How'd That Work for You?

    This is an age and time of supreme confidence. Do you know it at your house, or maybe you remember it?  

    "How'd that work for you?"

    As the mom of a 10 and 12 year old, I don't say those words very often, if ever. But if the moment is right, and if hearts and minds are receptive, and there's a blue moon in the sky, I can say, "How'd that work for you?" 

    The prefrontal cortex necessary for critical thinking and impulse control in young developing minds is one of the last myelinated or connected areas of the brain. Right now, they need a little help connecting the dots or neurons to the right pathways. Critical thinking and impulse control is developed somewhere around 18-20. Parents hope sooner, rather than later.

   Many times their decisions make no sense to me, and their thinking is like a foreign language, but I can't run around saying, "How'd that work for you?" What I can and do say is, "How do you feel about that?" Then, I try to listen.


    Unfortunately, a lot of the time, I'm not really interested in hearing about how they feel, particularly if it involves complaining about the other sibling, and if they are not willing to consider what part they played in the current situation. In the heat of it, I rarely remember to look for the horizon in the unhappy. Yet my long term goal is to steer them towards a larger picture of life, towards a larger Love, and towards a larger world, but sometimes you just want to throw your hands up and say, "Enough already."

    But there's you. You can say, "How'd that work for you?" Aunts, uncles, friends, grandparents, coaches, teachers, and fellow moms can and should say, "How did that work for you? How did your actions work out for others?"

   I'd love for you to ask them how they feel, but first and foremost, I'd like you to be a prompt in their lives to deeper thinking about deeper issues. Ask those deep questions that on some days I cannot.

    Surely, if they have a sense of who they are by the time they get to college, it will be because they have a sense of who others are before they get to college. We are all connected, but I can only do so much connecting.

    As a mother, my voice will be heard and validated about the time they have their own babies.  I need them to think about how their actions impact themselves and others sooner than college. You are pivotal to my children in that process.

    "How'd that work for you?" opens up a wide range of conversation. Please open that door and go through. Help them think about what it is they think about. Help them think about what it is they do not think about.

    We live in a world of instant gratification. Very little thought goes into snap decisions. Whether it's hitting send or texting something not well thought out, words make their way into the world, and words precede our actions. Our actions create our character, which in turn, creates our lives.

    School clothes shopping, the t-shirt hung in the young men's section of the store confronting all those who passed by. On the front of the t-shirt was the picture of a girl in a bikini bottom, long hair flowing down. She was facing the ocean. You couldn't tell if she had a bikini top on, as the words on the t-shirt and her hair blocked her upper body. Never mind that the whole shirt demeans women and girls, let's just talk about the words. What were the words on the t-shirt? Bad decisions make for great stories. I pointed the shirt out to my daughter, and we discussed it for a few minutes.

    "Bad decisions do not make good stories," I said. "They make consequences, they hurt people and they harm, but you live in a culture that celebrates doing what works for you, the impulse buy, and the impulse decision - all at the expense of others." She heard me, and I think she got it. One of those rare mom/kid moments.

    In the car that morning, we'd actually discussed the violence in Virginia. Isn't it all related? The t-shirt and Old Dominion, and wrong thoughts about people we don't know. Which lead to actions against people we don't know? This people, is who we are becoming because we don't want to think to deeply about who we are becoming, or what guns are doing to us. But our first weapon was a word and a blaming, but healing too, begins with words.

    As the school year starts, and their world becomes a bit larger with the opening of school doors, could you ask my student, "How'd that work for you?" Help me not just show them a larger world, but show them what a larger more open mindset looks like. When they do something that lacks thoughtfulness or impulse control call them on it. It's natural at this age, but it doesn't have to be natural for them at 18.

    If my children think deeply about what they think about, and deeply about what they do, it will be because caring relatives, teachers, friends, coaches, and mentors stepped into their lives and simply said, when the stakes were lower and before they got much higher, "How'd that work for you, and how do you feel about that?" 

~ Kim