When you correct others, what are you learning?

I am a father, married with four kids. The kids would shoot me if they find this story. But I am making it about me, not them.

You see, one just refuses to clean her room. I have tried anything short of nagging. Then I’d take her phone. She is so defiant like me, she is like, whatever. This last time though, she responded in a very good way. ‘You should see my room now.’ She was proud of her work.

Did I gloat, nope. Make a negative comment, no. I was very intent on not destroying the moment, making it worse. Just handed her the phone and said ‘Good job’. So I was learning as well in this process.

A son games too much. He has health issues that I believe are from doing this. I found several books and articles that support this belief. So I learned things about myself as well, changes to make to help me work and take care of myself better.

I limited the amount of time per day on his computer. I knew he’d figure out a way around that pretty quickly. Oldest trick in the book, I think it is called proxy. Now I knew which was ‘his’ computer but who wants to spend time chasing that?

I know a dad that creates a password every day. Too much effort there.

I would announce that at such and such time the computer goes off. Argument ensues. Soon, I’d just wait until it was obvious it was time and cut the computer off. I’d recognize what I think is a foot stomp. Oops, daughter was doing school work. So I decided to study the app more, understand how to determine which computer is whose. (Is that a valid sentence?) Figured out you can pause the router rather than unplug or turn off or rebooting the router. Oh look, you can pause devices. And you can pause them for a certain time. Let me guess, you knew already.

More learning. More adjusting.

What is my point? Quite simple, I think. Stick to your principles. But adjust as you learn more. Rigidly sticking to principles leads to the old dogmatic accusation. So while you are teaching others, make sure you are learning as well!

My job has a very steep learning curve. The desire to resist is definitely there, causing stress. So all of the above applies to me as well.

Later!