Case Study on Communicating in
Raising Grandchildren
Jeffery sat at the
dinner table forking dots into his mashed potatoes. Joe noticed the perplexed look on Jeffery’s
face and said to him, “What you see is what you get.” Jeffery looked up in bewilderment, wondering
what his grandfather was talking about.
Sylvia piped in, “Leave the boy alone, anybody can see he has a lot on his
mind. He’s probably considering what the
minister said in his sermon this morning.”
Jeffery rolled his eyes and returned to playing with his food. Sylvia was looking for an opportunity to
reinforce her beliefs on Jeffery. So now
weather or not Jeffery’s contemplative mood was related to the sermon or not,
Sylvia was intent on driving home the points of the pastor’s sermon she felt
Jeffery should have gotten. Looking at
Jeffery she went on to ask, “So, how did you feel about the minister’s remarks
that “God used Joseph’s time in Egypt as a slave and the time he was in prison
to mature him and teach a self-centered, spoiled boy how to forgive his
brothers?” No response from Jeffery, so
Sylvia continued, “Seems to me that a little hardship in life can be good for a
person if it teaches them to be a better person. On the other hand, it’s not good for a person
to dwell on their past to the point that they can’t get on with their life,
don’t you agree?” Still silence. “If Joseph had . . .” “For Pete’s sake,
Grandma, what do you want me to do, agree with you that I’m spoiled, I don’t
have a job, I don’t have any plans for my life but to sit around and feel sorry
for myself.” “Well, maybe if you
forgave your mother like Joseph forgave his brother’s you could get past all
this, after all . . .” This time Joe
interrupted Sylvia, “I agree with what you said the first time Dear. . .
something about leaving the boy alone.”
Actually, Jeffery had
not been thinking about the sermon, but he had been seriously considering what
he should do with his life. His
relationship with Lousia was getting more serious. After they first started dating he grew tired
of her and tried to offend her in ways that would make her go away. But he couldn’t shake her loose. She was the most persistent girl he had ever
met. And now after a few months of her
always being around he realized he was really enjoying her company. She was always positive no matter how
negative the situation, always optimistic in the face of defeat, always
cheerful no matter how anybody treated her.
When she wasn’t around Jeffery found himself thinking about what Lousia
would say if she were here in his situation.
Realizing he missed her when she wasn’t around he decided he wanted her
around all the time. But how could he
marry her if he couldn’t support her? He
couldn’t ask her to move in with his grandparent’s because they would never
have any privacy. On the other hand
Jeffery didn’t want to find just any job because he wanted to do something
important, to discover his life’s calling.
Through the remainder of
the meal Sylvia was itching to find more ways to express her religious views
she had gleamed from this morning’s sermon to Jeffery. But the one thing she did not try was to
listen to Jeffery’s thoughts. Her
efforts to share her religious beliefs were one sided because she was the only
one interested in talking about it.
Over the years neither
Joe nor Sylvia had attempted to understand Jeffery’s point of view so they
often missed out on discovering the difference between his reality and their
reality. They were still convinced that
Jeffery had no interest in making anything of his life. When in reality, Jeffery was in need of good
advice about how to move forward with his life.
Advice he didn’t get because they didn’t want him to communicate his
personal feelings. They didn’t feel they
needed to hear them because, after all, they assumed that they already knew
them.
Sylvia often does not
take the effort to understand other people’s feelings before she preaches to
them. It is easier to stereotype and
classify other people and make predictions and generalizations about them
rather than understand what is going on in the “reality” of that other person’s
world.
Discussion Questions: