Wednesday; May 22

When I was a young parent, people would warn me about children. Now, while some of the things they said made a lot of sense, there were other things that I just wasn’t sure about. One of the things people would talk about was children who acted up just so they would get attention – even negative attention. This didn’t make sense to me because when I was a child I did everything I could to avoid negative attention. I was such a people pleaser that I would choose to be invisible before I would chose to illicit the wrath of an adult, especially my parents. Now, while I still wonder about this childlike reasoning, I have no doubt that it exists in adults. I believe there are some people who do things for shock value. In fact, they will do things that are so inappropriate that people can’t help but react to them. They value attention over acceptance, so their goal is to be noticed.

The reason I bring this up is to ask about the best way to deal with this shocking behavior. If we engage in publicly calling them out, they get what they want – notoriety. Would it be better to just shake a disapproving head and walk on by? I doubt that they are interested in logical debate on what they are doing, so maybe the somber silent treatment is the best approach. Sure, we can express our opposition to their behavior, but let’s avoid calling attention to them and giving them what they want.

I don’t know the best way to handle this because that rationale is still foreign to me – I still want people to approve of me. I recall an old adage that cautions against wresting with a pig because both of you will get muddy and the pig will like it. If we take the high road, we may not change the behavior, but we’ll be able to stay clean.

Think About It!

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