"Caring Means so Much"
The author wishes to remain anonymous
Edited by Shmuel Greenbaum
Printed with Permission of

There is an old saying, "Don’t use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend’s forehead." In the literal sense this isn’t common. But figuratively many might be guilty of doing what the saying warns not to do.

Removing a fly from someone’s head is an act of kindness. But don’t do anything that will make the situation worse for the person you are trying to help. The first rule in helping people is: Do no harm!

One form of this pattern is when you try to influence someone to improve in some way, but what you say causes discouragement. Telling someone, "You are so lazy you’ll never get anywhere in life," won’t motivate this person to become noted for his alacrity and proactivity.

Telling someone who made a mistake, "Why can’t you learn to do things right?" makes an assumption. It’s giving the person a message that he can never learn to do things right. If he really can’t, there is no benefit in your asking this question. If he really could, then your question is acting as a barrier to prevent him from learning better ways to do things.

A parent or teacher who punishes a child, yells and shouts, and causes pain for a child’s failure to study properly can easily cause a child to form negative associations with studying. The intention might be for the child’s best interests. But the approach will intensify the problem rather than solve it.

We are most likely to be guilty of using counterproductive approaches when we become angry at someone we care about for not doing things that will be helpful to him or for doing things that are harmful. Ironically the more we care, the more likely we are to become angrier. And the angrier we are the less clearly we think. We need to keep our original intention in mind. We care and that is why we react. So let what you say and the way you say it reflect your sincere care. The message you convey should be, "You are important to me and I care about your welfare."

My students related these stories to me:

When I was a young girl, my mother would try to motivate me to eat by saying, "Think of all the starving children in the world who would be happy to eat this food." My feeling sorry for those children took away my appetite.

When I didn’t do my homework, my teacher would embarrass me in front of the entire class. This didn’t make me love to do homework. Instead it made me hate the subject that teacher taught.

I didn’t call home very frequently. Whenever I did call home, the first reaction I heard was always, "How come you didn’t call until now? Why do you make us worry so much about you?" This made me feel guilty. But I so disliked hearing this that I kept pushing off making telephone calls to my parents. I wish they would have said, "We’re so happy to hear from you." This would have made me call more often.

When my friend told me about mistakes he made, I used to react, "How could you have messed up such an easy thing?" He wanted my suggestion about what to do to prevent these mistakes in the future. Only later did I find out that my reactions stopped him from confiding in me.

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