where there’s true back and forth dialogue, a desire to find a solution to a problem, and a cooperative attitude. When she came at me from that approach, I was all ears.
Communication is the source of so much misunderstanding and conflict in our lives. We all have different communication styles and methods. It’s important to realize that if we’re not having any success with our communication, the problem could be in the way we’re trying to express it. We could be communicating in a way that is causing the other party to completely shut us off.
Equally important here is the fact that my grandma’s message didn’t really change much. This tells me that her message was falling on deaf ears for several months. While I was upset that she almost instantly started complaining, that really shouldn’t have made me shut off what she was saying. So while someone may be communicating to us in a way that we don’t like, we really should take the time to hear what they’re saying, evaluate its merit, and give it the consideration that it deserves.
I’m Darrell Darnell and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.
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