I was surprised how much I didn't have that reaction to this guy, mostly because I . . .recognized in the wife what certain female members of my own family do?
Which is that it was very clear to me that up until this (and sometimes even through it, in a couple of cases) things needed to be how she intended to the point where she did in fact go into the middle of her kids doing the work and start cleaning up their stuff without them present.
And I know why that is, but the side effect of it is that it's actually very hard and hostile and stressful for the other members of the family to build any of their own habits that way? And it's easier just to . . . not, because "not" means you're not getting constant "no do this instead, no I'm doing X with that you're messing it up, no that needs to go there" - because part of the motivation is the sense that the state of the home/etc is a reflection on her as a person, there's a huge OWNERSHIP that she very clearly does take?
And I was really pleased that she did grasp that she had to let the kids have ownership as much as she needed to get them to do the work, because that was . . . a battle . . . in our house.
And it can be very hard to bring that issue around and address it, because it absolutely does end up with the person who's doing that doing a hugely unfair amount of the work, and it also means that work is benefitting the people who aren't doing it? But if you don't address the ownership and investment and letting go of control you can't actually fix it (at least not without it becoming . . . unfortunate . . . in its dynamics in a whole new way).
no subject
Which is that it was very clear to me that up until this (and sometimes even through it, in a couple of cases) things needed to be how she intended to the point where she did in fact go into the middle of her kids doing the work and start cleaning up their stuff without them present.
And I know why that is, but the side effect of it is that it's actually very hard and hostile and stressful for the other members of the family to build any of their own habits that way? And it's easier just to . . . not, because "not" means you're not getting constant "no do this instead, no I'm doing X with that you're messing it up, no that needs to go there" - because part of the motivation is the sense that the state of the home/etc is a reflection on her as a person, there's a huge OWNERSHIP that she very clearly does take?
And I was really pleased that she did grasp that she had to let the kids have ownership as much as she needed to get them to do the work, because that was . . . a battle . . . in our house.
And it can be very hard to bring that issue around and address it, because it absolutely does end up with the person who's doing that doing a hugely unfair amount of the work, and it also means that work is benefitting the people who aren't doing it? But if you don't address the ownership and investment and letting go of control you can't actually fix it (at least not without it becoming . . . unfortunate . . . in its dynamics in a whole new way).