Avoiding the polite path

My 4 year old just told me about a problem she is having at nursery. As with all small people problems, they are remarkably similar to grown up issues at their core.

The boy who sits behind her on the listening mat sings too loudly, in fact he sings so loudly it hurts her ears. That isn’t the actual problem though, the prob

lem is something we have all faced. She is uncomfortable but feels that she cant do anything about it. She can’t approach the teacher because the boy isn’t doing anything wrong, she cant tell the boy because he is her friend and she doesn’t want to hurt his feelings, she can’t just move because its rude. So instead she does what we have all done many, many times – she puts up with it. She just sits in pain dreading song time because of her over-zealous friend.

When she told me about her problem I could instantly see a lifetime of not complaining about being interrupted, spoken over, incorrectly corrected, mansplained. Dozens of bad first dates, not asking for a pay rise and not eating the last biscuit. Being overly polite and protecting other peoples emotions over your own is a road I have walked for many years. I spotted an opportunity to change her path.

We started to chat about her problem; how often is he loud, has she spoken to him about it, how close does he sit to her etc. We then talked about what she could do, could she move to another spot? Should she speak to the teacher alone? We only spoke for a few minutes but keeping it to herself and being overly polite was never mentioned. She came to a solution to simply tell her teacher that he hurt her ears and move to another spot. A simple problem with a simple solution.

This might not feel relatable to you, but I assure you it is. Keeping the peace, putting yourself last and allowing politeness ruin experiences happens to us all and we can all learn the lesson I tried to teach my daughter that evening. Staying silent and putting up with it is not a solution and there are dozens more to explore.

Hopefully I have managed to slightly nudge her away from the polite path and give her some tools to avoid the mansplainers and idea stealers. I also hope that you can relate to this and the next time a boy in your class (or man in your meeting) is hurting your ears, you can see other paths ahead of you.