Once of the central thoughts in Stoicism is that you can’t control what happens, but you can control how you react. Not just how we physically react, but also how we react mentally and emotionally. As a parent, I know it is hard enough to get your kids to control their bodies. My son went through a biting phase that took a long time for him to come out of, and while part of it was his older sisters baiting him into it, part of it was him just not having the impulse control over his action. Teaching our kids emotional control is a much harder task, especially since it is something most adults struggle with. However, if there is one thing I have been trying to instill in my kids it is to not get upset over something somebody else says or does.
Marcus Aurelius put it this way:
Choose not to be harmed – and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed – and you haven’t been.
I don’t kow how many times I have told my kids that whatever they got upset out isn’t worth getting upset about. It never helps. Partly becuase that is just my perspective of the events. Something happended that I think is inconsequential, so therefore it can’t possibly be worth a child crying over, right? I realize that thinking is flawed. To me, her brother telling her she can’t be a customer at his imaginary restaurant is nothing to get upset over, but to a six year-old girl, it does matter. So my feedback to her shouldn’t be to dismiss her emotions, but to recognize them and respond appropriately.
I get that you can’t choose not to feel someting, but you can choose what to do – or not do – with that feeling. So yes, a kid is going to feel sad when somebody says or does something mean, nothing we can do about that. What we can do is try to encourage our kids not to let that sadness turn to some great insult that then sends them into a spiral. I don’t know about your kids, but most of the biggest meltdowns and arguments start with something incredibly small. Somebody sat in somebody else’s spot on the couch. Somebody used somebody’s hair tie. Somebody said they couldn’t be the queen in their pretend game. This small slight turns to sadness or anger, which then turns to hurt, which then opens the flood gates on all kinds of negative behavior.
How much negativity could be avoided by choosing not to be harmed by these offenses? Whether I see them as a small or my kids see them as large, either way the Stoic mindset would be to not feel harmed by it. Becaue the extension of feeling harmed by it is actually being harmed by it. Our minds can take a preceived offense and make it real. Our minds can take some small incident and blow it up out of proportion. When one of my kids does end out melting down over who used which hair tie, who ends up being the one that gets sent to their room or ends up missing out on something? Not the one who used the hair tie, but the one who felt harmed by it.
And I see the examples with my kids all the time, but as parents we need to recognize it in ourselves. Your kid doesn’t listen the first twelve times you tell them to pick up their socks. Are you harmed by it? Are you letting that influence your attitude and behavior toward the rest of your family? Yes, you worked hard to keep to keep the house clean, but you can choose not to be harmed when you step on a lego. Emotionally I mean, stepping on a lego will always physicall hurt like hell. But even so, will it ruin your mood? Ruin your day? Even worse, are you building up resentment for your child so where the next time they forget to pick something up you’ve got the example of the Lego ready to throw in their face?
This is not to say don’t have feelings. Have them. Feel them. Recognize them, and then act accordingly. Do I get mad, sad, and frustrated when my favorite teams lose? I grew up a Detroit sports fan, of course I do. Do I let it that harm me? Of course not. I am mad for a minute or two, then I understand than it has to real impact on me and no actual harm has been done to me, and I get on with my day. Whether it be your favorite team losing, or your losing your job, it should make no differnce to how your respond. You keep yourself together (despite how you’re feeling, not without feeling) and you control the only thing you can – your behavior.
This takes practice, but if we can start working on this with our kids when they are young they stand a better shot of choosing not to be harmed as they get older. How much better will high school be for a kid who can choose not to be harmed by who said what or who asked who to the dance? How much more would we enjoy life in general if we weren’t weighed down by the negativity, self-pity, and grudges that come when when we feel we’ve been hurt by somebody? Not everything in life with go your way, there is nothing you can do about that. Not everything in life can harm you, and that is completly in your control.
I Think Therefore I Dad 