When you have a problem because my behavior is interfering with your meeting your needs, I encourage you to tell me openly and honestly how you are feeling. … I will listen.
— Thomas Gordon
How long has it been since you were on a seesaw? Remember how you could affect the ride of the person on the other end by shifting your weight forward or back? If you moved forward quickly, your friend would likely drop with a solid bump! By leaning way back, you could keep the other person suspended in midair.
Families and other interpersonal systems have a balance system not unlike that of a seesaw. A change in one member of the family will generally upset the balance of the total system, affecting everyone. Often, families are strong “resistors” of change because of the delicate balance in family relationships, even though the system may be painful — or even destructive.
Becoming more assertive is clearly a change that may upset the family balance.
A passive partner who begins to express a new assertiveness introduces severe strains into the family system. The children, previously able to manipulate at least one parent easily, must find new and more direct avenues to achieve their goals. A reluctantly supportive spouse will soon be actively sharing in household chores, since the formerly nonassertive partner may have gone back to work or school full-time.
Renowned psychologist Raymond Corsini tells a story of just such a client. The woman told Corsini she was “wiped out” each morning by nine o’clock after preparing separate breakfasts and lunches for her husband and each of their three children, cleaning the house, helping with homework, and driving the youngsters to school. “Tell your family,” Corsini prescribed for her, “that your doctor has ordered you not to get out of bed until nine a.m. every weekday.” She followed the “doctor’s orders,” and when she returned for her appointment the following week, “she was a new woman. … The children had fought to get her out of bed, but she refused. In a month the husband and children were doing fine taking care of themselves.”
Such changes present a difficult adjustment for everyone. The prospect of such disruption of the family balance can be a considerable obstacle to the person who wishes to become more assertive. A traditional partner may actively resist changes that demand a greater share of responsibility for the family’s well-being. For the children, a whole new set of challenges is introduced as they learn to deal with the requirements of increased self-reliance.
Assertive children, like assertive adults, are likely to be healthier and happier, more honest, and less manipulative. Feeling better about themselves, these youngsters are headed toward a more self-actualized adulthood.
We favor a conscious effort in families, schools, churches, and public agencies to foster assertiveness in young people. Let’s create conditions that will tolerate — even support — their natural spontaneity, honesty, and openness, rather than sacrificing it to parental anxiety and school authority.
Let us be clear: we do not suggest that parents ignore discipline and adopt totally permissive child-rearing. The real world places limits upon us all, and children need to learn that fact early if they are to develop adequate life-survival skills. However, we consider it vital that families, schools, and other child-rearing social systems view children as human beings worthy of respect, honor their basic human rights, value their honest self-expression, and teach them the skills to act accordingly.
Assertive skills are valuable for children in dealing with their peers, teachers, siblings, and parents, as well as with strangers. When Mike Emmons led assertiveness groups at a local elementary school, the youngsters got enthusiastically involved and volunteered a few situations from their daily experience:
The children easily understood the meaning of assertiveness. They practiced the skills and especially enjoyed being videotaped in the process. Even the children’s feedback to one another was specific and helpful. Children can learn the basics of assertiveness and apply them to situations in their own lives.
Parents often have difficulty discriminating between assertion and aggression when disciplining or dealing firmly with their youngsters. Although each situation is unique, the key to defining assertiveness in family interactions is mutual respect. Children, like adults, are individual human beings. They deserve fair treatment and nonaggressive discipline.
Most of the principles and procedures advised elsewhere in this book apply to the development of assertiveness in children, so we won’t present any specialized material here.
How about your kids? Have you taught them appropriate assertiveness skills? Can they handle themselves with their peers, with neighborhood bullies, with pushy salespeople, with privacy questions online, with adults who might take advantage of them? Can they openly express affection and appreciation to friends and relatives? Let them tell you about the difficult interpersonal situations they face every day. Use those situations to teach and practice assertiveness skills, using the procedures you’ve learned in this book. You’ll learn a lot about them — and yourself — in the process.
Independence may be the single most important life issue we all face; certainly, it is the core around which growing up revolves. Some rebelliousness is normal and healthy for teenagers and facilitates their developing independence. Families with dominant parents and inhibited teenagers may find that the teens’ necessary steps toward independent adulthood are delayed.
Unresolved ties with parents — unfinished work from the teen years — sometimes restricts independence in the lives of adults of all ages. In our experience, an appropriately assertive approach by the adult “child” can clear the air, make the situation clear to the parent, and allow for the needed expression of feelings on both sides.
New York psychologists Janet Wolfe and Iris Fodor (1975) offer five steps toward a new assertive mother-daughter relationship, useful for anyone who is dealing with this issue:
“Whatever happened to ‘respect for your elders’?” a seventy-two-year-old retired engineer asked recently. “In my generation, kids held the door for older people. Now they crash through first and knock down anybody in their way. Same thing when you’re standing in a line, driving down the freeway, or trying to find a seat on the bus. ‘Me first, and the devil take the hindmost.’”
Yep. Those of us who are “of a certain age” pretty much have to look out for ourselves, like everyone else. It’s not likely these days that anyone — at least in the United States — will step aside or hold the door or say, “You first,” unless you’re obviously disabled. So what’s a senior to do?
Well, you know the answer you’re likely to get from us: “When it’s really important to you, be assertive!”
And the approach to assertiveness we would advise for seniors doesn’t really differ from what we’ve been saying throughout this book. The real difference comes in terms of the situations older people are likely to experience. In addition to the usual encounters with store clerks, social groups, pushy salespeople, noisy neighbors, and so on, seniors find themselves patronized by medical office personnel, ignored by politicians, neglected by their adult children, mistreated by caregivers, and dismissed by the courts when they seek contact with grandchildren after an ugly divorce. (For an entertaining look at some of the issues and joys of aging, we recommend Eugenie Wheeler’s book The Time of Your Life.)
Some of these circumstances — the political and medical establishments come to mind — are not likely to change much, despite your best assertive efforts. You may, however, be able to teach your adult children and caregivers a thing or two about responding to your needs. We suggest you start by reviewing your goals. What are you after? Do you really want to change the world or just to live better in your corner of it? Do you particularly want your children to spend more time with you, or are you just lonely for any company?
In one interesting study, researchers at the University of Waterloo in Ontario examined seniors’ responses in a conversation with health care workers (Ryan, Anas, and Friedman 2006). Seniors who responded assertively were evaluated as more competent than those who were passive or aggressive.
The many challenges seniors confront that have implications for assertive action include such situations as:
If you are old enough to belong to AARP, or maybe even to collect Social Security, we urge you to add such situations to your list of goals for assertiveness. Review the fundamentals of assertive behavior in chapter 5 and the step-by-step process in chapter 13, and apply those principles and procedures to situations that are specific to seniors.
Finally, consider this: it’s not all about you! We urge our own gray-haired generation to keep in mind a couple of caveats:
Let us sum up our discussion of assertiveness in the family this way:
Change in family systems is more difficult, more time and energy consuming, and potentially more risky (families can and do break up) than is change in individual behavior. We encourage you to evaluate carefully, to proceed slowly, to involve everyone openly, to avoid coercion, to tolerate failure, and to remember that nobody and no approach is perfect! Do what you can to develop respectful assertive and caring relationships within your family and beyond.