"Mistaken goals: the Swiss-Army knife of parenting" is the title of a delightful post by Kelly Ellmore in Reepicheep's Coracle which generated much lively discussion. To be honest, I completely forgot about the concept of mistaken goals, but I have my own twist on the idea.
Young children don't misbehave - they act in a fashion consistent with their goals, desires and emotions. It is our job to help them a) recognize these goals, desires and emotions explicitly b) cope with difficulties effectively and c) make decisions that will serve the attainment of their values.
To correct a child's behavior (for a wonderful practical example, see Kelly's followup article on applying these concepts in the classroom), the adult needs to figure out the why's: a) mistaken goals b) implicit desires and c) current emotions the child is experiencing. Jane Nelsen does a nice job of breaking down this approach in the Mistaken Goals Chart and I won't try to come up with anything new there.
Instead, I want to focus on how this same concept changed my life when my husband introduced the idea to me to help solve my very grown-up problems. We call it the Thinking Game. Why? Well, Here is how it happened.
We were taking a road trip across the country. Somewhere in the middle of Wyoming I got to thinknig about my job. "I've been frequently told, I am not a good listener," I said, "and I believe, it interferes with my career." Jeff turned to me and said, "Why do you think, it does?" "Well, because every boss I have keeps telling me so! They always package it up with 'Kate, you think so fast, other people don't have a chance to catch up with your processing, and they feel their ideas aren't being heard' or something. But I find it so hard to listen when I already know what they are going to say!" "Well, " he said in a oh-so-frustrating Socratic fashion, " why is it so hard?" "Ahm, because I want to get to the right answer!" I was beginning to sound foolish to myself. His why's kept on coming. Did it matter more that we got the right answer, or that my boss thought, I was a listener? Was it about creating a better product, or getting a promotion?
I felt like I was being undressed, publicly. It was... well, an exhilirating, humiliating, eye-opening self-discovering torture. In the end, I said, "This is so mucb fun! Like a great game!" My dear husband rolled his eyes and said with apparent exasperation, "yeah, the thinking game..." He got his just desserts when this sarcastic statement became a pillar of my self-improvement for years to come.
Children do not have a copyright on mistaken goals. We start with inappropriate unrecognized desire for attention or power or security, and build layers on top of it until, as adults, we construct elaborate strategies to achieve goals we are not fully aware we have. More often than not, making these goals explicit (and learning to recognize them for what they are!) provides easy and effective strategies for achieving them.
How's this one: WHY do you feel bothered by the disrespectful way a stranger treats her children at the playground? When I answered that question, I became better able to make friends with other moms and quit feeling so lonely... But that's a whole another story.
