From Calamity to Sanity: The first step on the road to sanity
A while back I raised the idea of family life being like a roller coaster.
When times are good, we are reluctant to raise the spectre of past problems. So we quietly pack the problems away and get on with enjoying the calm, be it ceasefire, detente or truce. Sooner or later, previous hotspots are triggered, and before you can draw breath, you are on the downhill run of the rollercoaster, back into old conflicts with everyone repeating the same patterns of behaviour. This may be further amplified by actually bringing up old wounds with our global statements characterised by the demon words ‘‘never and always’.
There is a way to get off the wild ride.
Like most things, it takes effort, a little skill, some learning and some risk. The first step is between you and your spouse or partner - a decision and commitment to try something new. Enter conversations that matter.
As you consider crafting new ways of working and behaving as a family, you will need to decide, as a couple, how you work together, how you navigate conflict and how you manage mistakes and ‘failure’ (actually, the best way to fail is to do nothing).
Helpful things for this ‘ground-zero’ conversation:
Acknowledge that this might be a new thing for both of you
Give yourselves, both of you, the permission to have the wheels fall off as you learn
Decide on your reset strategy when the learning stretch becomes too much
Decide on the framing issue - what do we want to focus on to learn and improve?
For me, during the pressures of navigating home schooling and working, the reset strategy was to signal that I have, right now, had enough, and that I’m (temporarily) walking away for a breather. Singapore has famously called its shutdown as a circuit-breaker, and you, too, need something to break the cycle of, again, tipping over the edge of the roller coaster. Be sure to give everyone certainty of why you are doing this and how, before the time comes to break the circuit.
When you both have commitment to designing a new ‘ride’, the next step is to talk it out as a family. How you do this depends on the ages and stages of your kids. Toddlers through to middle elementary-aged kids will gain more from giving your plan to them. Children older than middle elementary will benefit more in developing the plan with you. So what plan then?
In the book, I suggest two methods to shape the conversation about what new or different behaviours or actions should ensue. Both start with framing the issue:
How should we better deal with conflict?
How can we better manage working and schooling from home?
How can we reduce the shouting that goes on when we are mad?
The second step is to explore using a process to do the work for you. Unstructured explorations have the risk of devolving into accusations and arguments. A simple process that explores behaviours, attitudes and values starts with three questions.
What should we stop doing or saying?
What should we keep doing, or saying?
What should we start doing or saying?
This gives you a set of actions and behaviours that form the basis of a plan, but probably too many. You might then use Dai Clegg’s MoSCoW tool to prioritise:
What Must we do?
What Should we do?
What Could we do?
What Won’t we do?
Or maybe you can see already what it is that you need to work on - what you will actually do.In coaching/mentoring others on this, I’ve seen the emergence of setting up home timetables, learning more about behaviour management, better sharing of technology resources (especially bandwidth) and finding ways of navigating conflict.
The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single conversation.
