给校长的信
感觉当妈无师自通成了心理学家。
Dear Ms. Chloe,
Thank you for following up with the email. I really appreciate the patience and kindness Ms. Lucy and you showed Alexis, and I'd like to say something more on the issue we discussed in our last call.
As you have noticed, Alexis sometimes has difficulty acknowledging her wrongdoings. I am also aware of the situation at home. By my observation, she is not being deliberately dishonest when she does that, it is more like she has constructed a different reality in her mind and firmly believes that the “constructed reality” is what actually happended. Therefore, when she insists on “her reality”, she feels that she is telling the truth and being honest. As a result, she does not respond well when being called “dishonest” under such circumstances, and she sometimes lash out or clings to her narrative more closely in defiance.
I think this is her psychological machanism in dealing with the world when it is not to her liking. For instance, she found on my phone an app to create customized Santa videos and realized that the video she received the year before was not given to her by Santa, but she quickly made up this narrative that Santa approved what I did so he didn't do extra work in sending her another video. She told me if I hadn't customized a video for her, then Santa would have done that for her. Up to this day, she still firmly believes that's what happened.
I'm not saying that this mechanism is the right way to deal with negative things in her life, I merely want to point out that it exists. Actually we had a long talk about this last evening. I showed her a short video in which a bunch of people made to test whether kids are always honest, and they put band-aids on the faces of little kids when they are napping. When these kids wake up, some of them start to tell adults stories like they fell down before the nap or was punched by other kids. The conclusion of that video was obviously that kids are not always “honest”, but I told her that's not the whole story, and explaind how they constructed other realities in their minds to rationalize the existence of the band-aids. Afterwards, I asked her whether she realized that she tended to do that at times, and after some thinking she asked me, “I'm getting better though, am I?”
I believe that was a moment of breakthrough because she finally realized what she was doing and started to accept that. I didn't ask her to simply abandon what her mind tells her when bad things happen, because I am also concerned that she will go to the other extreme and start to question herself all the time. Therefore, I asked if she can do this in the future: when her narrative of an incident contradicts with some one else's, pause and think again. Ask herself, “Am I doing it again? Am I creating another reality in my head?” She responded positively to my suggestion, and I hope this is a good start to break her from past behavior.
I absolutely agree that we should be consistent in our way supporting the kids, and that is why I feel it's important for me to share this with you. I'd also like to ask you that if some other incidents happen in school and she starts to build another narrative in her mind, could you kindly remind her to take a step back and think again, instead of calling out on the dishonest behavior? Maybe she will respond to that a bit more positively.
Thank you again for your patience. I hope I explained everything clearly and we can reach some mutual understanding concering how to support Alexis.
Sincerely, Kathy