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Thursday, December 16, 2010

I drive my daughter insane

This morning we were talking about how to deal with mental blockage and frustration. When I say "we" I mean that "we" started talking about it together and then she got frustrated and then I lectured.
This is not the best way of dealing with it. But, it does illustrate the problem with our mental personality types in this family.
The daughter has many of my strange quirks. She gets frustrated and "locks up."
I was telling her that first you recognize the problem, then you see if there is a yes or no answer, then you visualize a third way. You can't just say "I have a problem," and freak out. Instead you come up with a plan for dealing with your frustration problem. I suggested, stopping, taking some deep breathes, thinking calm thoughts, and then either doing something else for a while, or looking the problem from a distance or another perspective, or taking one small easy part of the problem and solving that.
She got angry and said "I can't."
I said, "There is always another way, You can fix almost anything."
I told her that if you can see you have a problem you need first say, "ok, something is wrong, where do I go from here," not "something is wrong, I can't deal with this," cause that is a dead end, but the former statement is a starting place.
Then she got mad and told me she didn't want to talk about it anymore. And I said that illustrated my point very well. And then she got more angry and I made her stop what she was doing and listen and I said not to focus on what was wrong, and how angry she was, but to focus on a way out of her frustration or another subject it. There is always another way, another solution, a different way of looking at the problem.
I have no idea what I am saying, but the time to start to deal with anger management and frustration management is probably when you are nine and not when you are standing on the side of the Burnside Bridge.
Then we went and played Monopoly....
She does not hold a grudge but she has told me that she thinks I am weird. Sometimes she tries out my advice and often it doesn't work. But, she says she appreciates my efforts.
I've told her that she doesn't want to end up like her father who once threw his $200 GPS (Windows, I hate Windows, it is a stupid OS, people who rant about how good Windows is and how Bad other systems are-Like the Mac OS or the Commodore 64, are idiots. The Commodore 64 OS worked better Windows 2000) computer out the door of his tractor. I point out that I have to work on my attitude and my frustrations every day and I am only telling her what works for me.
This helps her attitude quite a bit. We pray for each other at our house...

2 comments:

  1. All problems have solutions, and once found the problems disappear. The answer is patience! This allows one to think. Something necessary for arriving at solutions.

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  2. It's okay if she thinks you are weird. It's normal and means you are doing a good job as a parent. I think she's very lucky to have a dad who plays with her so much and wants to spend time with her. It sounds like her mom is pretty level-headed and will probably compensate for any of your perceived inadequacies! Isn't it annoying when our children reflect our worst traits?

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