Monster & Teeny

I was talking to a friend the other day about how some of the people who know me through various connections only know certain aspects of me and actually if they were all sitting round describing me to each other they may not even recognise they were talking about the same person. Once you get past initial first impressions and physical attributes you realise that actually the real essence of a person, and how much of it they show to you, or how much of it you have the vision to see is based on all sorts of things.

Clearly there are some people we are predisposed to see the best in, or able to ignore the less desireable traits in them because we love them, or have a long history with them - people we are related to fall into this category, but also that sort of familiarity can show us all of someone’s worst faults too. The digger you deep in getting to know someone the more likely you are to turn up the unpleasant things that they hide to the world at large. The danger with long relationships with people is you are unlikely to recognise when they have changed, when the box you put them into no longer actually fits and it is only your view of them that makes people look that way rather than something they are actually demonstrating - parents often have clouded views of their children, based on them as very young children, which they cling to as defining them, long after they have grown up and are not like that at all any more. Couples who have been together for years still look at each other and see all the traits of the young person they once knew, even if they have long since grown old and all of those attributes of youth have long gone to the rest of the world.

The shorter the amount of time we spend with people the more we are at the mercy of what they want us to see about them rather than who they really are. Workmates are people we see in a very specific environment, behaving in a certain way and conforming to a set of behaviours, a code of conduct that forms their work persona. There are the stereotypes that we all have in our minds about people too, if the person in the newsagents is always ready with a smile and a joke every morning when we collect our paper we assume they are a cheery, fun sort of person on the basis of that brief encounter. There are traits which have to be demonstrated in certain situations which can form our view of people - people in caring professions appear to be compassionate, selfless, nurturing; people in positions of authority or have had great levels of education or training tick some boxes just from that and we can end up surprised by the personality that sits alongside those things.

Also though, we respond to other people, we often feel that some company brings out the best or the worst in us. I have friends with whom I am very silly, friends with whom I am sensible, friends with whom I will have intelligent and informed conversations, friends with whom I just sit and talk rubbish. There are people who know my insecurities and I would share a confidence, others whom only ever see the confident, assured side. We bounce off other people, showing different sides of ourselves depending on the situation we are in and how they react to us. If you are clearly shocking someone with your ideas or behaviour you may go all out to shock them even more or you may modify yourself accordingly - they will be left with very different ideas of who you are depending on that although on a different day you may well act totally differently anyway.

Finally there is the self fulfilling prophesy. There is the phenomena where if you label someone as something, consider them a certain way, treat them accordingly for long enough then they will become that, or at the very least that is all you will see in them and all they will offer in return. I’m sure we’ve all felt wrongly appraised before and ended up questionning our own self view - am I really like that? I must be if that’s what they see in me. We are all a walking bundle of anomolies too, none of us fit a mold completely, we are all able to take an action that can surprise everyone, sometimes even ourself.

So where am I going with this? In small children self image is a fragile thing - heck, in plenty of adults it is too, they use people they spend time with as mirrors, gauging themselves on the feedback they get. A child who is told they possess negative traits will simply display more and more of them and become that thing overall. A child who has his positive traits reflected back and talked about will do the same. I’m not saying that by telling a child they are a maths genius you will create one - the trait has to be there already, not just a figment of your imagination or hope. A child who spends their time on pursuits they enjoy with people who bring out the best in them and is encouraged to celebrate themselves and what they are great at will have that as their self image. If that is their self image then it will be what they show to others. All very simplistic I know and of course not as straightforward as that necessarily but the idea is nothing groundbreaking - the carrying it out might be though.

The best environment for me is one in which I am with people I know love me, people I know think well of me and people who are easy company, allowing me to show aspects of myself without worrying what they might think of me or whether the odd bad moment will change their good opinion of me. I need time alone too, to not feel constantly ‘on show’, to be left to my own devices without my time and energy constantly directed in a certain way. I need to not be labelled, to not be considered ‘the X one’ to not be cluttered up with negative views about me or squashed into a box. I dislike spending time with people who only know one facet of my personality - who would describe me in just a couple of words and think they’d captured who I am with that. I don’t want to spend time with people who judge me, who see the surly, or the silly, or the bossy or the prone to mistakes when I’m carried away with something side of me only. This is the environment my children spend most of their time in, with me, or other people who love them, see the best in them and celebrate them as individuals, allow them to follow their interests and passions, don’t compare them to others, fret about where they rank alongside others, allow them to demonstrate their less desireable traits without judging or blaming them or considering that those are the traits which define them. But of course constant behaviour modification is also dangerous, so allowing them time to experiment with different ways of acting is equally important - I’m sure at the various unsupervised by me times that the children have each week (at activities like Badgers or Beavers, or while I am at work and they are with family and friends) they show different sides to themselves, act in different ways and quite possibly are people I wouldn’t always recognise from someone else’s description - such company can bring out the best or the worst in them and them working that out and dealing with in for a small amount of time each week is ideal. But the idea that who they sat next to and bounced off would play a bigger role in who they were percieved to be - and eventually who they became, that keeping up with their mates or bowing to peer pressure about what to watch on TV, play in the playground, be interested in or what was cool or popular would be far more dictated by others than found within themselves, that opinions would be formed on them which would lead to a tag or a label which would follow them through their school career is shocking. I understand how parents get a school report or attend a parents evening and don’t recognise the child being described, are shocked at how different the personality described at school is to the child they know at home. I know that the ‘true me’, the one I know best is the one I am at home, with my family or close friends, in my own environment. I imagine that the ‘true Monster’ and the ‘true Teeny’ are also the children they are day to day, with me, at home, playing with their own toys or with each other, watching what they choose on TV, deciding what to play with next, what theme to have for their birthday party. I may have a bearing on these choices but not much of one, whereas I see them change even as I close the door behind me or drop them off at Badgers or bring them into a room filled with other people. Providing home is where they are happiest and best I can’t see any reason to prevent that from being where they are most - yet another of the many reasons why we HE.