So What Was a Neat Perspective Shifter for You?

Living in another country for two years.

Having a child who is an extrovert.

Teaching for years and seeing trends come and go.

Focusing on the humanity rather than the opinions.

Seeing multiple relatives acquire Alzheimer's.

Having three children from the same gene pool with dramatically different strengths and weaknesses.

:)

A friend of mine has a Kindergarten daughter. Her teacher asked the children one day "what country has the largest population?", the child's response was heaven. While that is not technically correct, heaven is not a country, I felt that was a profound statement coming from a 5 year old.

M

First, that column was very sweet. We always have a couple 'big kids' show up at the door and usually their costumes are pretty cool.

My husband bought two bags of candy, thinking conservatively, but I also picked up a few handfuls of the Brach's variety just in case....

As for perspective shift-- it was a small one. A couple of days ago I subbed at my son's old preschool... it's been a while, to say the least. One of the kids that day seemed peeved that I wasn't the usual teacher and that I didn't know the drill. (Their preschool's rules flux with the kids and their abilities, if you know what I mean, so they are now allowing some play that they couldn't before as this is a more cautious group.) Today, I went to pick up something I'd left behind and he called me over. "H.!? Do you remember me? When we were playing hidden treasure? Do you remember what the treasure was?"

I was floored that this kid was so excited to see me. "A golden cape" I told him, "And you also had that shimmering Superman shirt under there too." The boys were impressed that I remembered, and they were playing the same game, hiding a cape under the pillows in the loft and then peeking at it. He hadn't remembered any of the friction or my mistakes he had called me on, just that moment when we were having fun. It was very nice!

PS: I realized later that you asked about something I had *read*. Oops. I should put up a blog post of all of the many things I have read that have changed how I viewed my world. Great question, P..

I learned about this from a friend only when we were adults. He wasn't one to come over for playdates to ours much. When he did, my mom served up chocolate covered donuts and a glass of milk as an after school treat. He tells me that he still remembers that and that it was a paradigm shifter for him. He had always envisioned donuts as being a breakfast food. (hey we were children of the 70s). When it was served by my mother as an after school snack, it opened his eyes to re-thinking breakfast, re-thinking food "rules" and to re-thinking categorizations of many things. We were still grade school aged at the time.

Glad a donut snack can work that kind of magic.

best to you and yours,
F. B.

i've never minded older kids trick-or-treating. if they go to the trouble of putting on a costume, i'll give 'em candy.
moot point out here, but my boys grew up in a terrific ToT neighborhood where we were mobbed.
if they don't have a costume i still give out candy. but i make more of a fuss over the ones who've made the effort.
as for the perspective shifter, it was flylady. my first reaction to it was disappointment. after all the big hoopla, i went there and found it was........cleaning tips?
meh.
but one thing i got out of it that stuck forever was cleaning my sinks and countertops every night. my mornings are so much nicer when they begin with my walking into a clean kitchen.
:) khairete
S.

The newspaper.
Our county has a policy - no one under 13 can trick or treat.
I also have friends who live in suburbia (I'm out in the country) and they have many kids stop by for trick or treating.
Generally they know the kids in their neighborhood and will not give out to strangers.
Why?
They get carloads of inner city kids swooping down on the neighborhoods.
Their ride waits in the car while the thugs make the rounds, smash a few pumpkins, pick on other kids, then into the car they go so they can go hit another neighborhood.
It ruins Halloween for a lot of people.

Not so much from reading anything, but recently I took a class up at the local community college. Apprehensive at first because I feared that at 49, I would be the oldest (and I was :) and that the younger people wouldn't be too into my being there. turns out.. those were MY own insecurities.. the younger crowd liked having me there and liked talking to me... that saying of you can make a hell of a heaven and a heaven of a hell.. its our minds that make it so... It's so true... for the most part, I think people are good natured and if you are friendly, most will be friendly back...

I read that some children won't say thank you etc. due to labels... I'm so tired of labels. A kid can give a look of gratitude or say it in sign language. America is erring way too far on this PC trend.

What have I read, that changed perspective? BPDfamily.com.
My mil has this mental illness. Before we had a name for it, it was deeply mystifying and painful and inexplicable. We had not idea what to do because all the "normal" ways you try to relate to someone doesn't work.
People would constantly be telling us how to fix something or the logical thing to do, or what we "ought" to do. It's what I would have thought also, if the situation were reversed. It left us clueless and guilty and ashamed and powerless because those things simply didn't work.

The website is for the family members of people with this disorder. It took all these pieces of behavior and made them make sense. It helped us protect ourselves emotionally. It gave us tools for communication and boundaries. It let us ignore all the people who thought they knew better.
It let us wait out some painful behavior of relatives who believed her lies.
Information is powerful.

Believe it or not, I actually make our bed every morning now. Since acquiring three more cats in the last year (and at one point having 10(!) in the house for 12 weeks, due to our one adult female getting out and getting pg a week before she was going to get spade grr...) I just don't want them on my sheets during the day.
Reading about the women here who make their beds and why gave me a different perspective.

Also, when I first became a homemaker, I super super hated housework. Then my mother bought me a book (can't remember the name) that was all about finding the zen in housework. It totally changed the way I looked at it and I don't hate it so much now.

Fifty Shades of Grey totally changed my outlook on sex.
Seriously.
(I've since discovered there are much better books than those, but...)

It has made me much more adventurous in bed, and made me open to thing I never would have considered before. I've learned a lot about myself and what I like/need as a result of those books, and my hubby gets to reap the benefits!

hhhmmm for me? it wasn't reading something it was living in Belgium and Germany during Operation Desert Storm....made me appreciate being an American even more.

I liked the article. It was sweet!