On
Tuesday, we experienced an unprecedented election following a highly charged,
seemingly endless presidential campaign.
The single piece of clarity that I had in the fog on Wednesday morning
was that how we as parents responded to our children about the election results was vitally important . There are many
lessons there for our children and ultimately for us.
Handling Winning and Losing
What
we model for our children when we win and when we lose becomes their
understanding of civility and sportsmanship.
Celebrate victories with integrity, compassion, and kindness. Examine losses with confidence, curiosity,
and caring for yourself and others. This
election does not change who you are. It
does not change your vision for your family, your community, and your country.
Handling Feelings
It
is important to experience your emotions about the outcome of the
election. Feel your feelings. If your candidate did not win, allow yourself
time to grieve the loss. If you feel
sad, cry. Let your children see your
sadness. Assure them you are OK and that
they are safe. Let them know that you
are simply feeling sad right now and it will not last forever.
If you feel angry, feel it deeply. Examine where you feel powerless. Then
remind yourself of what Maria Shriver read from Random Kindness and
Senseless Acts of Beauty in a video that she posted the day after the
election – “Our leaders got confused, so we are all leaders now. They told us there was nothing we could
do. They were wrong. When we tell ourselves there is nothing we
can do, we are wrong.”
Whatever
emotions you are feeling, feel them, and let them go. As Pamela Dunn, author of It’s Time to
Look Inside: To See Yourself and Everyone Through the Lens of Magnificence,
says, “Feelings are meant to be felt, not necessarily expressed.” I invite you
to read Pam’s book and to check out any of the courses from Your Infinite Life Training and
Coaching Company for more about experiencing and expressing your emotions.
Create
a space for your children to experience their emotions. Talk about your feelings and ask them about
theirs. Make this a conversation that
will unfold over days and weeks.
Staying Centered in Your Values
Use
this time to reaffirm and stay centered in your values. Talk with your children about the values that
you share with your candidate. Discuss
your family values. Talk about how to live
from your values in your daily life.
My friend, Catherine, recently created a manifesto. She began with her personal Love Manifesto,
which included revealing that “Sometimes, I am mean, nasty, judgmental, and
treat others poorly.” She went on to
accept and love those parts of herself as well as the parts that are easier to
love. She closed by saying, “It is only through the sum of my parts and the entirety of
my being that I can say…I am a love warrior and I am magnificent.” She
then applied that to our nation by writing the following manifesto for our
country:
“If
we, as a nation, can understand this in the core of our hearts,
If
we, as a nation, can love and accept the parts of ourselves that we don’t like,
and
If
we, as a nation, know that all of our parts have helped us get where we are
today and will help us be a better version of ourselves tomorrow,
Then
we will come together, stronger and more loving than ever before.”
Consider writing your own family’s manifesto or living
by Catherine’s. It will allow you, your
family, and all of us to rise.
Staying Involved
Teach
your children that they can continue to move the world forward through
supporting their friends and community. You
can model that for them by staying involved or by getting involved. Contribute to your community as a family by
volunteering with organizations that share your values.
Read
the book Random Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty with your
children, and practice acts of kindness and beauty. Begin to notice those acts being done by others and point them out to your children. Ask them to begin noticing, too.
Facing the Fear of What We Imagined Would
Happen
We
live surrounded by a media that feeds us sound bites. We do not know the complete, complex human
beings running for office. From the
snippets we see, we label them, judge them, and imagine the worst. We develop a fear of what could happen if
they won. If your candidate did not win,
those fears are coming to fruition. How
do you handle that and teach your children to handle it? Here are a few ways:
- Be willing to be wrong – Open a space, even if
it is initially a tiny space, that you may be wrong about the winner and what
he will do so that you are willing to give him a chance to succeed
- See what is positive in the winner – Practice
seeing one thing, even if it is initially a tiny thing, that is positive about
the winner
- Talk to people who voted for the winning
candidate and seek to understand their reasons and feelings – Make sure that you do this from a place of
curiosity and do not engage in pointing out how they are wrong
- Explain to your children that not every person
who voted for the winner embraces the beliefs he professed and that there was
something else more important to them
- Have a conversation with your children about misinterpreting anger for authenticity or power when it is
actually the opposite – Introduce the concept that kindness is a strength and
that authenticity doesn’t mean being disrespectful or uncivil
- Practice focusing on what you want to occur rather
than focusing on what you do not want – What you focus on expands and focusing
on your desires allows you much more flexibility and creativity
Mike Rowe,
of Dirty Jobs, recently wrote, “I’m
worried because millions of people now seem to believe that [the winner’s]
supporters are racist, xenophobic, and uneducated misogynists. I'm worried
because despising our candidates publicly is very different than despising the
people who vote for them.” Again, talk
to people. Connect on a feeling
level. Seek to understand over seeking
to be right.
Talking about the Bullying Behavior of the
Winner
Of
all of the leaders that children typically look up to, President of the United
States is at the top of the list. In
this election, children have seen disrespectful behavior shown by the winner of
the election toward women, minorities, immigrants, and the disabled throughout
the campaign. How do we teach children
about inclusiveness, compassion, and justice when our President Elect has not
displayed those values? How do we
explain the divide between having seen those behaviors and the fact that he was
elected to the highest office in our country, an office children assume is held by someone who exemplifies our highest principles?
- Without explaining away or dismissing the behaviors
that you do not like, discuss the ways you would have liked him to have behaved
- Explain that all famous people – including politicians, presidents, basketball players, actors, musicians – are not
necessarily our mentors or heroes, and then discuss who their heroes are and
the characteristics that they admire, focusing on how they want to be
- Discuss the concept of accountability – that
people are responsible for their behavior and the consequences of their
behavior – and how that applies to the president elect’s behavior (such as the
loss of respect and lack of trust)
- Discuss how adults can choose bullying behavior
and it doesn’t make it right
- Explain that this election was not typical and
that you feel equally confused, again emphasizing that the majority of people
voted for him in spite of those behaviors not because of them (something was
more important to them)
Dr.
Tim Jordan, author of Sleeping Beauties, Awakened Women, recently wrote,
“Instead
of being left with a sense of disillusionment, encourage kids to become people
of character who do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do,
regardless of what everyone else is saying or doing. Hopefully they will do as
I say and not as the politicians have done.”
Supporting the Leader
In our
parenting courses, we teach the concept of ‘supporting the leader.’ That leader may be you or it may be one of
your children taking charge of the dinner menu.
A part of building team and increasing success is to support the
leader. Our success as a nation depends
upon our leader’s success. Teach your
children that desiring your leader to do well is important. Supporting the leader does not mean that you
agree with everything he proposes or says. It does mean being cooperative – not
compliant – and holding your leader accountable. It means influencing for the greater
good. Although you may disagree with the
leader, it does not mean being an obstructionist.
With your
children, point out how you do that in your family and encourage more of it as
we move forward.
Moving Forward
In a recent
post, Desmond Tutu said, “Each
side now must come together and realize that you share a greater goal than
victory, which is the development of a country that serves all of its people
and that leads the world to a greater destiny. The only way to peace and
healing is to turn to one another and try to understand what motivates such
fear and anger. The anger over inequality and injustice, whether in America or
South Africa, is real and must be addressed, for a country is only as strong as
its weakest and most vulnerable citizens.”
Our most vulnerable citizens are our children. Conversations about the election, including
listening intently to what your children care about and what they feel, can
re-establish balance after this tumultuous campaign season. How you respond sets the stage!
