"The morning is as usual, kids getting ready for school, breakfast is getting started when across the room comes sound of a cereal box pouring over the table and spilling on to the floor. Every fibre of my being wants to ask "Why did you do that?!" "How could this happen?!" "Why.....?!" BUT, my brain stops a second and goes back to our seminar the night before, and I remember that there's another question in my toolbox.... Instead of 'Why', I ask "What happened?" What was about to be a defensive quarrel, possibly littered with yelling and tears, became a moment where I listened. We had a simple conversation about how the bag was ripped, and an accident happened. Our daughter had a chance to explain the facts, and we cleaned up the mess together."
This story was told to me following our WITH... not AGAINST seminar. A very good question from a parent that evening asked 'What's the difference between asking 'Why did you do that?' and 'What happened?' On the surface, they are both addressing an incident. The first question, however assumes guilt and culpability. In essence, by asking 'Why did you do that?' we say 'You did something wrong, now explain yourself...' By asking 'What happened?', the conversation is now open to listening, empathy, perhaps dialogue, and instruction.
It's a amazing how such a simple small change in wording can transform a morning from chaos to calm, from defensive to cooperative.
Will this change everything? Of course not. We will still find ourselves at odds with one another, but beginning from a place where we open ourselves up to relationship rather than jumping to punishment. Our seminar introduced us to working away from punitive/blaming and permissive/excusing to restorative/ cooperating.
Want to know more? The content from both seminars is uploaded to our website at http://covenant.nace.ca/news-and-info.html . These will also help you to understand how we are striving to address relationships here at school as well.
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