When your boss pats you on the shoulder with a genuine “Good job!”, it makes all those long and hard hours seem worthwhile. When a husband comes home and the first thing he says to his wife is, “Thank you for taking care of the kids and making dinner!”, the woman feels loved and appreciated. If you make a habit of thanking your child for doing the household chores even if he is supposed to, most likely he’ll continue performing the duties gladly and responsibly. When a daughter expresses her gratitude with such words as “Thank you for working hard and paying for my education!”, it brings tears to a mother’s eyes.
Praise, admiration and thank you to humans are like nutrients, sunshine and water to plants. Without such essential elements, plants wither and die. Dr. Laura Trice is a therapist and coach who has seen people with different forms of life-threatening addiction at the rehab facilities. She discovered that the core wound of an addict sometimes came down to something as simple as his father died without ever saying he was proud his son. And in most cases, the father had told everyone else that he was proud of his boy.
Joe and I have been watching and cheering for Jake’s soccer games for 5 seasons. Like all the other parents, we always tell him he’s done a great job whether his team wins or loses. After all, these are very young boys who can hardly do anything wrong. A couple of months ago, Jake and I went to the group skating lesson and it happened to be cancelled due to hockey games taking up both rinks. So we stayed to watch the game played by teen boys. The atmosphere was very different. A dad standing next to me was yelling constantly. A few times he grunted. “Come on, don’t just stand there. Move your butt!” or shaking his head, “I can’t believe he just did that.” Standing next to him made me feel tense and inadequate.
It’s easy for parents to praise young kids freely and abundantly. For some reason, after a certain age, all that stops as if the bar were raised and we decided to withhold admiration in order to keep our children motivated, or we didn’t think they needed it anymore now that they had grown up. The fact is no matter how old they get, our kids always deeply desire to be praised and admired. So continue to give it specifically and genuinely.
If all the son wanted was to hear his father say “Son, I am proud of you!”, or a husband longs for his wife to thank him for being the breadwinner of the family, why don’t they ask for it? We have no problem asking for other things in life, such as size 6 shoes or even a raise or promotion. But when it comes to asking for specific ways to be appreciated or thanked, we just stop. Dr. Trice believes that when we ask others to meet our emotional needs in such personal ways, we give out critical data about ourselves: our weakness, vulnerability and where we need help. With this information, others can neglect us, abuse us or actually meet our needs. Does the reward outweigh the risk? Definitely. Shame and vulnerability researcher Brene Brown says vulnerability isn’t weakness, but an accurate measure of one’s courage. Vulnerability is the only path for us to find our way back to each other, husband to wife, parents to children, Democratic to Republic, religion to religion and nation to nation.
So at this season of Thanksgiving, ask your inner circle how they want to be thanked and meet their needs specifically and genuinely. I want to thank Joe for being our chauffeur in the past few days so that the women in his life could get some serious shopping done. I want to thank our daughters for coming home and even a day earlier to spend the holiday week with us. I want to thank all our friends who came and visited in the past few days. Out of all the places you could have gone, you chose to share a part of your Thanksgiving with my family. It means a great deal to us!
Together we can change this world by getting out of our comfort zone to thank and appreciate one another. Thank you for reading my post!
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