Sensitivity training

The working day was interrupted by an early morning call from The Eldest’s mum in need of assistance with her.

A busy morning passed in the blink of an eye before The Eldest arrived fresh from having her lower braces fitted and in a low mood from recent experiences at school.

I took a half day off to spend some time with her and to get her to a doctor’s appointment for the afternoon.

We had a long, heated discussion about what had been going on, as being a sensitive soul, she unfortunately keeps falling into the same traps with her “friends” by expecting them to all be as kind and considerate as she is and then being hurt and disappointed when they are not.

There was a lot of talk about expectation levels and the perils of holding people to a standard that they don’t know exists.

Walking the tight rope of compassionate/tough love is a delicate balancing act, and I think I just about got it right. Getting her out on a walk by the river certainly helped. She seemed OK when I dropped her back with her mum anyway and we both acknowledged that we were shattered after the encounter.

Fingers crossed she will have actually taken some of what we talked about on board, but I know that end of the day, she needs to deal with things in her own way. 

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.” – clever guy…