I learned many things when I studied law, but I want to
talk about two things today, because I think they might help parents reach
some insight about problems in the parent-child relationship and how to create positive, effective solutions. One item is the directed verdict. The other is the
golden zig zag.
When one side in a trial finishes presenting its case, the other side
may ask for a directed verdict. This is a request that the judge take the case
away from the jury, basically saying that the first party did not prove one or
more crucial elements of its case. When we learned about this concept in school,
we likened it to looking at one side of your hand. When you look at one side of
your hand, you are unable to see the other side, and vice versa when you turn
your hand over to see the other side. Asking for a directed verdict means that
you think you can tell everything there is to know about how to decide a case
just by looking at one side of the hand.
Our perspective is like a directed verdict sometimes. We
only see one side and do not have the richness of considering the other side to
fill out the complete picture. Intelligent folk strive to be open-minded,
considerate, and aware of many perspectives, but let us face the fact that we
are not that successful at it when our emotions are at stake. When a parent and
child are at odds with each other, it is so easy for the parent to reach
conclusions as to the reasons why a child is behaving a particular way. The
danger is that the parent is not giving enough reflection to the situation to
consider what other perspective might explain what is happening.
Those of us who studied Aristotle and his philosophy in school
may recall his golden mean, that
moral behavior is the desirable middle or mean between two extreme points: one
of excess and one of deficiency. I studied under a wonderful professor, Dean J.
Spader, and he wrote an article entitled “Individual rights vs. social utility:
The search for the golden zigzag between conflicting fundamental values.” You
can find this article in the Journal of Criminal Justice, 1987, vol. 15,
issue 2, pages 121-136, if you would like to read the entire article. I am only
going to reference one tiny part of the article that caught my interest many
years ago and which has stuck with me as a decision-making tool for many years.
If you are a fan of Stephen Covey’s 7
Habits of Highly Effective People, then you will be familiar with the four quadrants that Covey uses to determine what is
important and urgent. Other authors have suggested a similar quadrant box for
decision-making. Here is an example of the quadrant box:
 |
| Quadrant Box |
The quadrant box basically sets out two positives in box one
(upper left) and two negatives in box 4 opposite it (bottom right). There are
two other combinations of boxes one and four that appear in boxes two and
three. Covey used the box to make lists of things along with their importance
and urgency factors. Box one was “important and urgent,” box four was “not
important and not urgent,” and you can figure out how boxes two and three were
completed.
In Spader’s article, he wrote about the struggle to balance social versus individual
rights. While it was clear to Spock in Star Trek parlance — “the needs of the
many outweigh the needs of the few” — in reality our social and governmental
structures struggle daily with this issue. In essence, rather than search for
the mean point between two extremes, Spader showed how we made “zigzags” among
the boxes as different needs and rights came to the forefront related to
different situations.
OK, you are
thinking, this is interesting, but where
are you going with this? Where is the usual Monday Morning Check In discussion
about life and improving our habits and character? I am getting to that. I
just wanted to be sure you had the same tools at your disposal that I want to
use: the directed verdict hand and the golden zigzag.
Last week was an interesting week for me as a teacher
observer. Some of my best studio moms were struggling mightily with child behavior issues. Now there are many possible reasons for the behaviors we saw: school is
out, vacation bible school or summer day camps have started, routines are
altered, etc. Kids and their parents are just starting to figure out what the
schedule is going to be for the summer. As I watched though, I saw how easy it
was for my best studio parents to fall into the trap of the directed verdict –
seeing just one side of the hand. I understand the reason for this, because a
lot of emotion is attached to any part of the parent-child relationship.
I call these my best studio parents because they are open to
discussing the problems with me and reflecting on possible solutions. They are
also open to hearing any possible observations I have about what might be going
on. And I admit, I can be pretty frank about what I see. I am in a unique
position as a teacher observer who sees the parent and child maybe once or
twice a week. I am not easily inured by the day to day grind, so I can
sometimes see quite easily what might be going on. I also have the advantage of
watching a pattern unfold from week to week.
I will not relate the personal stories of my studio families
from last week. Suffice it to say that we had lovely conversations about what
could be going on. I offered up the observation that things were not quite so
one-sided if we were to take a step back from the directed verdict and look for
the golden zigzag. There are many perspectives and each has its own possibility
for directing us to a particular verdict. The truly reflective teacher and
parent will instead search to follow the golden zigzag, which will consider and
balance all the possibilities.
I will leave you with one personal story that a parent
volunteered to share. In this case the parent and child had struggled last week
because the parent’s work routine had changed once school let out. That meant
that the child’s practice routine changed, and the parent had not been able to
work out a great solution yet. This week the parent still had not worked out a
good solution, but she had found a way to resolve most of the practicing drama
issues.
Mom said she spent time reflecting on what she wanted rather than what
she did not want. In this case, she wanted to get back into a practice routine that centered on practice rather than drama issues, despite her summer work schedule changes. This week she resolved her previous week's problems by doing these things:
- Mom worked to change her attitude and make practicing more fun again, instead of a chore.
- Mom still had not figured out a great schedule, but she did put practice sessions before something else that the child would want to do, such as playtime.
- Mom kept it simple and fun.
- Mom used grandma and the child’s younger cousin to re-inspire the child to play by having grandma and cousin serve as an audience.
- Mom worked to see more good things in the child’s playing rather than things that needed to be corrected.
Bravo, mom! Rather than facing the situation as “this is the
way things are, and you just have to get over it,” mom looked for the golden
zigzag. Judging by the success mom reported to me at the end of the week, I
would say that mom had found it.
Happy zigzagging!
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