I’m back! Our family was in the Lake District of England. I ate sausage rolls at the local sheepdog trials. I ate Jammie Dodgers on top of Catbells. I may have engaged in some light improv at Edinburgh Fringe. It was a delight, but I was ready to be shoved onto a “people mover” back at Dulles. Because nothing is more exciting to me than the start of a new school year. Any transition is an opportunity to get curious about your functioning. Here are three questions that might be useful to you this back-to-school season, regardless of age or stage of life.
Classmates and challenges may change, but we all have our predictable functioning when stressed. What’s yours? (I have a whole chapter on making predictions when you join a new group in Everything Isn’t Terrible.)
A teacher will often ask parents at the beginning of the year, “What do I need to know about your child?” Nothing wrong with that. But maybe that’s also an opportunity to ask a child, What do you want your teacher to know about you? What are you interested in knowing about them? Maybe they can write a letter, or find another opportunity, to define themselves in this new relationship, without your mediation.
Your imagination and anxiety fill in the blanks with when you don’t have person-to-person contact with people in a new system (or old one). Narratives are spun, and assumptions are made, whether you have the facts or not. One weird look in a Teams meeting, and you’ve written a six-novel saga about why Bill from accounting hates your guts. Where could one lunch conversation, one spin around the block with someone, save you hours of rumination, or false guesswork, about how people think? People often make productivity goals, but they seldom set contact goals when they enter a new relationship system. These questions sum up three principles:
What would you add to this list? Similar posts: News from KathleenThe Kindle edition of Everything Isn’t Terrible is $1.99 on Kindle right now if you want to grab a copy! Listening: Honestly, a lot of podcasts about royal family drama. In family systems world we call this research. Reading: Folklore of the Lake District by Stephen Rae. **BONUS JOURNAL for the TRUE TO YOU paperback! I’ve created a digital bonus journal to accompany the paperback launch of True to You. Email me a copy of your receipt and I’ll send it to you. Email me if you want me to teach your organization about systems thinking, or you’re interested in doing family systems consultation/therapy with me. Buy my books True to You and Everything Isn’t Terrible for more in-depth stories of people working on their relationships and themselves. If you love them, consider giving them a review on Amazon so other folks can find them. If you haven’t gotten the free digital workbooks for them, email me.
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