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An example in
real life about Our ‘Input Style’
Let us see how
our development or happiness could
be limited by our habits of
deleting, distorting and
generalising – even as we put in
information into our brains.
A child returns
home with its heavy load of books
and writing materials. The parent
starts scanning the bag for what the
child has missed in the school! And
the fight begins: “You are always
careless! You have lost the eraser
today also…How many times to tell
you to be careful. You never learn…”
After rushing
home after a boring day in school
with a lot of excitement to be with
the mother or father, the child is
confronted by an angry parent, and
is bewildered.
This unhappy
situation involves this process of
taking in information in this
style:
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You delete
the information about all
the books and note-books and
other items that the child
brought back from school – and
forget to congratulate it for
that! You forget to tell the
child that you never had such
trouble in your childhood, and
probably, you would not have
managed so many books and note
books: You carefully delete such
information from the child.
(Grandparents tend to defend
their grandchildren by
‘revealing’ such information
about you.)
-
You
Distort the fact that the
eraser or any article that is
missing, as the ‘fault’ of the
child. For instance, if the
child reported the whole bag
went missing in class, you would
suspect theft, and complain to
the school authorities… But, if
only a little piece of rubber or
a single book is missing, you
behave as if no one can steel
small things… It must be your
child’s fault.
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Generalising
events: The
child lost something earlier by
negligence. Hence, every lose
must be due to its own
negligence!
This process
happens naturally to humans
because we need to constantly
delete, distort and generalize
information for the sake of our
survival, as we saw in the article
last week.
Hence, take care
to constantly build your capability
to question your knowledge of
what you think you know –
particularly in difficult or painful
situations.
Am I correct in
blaming the child? Or others?
Am I deleting
information and making myself blind?
Is the child old
enough to handle so big a burden?
Does the
education system make the otherwise
very active child dull?
Does the
excitement of getting back home
overwhelm the child, so that, it is
in a great hurry to pack up, and not
able to check its desk and
surroundings for anything left out?
What are the ways
I distort facts?
I forget the
child is mine; I am the father or
mother; And the child is coming home
all excited to be with me whom it
missed the whole day long…
I play a
distorted role of a fact-finding
investigator than a parent, and
spoil the relationship.
The child
returning home with something less
than what it took only means just
that. Nothing more. It does not
reveal that it lost it. May be
someone stole it. Or there is a hole
in the bag. Or the item lost is too
small for it to take care of. Or
everyone is having uniform kind of
an item, and it is not able to
identify its own…and mistakes its
own for someone else’s, and leaves
it.
Do I generalise?
Your words reveal
any generalising you do: You are
always like this… You never
pay attention etc…
The child is not
always like this. Observe how
carefully it watches cartoon
channels always. How often it
has found articles that dad or mom
‘lost’ in the house?
Yes, you could
have dozens of parents of children
in a particular class losing their
peace, and joy of bonding with their
kids, just because there is one
child in that class that has taken a
fancy for collecting some item like
an eraser from others!
Obviously, we
need to become conscious of many
things we do unconsciously.
Turn around the
triple limitations to your
advantage:
See how we do
turn around the limitations in our
dealings with babies:
Parent encourages
their children when they are babes.
They don’t find fault with their
mistakes. But children learn to
correct themselves: be it in the use
of language, or their ability to
walk etc… It is as if they delete
all the faults of children from
their attention, and put in to their
heads only the good things about
their babies!
You help a
toddler to delete its
failures from its mind, and focus on
its ability to take the next
successful step. When it falls and
cries, you distract the child;
distraction is an attempt not to get
focused on failure; not to see
failure particularly when it
happened!
You help the
child to generalize one
success to many: the moment it can
pronounce your name, however
clumsily, you show so much
excitement, the child tries again
and again, till it gets it correct!
When it wants
encouragement and comes to you with
a cup full of sand and says it has
cooked soup, you distort the
fact that it is sand and pretend to
drink it and act out your great
satisfaction! And the child learns
you love it by your distortions! Not
if you honestly reprimanded the
child for its delusion that sand is
soup, and for trying to cheat you to
eat it!
Try to help the
child imagine and act out how it
will arrange everything into the
bag; help the child play with the
missing eraser… let it wonder how it
escapes nicely from the bag every
day! That way the child may find its
answers.
Anyway, it is the
child that needs to find its
answers. All you need is to play a
supportive, playful role-playing
atmosphere: and stop teaching how
not to lose things!
So, there you
are. In the area of your
relationship with your babies, there
are a lot you could learn. But, your
relationship with the same babies
when they grow into children seem to
take a U turn. Take care!
NLP can help you
improve your loving relationships.
There is more help coming in the
next week(s).
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