Babe Lesson

Children have this uncensored honesty about them. It’s no wonder that we are fascinated by the “crazy” things children say. As we get older we learn that we need to filter, but oh how it would be nice to be unrestricted without consequences again.

 Obviously as an adult there are certain situations in which the censor is crucial. Could you imagine getting mad at your boss and calling them a “stinky poop face”? Probably wouldn’t work out in your favor.

One area that I think we could adapt to their brutal honesty is expressing how we feel. When a child is hungry, tired, angry, and mad or no longer your friend, they tell you point blank. There is no second guessing or trying to interpret someone’s actions. Now I think that we would definitely need to add some finesse. I don’t know that going up to your friend and telling them their stupid because they hurt your feelings would be effective. Maybe try instead explaining how you feel and go from there.

 As adults we start to worry about what everyone else will think, feel or react and instead of dealing with an issue, we can bottle it up. Then we end up internalizing it and the person never knows why we were mad, they just think that we are being standoffish for no reason. At what age do we go from verbal explosions of feelings to internalizing everything at the supposed benefit of someone else?

 When you really think about it you are hurting both yourself and the person your upset with by withholding your feelings. If that person doesn’t know, the behaviour or action can continue and draw a rift in your relationship.  In one of my healthiest relationships we tell each other how we feel, we’ve gotten to a place where we can say “You’re being cranky…why?” and its accepted because we know it’s not coming from a bad place.

 So try it out sometime (in appropriate situations), if your feelings get hurt tell the person how you feel, try to come from a place where you are expressing your feelings instead blaming the person. Remember as children we could say anything to our friends, get mad, tell them there mean or whatever, have an epic (at the time) falling out and then next day be back to being best friends.

 Let go of the resentment, express your feelings, and take what people are saying at face value instead of reading into everything. Learn this valuable lesson from the little you who wasn’t afraid of saying that their feelings are hurt. Let’s learn this lesson from the babes.