Tag: teenagers

Don’t feed on the redhearts only

One of the great benefits of having teenagers in the house (WE HAVE FOUR TEENAGERS IN THE HOUSE) is that you get constant updates on the things you do strangely, or poorly, or stupidly, or wrong. It’s pretty great. 

Today, on the way to school, I was waiting for Eight O’Clock Bach to come on the radio, and they were playing some silly little French pieces with a flute, and a lot of airy runs and pointless meandering, and I said, “Ugh, could this sound more French?” 

One of the kids asked in an exasperated voice, “Well, why do you listen to music you don’t like?” It seemed like the height of stupidity to them, and I can see why.
 
But as so often happens when I am challenged, I discover I’m not actually a complete moron, and I really do have a guiding principle for my behavior. So I said, “Because I believe in exposing myself to things that are not my favorite!” 
 
This is absolutely true, and I think my parents deliberately raised me to think this way, especially my father. I remember going to art museums and never skipping the modern art galleries, even though they were, to put it mildly, not my father‘s favorite. We tramped through and probably obnoxiously proclaimed our opinions about the piles of lightbulbs and penis couches and whatnot; but we didn’t skip them. I also remember going to concerts of John Cage and Philip Glass, and also of less-talented composers who were heavily influenced by Cage and Glass, if you can imagine. And we would always debrief afterwards. 
 
And sometimes we just complained, but usually we talked about why we didn’t like what we didn’t like. We talked about what people might find compelling about it, and why it wasn’t enough to make it worth it in the end, for us. And sometimes we did like it, and we talked about that, too. The key was, we didn’t encounter art that wasn’t our style just for the sake of enduring it. We really looked and really listened, and we really thought about it, and hashed it out. At least that’s how I remember it.
 
My kids have grown up in an era where everything is tailored to follow their tastes, and where everyone is expected to curate their own list of favorites This is considered the sensible and normal and sane thing to do. Why would you not? Why not make a playlist solely of things you enjoy, and stock your shelves with your favorite foods, and subscribe to only your most well-tested channels? 
 
Let me be clear, this is not a moral question. There’s nothing wrong with making playlists of music you like! But it is a question of what you are doing to yourself, and what richness you may be missing, if you live your whole life this way.
 
And also what will happen when you come up to some unpleasant thing that you really can’t avoid, but you haven’t built up a habit of enduring. 
 
Part of the answer is something I remember reading in C.S. Lewis’ Perelandra. Ransom, who has found himself sent as an emissary of some kind to an alien, untouched planet, is wandering around figuring out how to survive on a literally unstable landscape, and discovering which growing things are good to eat. Some of them are more to his liking than others!
 
He made his way gingerly towards the coast, but before he reached it he passed some bushes which carried a rich crop of oval green berries, about three times the size of almonds. He picked one and broke it in two. The flesh was dryish and bread-like, something of the same kind as a banana. It turned out to be good to eat. It did not give the orgiastic and almost alarming pleasure of the gourds, but rather the specific pleasure of plain food–the delight of munching and being nourished, a “Sober certainty of waking bliss.” A man, or at least a man like Ransom, felt he ought to say grace over it; and so he presently did. The gourds would have required rather an oratorio or a mystical meditation. But the meal had its unexpected high lights. Every now and then one struck a berry which had a bright red centre: and these were so savoury, so memorable among a thousand tastes, that he would have begun to look for them and to feed on them only, but that he was once more forbidden by that same inner adviser which had already spoken to him twice since he came to Perelandra. “Now on earth,” thought Ransom, “they’d soon discover how to breed these redhearts, and they’d cost a great deal more than the others.” Money, in fact, would provide the means of saying encore in a voice that could not be disobeyed. (Perelandra, chapter 4) 
 
This is a slightly different phenomenon than what I was talking about. The plain berries aren’t bad; they’re just plain. Still, he has to compel himself to keep on accepting them, rather than skipping past them to get to the redhearts. He is not on earth; he’s in a different kind of place, where some things are better than others, but at least so far, everything is good.
 
I thought, too, of the little story of “The Magic Thread,” where a young boy is given a magic ball that is his own life, spun out in thread. When he comes upon something in his life he’d rather skip, all he has to do is tug on the thread, and he’ll instantly find himself past it. 
 

The following day at school, Peter sat daydreaming about what he would do with his magic thread. The teacher scolded him for not concentrating on his work. If only, he thought, it was time to go home. Then he felt the silver ball in his pocket. If he pulled out a tiny bit of thread, the day would be over. Very carefully he took hold of it and tugged. Suddenly the teacher was telling everyone to pack up their books and to leave the classroom in an orderly fashion. Peter was overjoyed. He ran all the way home. How easy life would be now! All his troubles were over. From that day forth he began to pull the thread, just a little, every day.

You can imagine how this goes. He finds himself pulling on the thread of his life more and more, skipping over difficult and boring and laborious times more and more often. And it’s not only because he’s selfish or lazy: Sometimes, as he grows, he pulls on the thread to skip over the painful spells for the people he loves: The teething and trials of his babies, and the sickness of his beloved wife. 
 
But of course as he skips and skips, he finds himself older, sicker, and more feeble, and “as soon as one trouble was solved, another seemed to grow in its place.” The more he skips, the less he finds there is to enjoy, until he finds himself at the end of his life, everyone moved away or dying or dead, the thread all pulled out. Oops. 
 
There’s less here to consider than in the Lewis book. The “magic thread” is more of a simple “stop and smell the roses” idea, because if you don’t stop because you think there might be a thorn, you’ll miss the roses; that’s all. In Perelandra, though, there are no thorns. It’s an unfallen world, untouched as yet by death or sin. And yet Ransom still feels impelled to stop and make his way through everything that is given to him. What’s that about? 
 
I haven’t read the book in a long time, but I believe it has to do with accepting our relationship with God: Who we are is receivers, and it is our place to accept what we are given. Either with intentional thanksgiving, or with radical acceptance of his will. The fallenness in that scene was not the existence of the plain berries; it was Ransom’s initial idea to reject them because they weren’t good enough.
 
One happy secret is, making your way thoughtfully and attentively through the parts you never would have chosen give so much more savor to the redhearts. It happens in little ways, like with music. Bach is always Bach and always something I want to listen to, but man, a Brandenburg Concerto is a thousand times more satisfying if you’ve just sweated your way through Trois Petites Pièces du Augusta Holmès.
 
And it happens in bigger ways. If I weren’t in the habit of leaving the radio on through my less-favorite parts, I think I would find it a lot harder to have teenagers in the house, with their winsome habit of telling me how weird and dumb I am all the time. The truth is that all of my kids are my favorite, and they all have dear and wonderful and compelling virtues and attributes, and I really do want to be with them. But their virtues are much easier to note and appreciate when you are in the habit of patiently enduring and accepting . . . you know, the other bits. This habit of acceptance is one of those muscles you can use to lift all kinds of loads.  
 
So that’s why I listen to music I don’t like. As I said, it’s not a moral issue, except in that it’s the kind of thing that trains you for the times when it is a moral issue: When it’s not plain berries or subpar flute music, but it’s the suffering and sorrow and struggle that comes into every life, especially the life of someone who’s chosen to seek God. By the end of Perelandra, as I recall, Ransom is put in a place of accepting far more painful realities than eating a berry that doesn’t taste exquisite. And he does it. 

 
The “inner adviser” that spoke to Ransom is the same one who speaks to us in our world. I hear the message, “Don’t feed on the redhearts only.” So, I try. 
 
Image: Edited version, original via Wikimedia (Creative Commons)

What are your kids really learning at school? How will you find out?

When my family used to homeschool, I used to interrogate myself about which was be worse: The horrible knowledge that I was in charge of everything they would learn that day? Or (if we switched to someone else teaching) the horrible knowledge I wasn’t in charge of anything they would learn that day?

It was very hard to get used to sending my kids off for six or seven hours a day, and not really know what they were learning. Now that I’m used to it, I can see that some of it is great, some of it is fine, some of it is terrible, and some of it is just baffling. The thing is, I never really know how much I know. All I know is what the kids choose to tell me, or what I can figure out.

This is true for every parent who is not physically sitting on top of their child twenty-four hours a day. All you know about what your kids are learning is what you are allowed to know, by the people your kids come into contact with, and by your kids. That is the nature of kids growing up.

Right now, there is a case working its way through the courts about whether or not parents should be able to get their kids to opt out of learning with books with LGBTQ+ themes. The problem with stories like this is that, reading it, I don’t really know what these books are. The article says the parents who are suing object to “LGBTQ+ inclusive books.”

It mentions, “Some of the books at the center of the clash include Pride Puppy, geared toward preschoolers and Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, geared toward students in kindergarten through 5th grade.”

You get the general impression from reporting on such stories that the parents are opposed to these books solely because they include LGBT people. This may be the case, but I have read numerous stories phrased identically to this one that, when you drill down into the facts, are revealed to deliberately mention one title but not another, or excerpt one page but not another. It’s hard not to conclude that the goal is to make the parents appear foolish and bigoted. It’s hard not to conclude that the article is complicit in hiding something from the general public.

Slate magazine—hardly a mouthpiece for conservative, reactionary parents—recently published a story about this very phenomenon, in which the author admitted that he thought it was overblown hysteria when people objected to the popular sex ed book It’s Perfectly Normal. But when he saw the actual copious and explicit drawings of intercourse, masturbation, and genitalia designed for ten-year-olds to pore over, he was taken aback.

Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly. 

Image by USAG-Humphreys via Flickr (Creative Commons)

At a certain point, all you can do is provide a space

When my kids were little and we were house hunting, the one thing I promised them was that we would find a house where we could hook up a hose. The place we’d been renting before had no hose spigot, and even though we went to the pool and the beach, I always felt like an important part of their childhood was missing.

So we found a house, and we did hook up a hose and filled up a little wading pool. The kids loved it, and they loved the sprinkler I set up and the little water slide we had on the grassy slope. They spent a lot of time out there every summer, gleefully playing as all kids play in a small amount of water.

One month we found ourselves with all our bills paid and a little leftover money, so we splurged on something else I’d always wanted for my kids: A wooden play structure. It had swings and a slide and a climbing net and a little tower with a wheel, and they had endless active time and pretend games, swarming up and down and on and over it; and as they grew, they nailed things to it and painted it and switched out swings and made it more and more their own.

Kids growing up

Several years passed, the kids were getting older, and I again found myself looking for something to make our yard richer for them, more exciting and entertaining, and something to draw them outside and keep them active. We got a trampoline, the biggest one we could find, and it was wonderful. Kids of all ages could use it, from the toddler who got bopped up and down like a piece of popcorn when the other kids jumped, to the teenagers who needed to work off some angst and frustration with a furious solo jumping session in the evening.

The other day, I looked in the shed, hunting for some pruning shears, and I saw so many toys that no one has played with in years. Bikes with silly little miniature wheels. A beloved backyard ride-on roller coaster that we took apart and brought with us in move after move but that hasn’t been assembled for a while. There’s a red and blue playhouse, once in constant, hot demand, and now it’s faded with the sun and occupied only by blackberry brambles and a few spiders.

It’s the same on the porch, and in the attic. So many roller skates and stilts and baseball gloves and bow and arrow sets, games and activities that I gathered and brought home for my kids to try to make them happy, to make them healthy, to make them into well-rounded people who could do a lot of things and knew how to enjoy themselves, and were strong and determined and capable. I wanted our home to be the place they would want to be, and the place they’d want to bring their friends to, so I constantly worked hard to fill their life with everything rich I could manage, and I constantly encouraged them to use them. Sometimes I even insisted they use them.

Have I mentioned that my children are growing up? 

Read the rest of my latest for Our Sunday Visitor.

Some thoughts on the dreams of children

One day, a child came snuffling and sobbing down the stairs in the morning, and when I asked what was the matter, she said, “Mama, I dreamed that you were dead.”

Oh, poor thing. I tried to wrap my arms around her and give her comfort, but she wasn’t done.

“And . . .and I had a REALLY HARD TIME GETTING MY BREAKFAST,” she wept.

Ah. My first impulse was to be offended. Is that all I am to you? A pourer of juice? The one who knows how to work a toaster? My death makes you weep because the most important meal of the day is now compromised?

But then I considered. This is a very young child. She has barely emerged from the age when food and mother are all one thing, not to mention the age when mother and she are one thing. To such a little one, a cold, empty breakfast table really is a terrible thing, a dreadful loss.

It’s very much like the song “ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone.” You wouldn’t scoff at that man and say, “Oh, I guess you don’t really love that woman; you just care about getting your vitamin D!” To him, she is the very sunshine. To my daughter, I was breakfast. That’s how much I meant to her, in her dreams. When I thought it over, I was very moved (and I made her a nice breakfast right away).

I do love hearing about my kids’ dreams. They’re sometimes fascinating, and often very funny. And some of my kids are usually fairly tight-lipped, especially when they hit the teen years, and I am openly hungry to know what is going on in their heads, and dreams are where it’s at.

But I do have to brace myself when I turn up in their dreams.

Dream parents, when they’re not dead, behave abominably, at least at our house. We are just the worst. We are constantly missing their birthdays, telling our bewildered children they get no Christmas this year, driving them off cliffs, refusing to look out the window when they’re trying to warn us there’s a tornado made of tigers outside, and so on. Sometimes we spread a giant feast on a table and then tell them they can’t have any; sometimes we just throw away their favorite shoes.

I don’t think I’ve ever behaved decently in their dreams. I don’t take it personally anymore. I know I’m a pretty okay mother in real life, and I know the kids more or less know I love them. I also know that dreams are where people work out our feelings about things, and the emotional content of a dream is much more significant than the actual plot and characters.

Just as the very young child was unable to tell the difference between the death of her mother and the loss of breakfast, and older child may not be able to discern (in their dreams, at least) the difference between “something bad is happening to me” and “my parents are monsters.” At different stages of development, the lines between me and thee, inside and outside, are blurry and shifting, and that’s doubly true when we’re dreaming.

So when a kid dreams about parents doing unfair, outrageous things to the kid, it may very well not be a dream about the parent at all. It’s pretty likely actually a dream about the kid and how he is feeling about his life. The parent gets to be the aggressor in the dream because parents are the main doer-of-things-to-kids, so parents are the most obvious choice to act the part as the one who does something unpleasant to the kid.

Parents loom large in real life, so when kids need a way to express to themselves that they feel impinged upon in some way, it’s probably going to be the parent acting that part. But what the dream is really about is how that kid feels and responds to the unpleasant thing.

Do they feel powerless? Do they feel angry? Do they feel afraid? Do they feel energized and motivated to save the day? This is the important part. That’s what the dream is about. Kids, especially, are very self-centered (in a healthy, developmentally appropriate way, I mean), so when they dream, they dream about themselves.

It’s very common, especially as they hit pre-teen and teen years, for kids to feel that life is unfair, or that they’re the only one who understands something and no one will listen to them, or that things have gone out of control –maybe someone who is supposed to be in charge has disappeared — and they have to struggle desperately to get back in control.

And so these overwhelming feelings turn up in dreams, and the larger machinery that produces those feelings is likely to be parents. If a child is having a lot of dreams of being hunted and persecuted and tormented, and if they are disrupting sleep regularly, then it might be time to take a closer look and see if something bad is going on with the kid; but some dreams like this seem to be a normal part of growing up. Unless there is some very obvious catastrophe or betrayal or injustice in the child’s life, these are probably not actually dreams about the adult doing anything wrong. They are probably typical dreams that signify a child slowly coming into his own identity as separate from his parents and from his family, and facing very normal mixed emotions as they come of age.

Sometimes a kid will even dream that there are zombies or some other scary monster pretending to be their parents. I used to think this signified that my kids thought I was a hypocrite, and that they could tell that my patience and dedication were just a mask that could slip at any time.

But this was me massively projecting my own fears about my adequacy as a parent onto them. Dreams about something scary pretending to be your parent are most likely about things in general not being what they seem — about a child not being as secure or in control as he once thought he was when he was younger, for instance.

Anyway, that’s what I think. Probably the significance of dreams varies as much as individual psyches themselves vary, which is quite a bit. But I do think that parents shouldn’t put too much stock in the dreams of their children, or at least remember that dream rules are different from waking rules.

What do you think? As usual, my training and expertise in this matter are absolutely zero; it’s just something I’m interested in! 

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Image: Wallpaperflare.com

The thing about having kids

If you are wondering what things are like at our house, here is what you need to know: We have FOUR teenagers. Wasn’t that good planning? Aren’t we smart? It also smells wonderful here, believe me. And whatever the levels of snark and sarcasm you’re imagining, multiply it by 10. The four of them tend to gang up on us and act together like some kind of unholy army of scoffing and scorn.

Sometimes my husband will fuss at them, because they need to be fussed at. I recently learned that, after he leaves the room, one of my daughters will turn to the others and say, with a look of mild astonishment on her face, “I never did catch that man’s name.”

Pandemonium. She has very good comedic timing, just like her father, and she gets away with way too much just because she’s so funny. Just exactly like her father (whatever his name is).

And that’s what it’s like at our house.

I set this essay up like I was complaining, but this is actually one of the greatest parts of having children — or two of the greatest parts, I should say.

One is that they are so entertaining. They start out that way when they are first born (all babies are beautiful, and all babies are incredibly ugly, which is hilarious), and they keep it up as they trundle through one developmental stage after another, gracefully or clumsily blossoming into life as if they’re the first ones that ever thought of trying it. These comic firsts — first goofy laugh, first words, first joke, first completely insane knock-knock joke, first pun — they don’t get old when you have a lot of kids. If anything, they get better and better, because you’re relaxed enough to enjoy it.

It’s possible that I’m predisposed to enjoy my kids’ humor because I love them, but I have also heard so many people say that they had kids for various reasons — for duty, or because their wives wanted it, or by accident — and were amazed to discover how entertaining the little buggers turned out to be. I remember seeing a post on Facebook where some hapless young man loaded down with a stroller and diaper bags smiled goofily and told the cameraman, “I never thought I’d be so proud of someone for rolling over.” He knew the kid wasn’t some kind of genius for hitting a basic milestone, and yet that’s what milestones are like: They feel huge. They feel historic, even though trillions of people have done them before.

I suspect this is a large part of why people answered as they did in a recent Pew study…  Read the rest of my latest for Our Sunday Visitor. 

Photo by Naassom Azevedo on Unsplash

How to actually raise teenagers

A lot of digital ink gets spilled over what it’s really like to raise older kids. I mean really, truly, no jokes, just the unvarnished truth.

We currently have four teenagers, and I’ve tried, myself, to put down some useful words on the topic, but the truth is, nothing scrambles your brain or flattens your ability to function like raising kids this age, these days. And yet it must be done. So here’s my contribution:

Writing about teenagers tends to fall into two categories.

The first comes across like a final report discovered decades later from deep inside a sealed bunker. You know the kind : “They have taken the bridge and the Second Hall. We have barred the gates but cannot hold them for long. We cannot get out. They are coming” kind of thing.

Poor miserable souls these parents are, for so many years they clung to the illusion that their own children would be different, and that they alone would maintain discipline and order and even an amicable relationship with their offspring.

But they suffer the same fate as everyone else. Their kids are absolute sociopaths, and the parents can’t wait to warn their peers about the fate that awaits them. They hang around at maternity wards just to gloat. They turn up at kindergarten graduations of strangers and throw tomatoes at the stage, because these kids may look adorable now, but they know what’s coming as soon as puberty sets in.

So that’s one kind of advice you’ll get from parents of teens. The other type valiantly pushes back against these tired tropes of the surly, smelly, antisocial adolescent. These parents insist that it’s neither necessary nor normal for teenagers to behave so poorly. Give them some higher expectations and a little guidance, and they’ll grow and bear fruit like the most elegant of topiaries.

They themselves have an entire phalanx of teenagers in their house right now, they will tell you, and the only way you’d guess it is because of the sounds of the viola wafting up through the floorboards as they willingly practice their arpeggios. One teen is tutoring his younger brother, two are about to come home from work at the Fine Young Man Store, and one is sitting at the desk he built himself, writing a letter to apologise to his elderly neighbour for how unevenly he chopped the shallots in last Sunday’s boeuf en croûte.

It is simply a matter of having the right expectations, and you must simply expect your children to be as inexhaustibly fabulous as you are yourself, and the job’s halfway done.

(The other half happens at boarding school, it turns out, which the grandparents pay for. Also the kids spend their weekends at the grandparents’ house. The grandparents themselves live in a metal trailer in the desert, desperately petitioning the courts to terminate their visitation rights.)

I joke, I joke. The truth, as usual, lies somewhere in between these two extremes. Teenagers are by no means natural sociopaths, but neither are they [excuse me while I get up and make sure my door is locked] especially willing and eager to be formed into useful members of society. Not. Especially. Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly. 

Image source PXhere (public domain)

10 gifts you ought to give your teenagers

As our kids get older, we find it harder and harder to choose gifts for them, now that we can no longer just scan the toy aisle and pick out something neat and colorful. We ask for wish lists, and on them are items that, not only do I not understand why someone would want them, I don’t even completely know what they are.

But I do know how to give older kids the intangible things they need on the 363 days of the year, when it’s not their birthday or Christmas (and not a single one of them needs a charging cable). These are things that may or may not delight them when they receive them, but may stay with them and help them for the rest of their lives.

  1. Being needed. Let them feel the feeling of being important to another human being. This can happen automatically in large families, but even there, some kids are good at escaping responsibility. But understanding that we are responsible for other people is a fundamental part of being human, and kids should learn it early. Some families overdo this, and turn kids, especially girls, into mini parents. This is unjust, and will lead to resentment and burnout. But if your child tends to feel that the world is here to serve him, that needs correcting. All kids should be in charge of something important, even if it’s small.2. The gift of being listened to, even if it’s something you don’t personally care about, because you care about your kid. Let them know more than you about something, and be really interested to hear all about it. Teenagers can come across as arrogant know-it-alls, but this, like so many unpleasant teen traits, often stems from insecurity. They desperately want to prove they’re smart and well-informed and interesting and worthy of attention. So sometimes step back and let them show their stuff, and compliment them on how well they know their topic. They may act like they don’t care, but they probably care very much, and will be very pleased to know they’ve impressed you. More importantly, if you are in the habit of listening to them chatter about inconsequential stuff, they are more likely to come to you with stuff that does matter.
  2. The gift of earning stuff they want. It can be tempting to give teenagers everything they think they need to make them happy, because you want them to be happy and you want them to be happy with you. But you’ll be giving them a much more long-lasting gift if you help them figure out how to do some work to earn some money to get the thing. This will also help them become more discerning about just how badly they want or need some item.
  3. The gift of getting away with things. Sometimes, let stuff ride. Just don’t notice it. It will be easier on all of you if you just pretend you don’t hear that tone of voice, didn’t notice that mess, aren’t aware of that screw-up, don’t care about that bad habit. It’s okay to have personal limits about what you’ll put up with, but make sure you’re not constantly correcting every last little thing. Prioritize, and save your correcting energy for things that really need it.

Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly. 

 

Image by Luisella Planeta Leoni from Pixabay

A few things I’ve learned about teens, conflict, and discipline

I like teenagers. Good thing, too, as we currently have five teenaged kids living in our house (as well as two kids who have graduated to full-blown adulthood). They’re so much nicer to be around than when I was that age. They’re fun to talk to (well, sometimes); they’re funny (well, sometimes); they’re creative and interesting and helpful (well, sometimes). I like teenagers.

Well, sometimes. A lot of the time.

But still, there is conflict.  A teenager’s body grows in fits and starts, and not always in graceful proportions; and their psyches are doing the same thing. Even when they’re not suffering from hormonal tumult, they’re trying to make what is truly an excruciating transition from childhood to adulthood. It can get ugly. And no, I’m not always patient and understanding. But I’m also not always the raging volcano of injustice and retribution I was afraid I would be.

Conflict, and the need to impose discipline, are pretty much inevitable when you’re raising a teenager; but unless there are serious mental health problems and/or your teen is doing something massively dangerous or destructive like using hard drugs or running away from home, it should be possible to have a relationship that includes things besides conflict and discipline.

Here are a general principles I’ve learned…

Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.

Image: by daveynin via Flickr –  Creative Commons

Let’s treat retail and service workers like human beings

This year, I have three kids working in retail. One is at a giant arts and crafts store chain, one is at a deli counter in a supermarket, and one is at a popular coffee shop.

One has had potato salad thrown at her. One has had her teeth insulted. And one just started his new job yesterday, so nothing bad happened yet, but his last job was at an old-fashioned candy shop, and you’d be amazed to see how spectacularly nasty people can be when they’re surrounded by jars of brightly colored sugar.

When my kids get home from work, they often dejected and bitter about the interactions they had with customers. These are decent, competent kids who really make an effort to do what is expected of them; but just because they’re behind a cash register or have an apron on, so many customers allow themselves to vent their spleen and call them names, insult their intelligence, blame them for things they can’t possibly control, or just treat them with disgust, rolling their eyes, sighing noisily, flapping their hands with disdain. I know it’s only going to get worse as it gets closer to Christmas. If Christmas shopping is a beast, they all work right in the heart of that beast. 

Customers are stressed out and overwhelmed by all the shopping and planning that needs to get done (or at least, that they’ve convinced themselves needs to get done). I’ve been there! When lots of people are depending on you to fulfill their expectations, it’s hard to keep perspective.

But really. Everyone. When is it ever more important to keep your perspective? If you’re not going to treat strangers well when you’re preparing for the birth of Christ, then when are you going to treat strangers well? The day after Christmas? The day after that? Maybe on your death bed?

Let’s all make a resolve to get this right, this year. Lots of people working retail and service jobs just got hired, and are just learning the ropes right when it’s busiest and everyone is at their most demanding.

Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly. 

 
Image by Pedro Serapio from Pixabay