Immediately when the children returned she found herself jealous and resentful of the time they stole from her intimate relationship with Tim. When the children returned home, it was as if Tim suddenly transformed from her lover to an acquaintance. She felt as if she was kept at arm’s length by Tim every time the children were around. She told this to Tim and Tim responded with a marriage proposal.
They married. Things between Annie and Tim began to deteriorate. Annie had little patience for the children. According to Annie, Trip now nine, was an ADHD child who demanded constant attention and enjoyed irritating her. Sarah was a jealous cold fish who was mad at Annie because Tim loved her. According to Annie, Sarah, now eleven, resents every attempt Annie makes to tend to her or even connect with her.
Tim sees Annie’s treatment of his children as abusive and disrespectful. She has come to me because Tim told her that if she does not find a way to be less angry and rejecting toward his children that he would take his children and move out and perhaps file for divorce.
I had taught Annie the HEART ritual. She used it effectively. Things were better between her and the children and between her and Tim. This was about our tenth session.
“Things are better. I don’t react to them with anger like I used to. I don’t raise my voice. I don’t call them names. I haven’t lost my temper with them in a long time. Instead of being at minus ten, I think our relationship is close to zero, maybe a minus one. It is not in the plus range. I’ve changed but they haven’t.
“Trip still taunts me with his constant tapping on the table. It’s not just me that is aggravated by this. It is also his grandparents. I used to scream at him about this. I don’t do that anymore. His grandparents still yell at him when he starts his tapping.
“I watch him tap, tap, tap, on the table and look at me waiting to see if I will explode. Now since seeing you, I imagine that he is giving me a character test by taunting me and I’m careful not to take the bait.
“With Sarah she is so ungrateful. We gave her a new cell phone for her birthday. I gave it to her wrapped as a birthday present. She unwrapped it, pulled it out of its box, ran away with it into her bedroom, and shut the door, leaving us with the mess to clean up. No ‘thank you.’ No questions about how to use a cell phone respectfully. This is typical of her and Tim doesn’t seem to notice. Tim and I were left to clear up the mess.”
“Was Sarah excited about her new phone?” I asked.
“Oh yes she was,” Annie said. “She screamed with excitement when she opened it. Yes she wanted it very badly and she was happy to have it, but she showed no gratitude. Don’t you think she should be taught to say ‘thank you’. I can’t imagine that if her biological mother had observed this that she would not have said something. I feel like something should be said to her about how she takes things from us for granted. Her phone was placed on my cellphone contract. I’m paying for her phone. It’s only fifteen more dollars a month. I’m willing to pay that but I would expect someone to notice and say ‘thank you’. I’m able to avoid making make an issue of this but I’m not able to avoid my resentment.”
“If you try to parent her about this, what will happen?” I asked.
“She will act hurt, complain to her father and Tim will be mad at me.”
“Sounds like a bad idea and a waste of your energy,” I said.
“Yes, totally,” Annie said. “It is hard for me to avoid these challenges that Sarah’s ingratitude presents, but it is getting easier for me to just not care. Sarah thinks I’m on a power trip just trying to control her.”
“How does she do in school?” I asked.
“She and Trip both get good grades and good reports from their teachers. People say they are good kids but I don’t see it.”
“I don’t think that you and this family are stable at zero or minus one,” I said. “I think for you to become part of a stable working family that you need to get well into the plus category.”
“How do I do that?” Annie asked. “I’ve stopped yelling at them. What more can I do?”
“A parent’s primary job is to take delight in their child,” I said. “It appears to me and I think to the children that you don’t enjoy them. At best you appear to tolerate them. They bring a special unique spirit into the world that most adults enjoy. These children see other adults enjoy their interactions that they share, their mother, their father, their teachers, their coaches, their grandparents. They also see that you don’t. Until you work to reorient yourself toward the children, your relationship with these children will remain near the edge of collapse or explosion.”
“So what do I do?” she asked.
“You tend to see things in the negative more often than the positive,” I said. “If things happen that you don’t foresee or expect, you tend to react critically. With the children this needs to change. Because along with children comes the unexpected to which you must adapt. It is part of the package.”
“You’re right, I am too negative. I don’t do well with surprises,” She admitted. “How do I change this?”
“Well, all of us are hard wired to look for what’s wrong first,” I said. “It is part of our natural instincts that help us survive. It is hard-wired in our brains and our biology. If we hit our little finger with a hammer, we are not thinking about other fingers that don’t hurt and are there to serve us. We are not even aware of our good ears, eyes and nose that function well. We take these things for granted and ignore the good in our lives so that we can tend to what is wrong. This tendency helps us clean up spilled milk, fix what needs fixing and tend to our hurts. This tendency taken to its extremes creates a dark world because we can always find something wrong with anything around us.”
“Yes that’s right,” Annie said. “I do that. When there isn’t something to fix, I look for something that needs fixing. I am not conscious of my good fortune.”
“Part of your good fortune may be that you have the opportunity to enjoy watching and participating in the development of Sarah and Trip.”
“That makes some sense to me,” Annie said, “but I still don’t know what to do.”
“When I was in graduate school, I developed this whole way of thinking about this in my head. I called it ‘appreciation skill.’ I planned to measure it by taking a person back through their memory of the setting that they passed through during the previous day. I would ask them about what they noticed about these settings, the details, like the furniture, the windows, the color of the walls, the books on the shelves. I would consider those who remembered a great many details to be good perceivers of their world.
“Then I would ask them to rate each detail as something that they liked or did not like. I would consider a person who was able to notice and like a great many things to be high in appreciation skill and a person who was most likely to appreciate the good in others.
“What I want you to do with Sarah and Trip is exercise your appreciation muscles. First, at the end of each day, I want you to make a list of things you noticed about Sarah and Trip. I want you to rate these things as a ‘like’ or a ‘dislike’. I want you to challenge yourself over time to increase the ratio of ‘likes’ to ‘dislikes’. When your ratio of ‘likes’ consistently becomes higher than your ratio of ‘dislikes’ I want you to begin telling Sarah and Trip the things you notice and like about them. Everybody needs to be noticed and appreciated. If you are able to do this, I am confident that you will begin taking delight in them and they will correspondingly enjoy and appreciate your attention.”
“I will need help with this,” Annie said. “Like you said my mouth finds it easier to say ‘no’ than to say ‘yes’.”
“Your mouth is not the only mouth that finds no easy to say,” I answered. “Children as they develop go through a stage of saying ‘no’ to everything. Saying ‘yes’ takes a great deal of thought. Saying ‘yes’ commits us to move with or toward. Saying ‘no’ means we don’t have to change or accommodate. It is easy for our brains to become frozen in the negative.
“It is harder for us to risk wanting, liking and exploring whatever the thing is to which we say ‘yes’. ‘Yes’ takes confidence, strength and courage. ‘No’ is a closed door we can hide behind.
“Seeing good in Sarah and Trip will be hard. But I’m sure that there is much good to see. I can understand why Tim would be hurt that you cannot see the good in his children as he does.”
“Me too,” Annie said. “So what do I do?”
“Again tonight start making your list of things about Trip and Sarah that you noticed during the day. Challenge yourself to look for things you value, but for right now it is enough to notice and remember things about them and make a list.”
Annie did this and returned the next week.
“I started off with a list of only three things for Sarah and four for Trip. For Trip they were all negative. By the end of the week, I was noticing that Trip’s tapping on the table had a good rhythm. Sometimes the beats that he created were very unique and interesting. I realized that he was absorbed by this drum beat art form and that his tappings on the table were not at all intended to irritate me. It’s funny how, when you really try to pay attention, you see things differently.”
Weeks later she said, “I get a high positive to negative ratio of likes over dislikes now when I consider things I notice about Sarah and Trip. I’m ready to take my appreciation skill on the road and begin to mention the good things I see in Trip and Sarah.”
Whether or not the children come around, if you work to build your appreciation muscles you will like yourself and your life better.
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