So when she comes home and says that she doesn’t want to be friends with someone anymore, and she’s stressed about going to school, we have conversations like this:
- There is a difference between being “nice” and being “kind.”
- Think these two words mean the same thing? Check out Marcia Sirota’s explanation on Huffington Post:
“Kind people can be assertive and set good limits. Nice people, on the other hand, bend over backward to be obliging. They deal with potential conflicts by placating the other person because they can’t bear to have anyone upset with them.”
- Think these two words mean the same thing? Check out Marcia Sirota’s explanation on Huffington Post:
- Sometimes the person who needs your kindness is yourself.
- My daughter doesn’t want to upset her friend by going against that friend’s wishes. And yet, when I ask my daughter how this makes her feel, she says it feels “horrible” in her body. It’s a great opportunity for me to point out that my daughter needs kindness too. And in this situation – one in which her friend isn’t being so kind – it’s my daughter’s responsibility to be kind to herself. This is an opportunity to practice setting boundaries and being more assertive. Again, this doesn’t have to be done in a mean way. Being assertive doesn’t necessitate being aggressive.
- You can’t make everyone happy, and it’s not your job in the first place.
- We all know this, and yet, it’s hard to know that someone isn’t happy with us. But the truth is, we can NEVER control someone’s reaction. We can try our hardest to make someone happy, or make someone like us, and there is no guarantee that it will work. The best we can do is to try and reduce the amount of intentional harm we cause, while also being true to ourselves.
- You don’t have to be friends with everyone.
- We’ve been talking about what “not being friends” really means. Does it mean never speaking her again? Never playing with her again? Is that even realistic? Instead of telling my daughter that she can’t/shouldn’t/should be friends with this girl, I start teaching her how to set boundaries. She still laughs with this girl, and likes to say hi to her on the playground. And that’s fine! When we talk about “not being friends” anymore, it means that she doesn’t have to spend all her time with that one girl, and she doesn’t have to do whatever that girl says. “Not being friends” means not being the type of friend that girl is telling her to be. It doesn’t mean ceasing to be kind, ceasing to enjoy her presence, or excluding her at recess.
I was a “nice girl,” and I stopped listening to my own voice years ago. I still hate conflict, and worrying too much about someone being upset with me. It’s taken me 30 years to figure out that this is even a problem for me, and I’m doing my best to take my own advice. So, I hope that with these conversations, my children learn that they don’t always have to be nice, and they certainly don’t have to be friends with everyone.
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This post originally appeared at Chattanooga Moms Blog.
