Cruel to be kind in the right measure

Sometimes the hardest parts of parenting are the parts of being a human being that are hard for us, ourselves. Personally I have trouble with those moments when kindness and compassion dictate that you honestly tell someone something they do not want to hear. My discomfort with hurting their feelings tends to lead to what I call “the mouth is quicker than the eye disease.” You know, when a scathing retort flies out of your mouth that is true but not in any way helpful. For me, anyway. My oldest and dearest friend and I used to refer to this as “Telling you about yourself.” It’s not a good thing… because it’s a kind of hurtful honesty that seeks to take away the other person’s own way of seeing him or herself. We all have a mental image of ourselves that we treasure, and we almost all understand that gratuitously attacking other people’s mental self image is Fighting Dirty. The problem with Fighting Dirty is that it feels like winning… at the time. Later it feels like cutting into a beautiful pie and realizing you forgot to add the sugar.

We’ve all been admonished to “Be nice!” at least once in our lives. We understand it to mean that we should use manners or behave politely, and there’s a broader meaning of “don’t make others unhappy.” But the word “nice” (as in “too nice”) also has implications of people pleasing for its own sake. And too much of that is not good for us. It leads us to push our own selves down too often in ways that aren’t healthy. It leads us to be doormats and invites people to take advantage of us. So “nice,” as a concept, can be pretty loaded sometimes. Particularly for women. And it goes double DOUBLE for moms. Because we’re supposed to set the example, right? And assertive and “nice” are mutually exclusive by definition. Showing kindness, on the other hand, means to be concerned or compassionate toward others. To have a true regard for their feelings, and not merely a desire to avoid conflict. Sometimes the kind thing to do hurts in the short run, but not as much as a “nice” fib would hurt in the long run.

My personal struggle isn’t with trying to be nice. (I would probably have my “nice” card revoked when they realized how young my children are when they first begin using all of the major swear words in grammatically correct sentences.) It’s trying to figure out how to be kind when what I really want to do is snap back with “at least I look at the back of my pants in the mirror before I buy them. I may still look bad but *I* am not fooling myself.” I understand that niceness is different from true compassion, and I’ve done some hard time on the Road to Understanding which behaviors are “nice” and how not to put myself in a position of doing things I really don’t want to do. All that practice comes in handy once you’re a mom, by the way. My struggle, these days, is to be kind when someone else is pushing my buttons. To find a compassionate way to assert myself. To be honest, even though it will give offense, but without being Mean. Because I can do mean. But it’s not who I want to be, and it’s certainly not the example I want to set my children.

So if this is your struggle too, and you notice me biting my tongue, shoot me a look of solidarity and support. Or shout a random obscenity for no reason- it’ll be our secret handshake. Because it’s not that I can’t think of anything to say… it’s that I can only think of things that I had really, really better not say.