Dissonance

One thing I learned during my social work training that really stuck with me was that it is possible, and often inevitable, for two opposing goals/thoughts/feelings to simultaneously be true or desireable. If you want to get really technical, we can label the resulting stress as dissonance (had to prove that I was awake in class).

Here's an example from my day. My three year old has started going to a kid's class two hours, two times a week. She's thrilled to go and is always begging to go play with other kids and do something "interesting". She's able to follow rules very well and does the proper things at the proper time. This allows her and her classmates to get the full benefit of the experience (ie not acting up and causing trouble). Great job, right? ARGHHH. At the tender age of three she has learned to follow the leader and that drives me nuts. I want her to question what she's told to do, but I also want her to fit in socially and enjoy herself. How do we teach both of those? More to the point, when to do which one? And how often am I going to regret teaching her to question MY authority? ha ha.

Although she loves it and is good at following the rules and playing with others, she is utterly exhausted at the end of two hours. It takes a lot out of her to be on her best behaviour for that long and she usually breaks down within minutes of picking her up. That's how I sometimes feel myself after a long social outing. She's already internalized that although some parts of it are hard and tiring it's worth it because of the fun things they do. Interesting.