u/CraigScott999

I’ve never seen a stupid kid;
I’ve seen a kid who sometimes did things I didn’t understand
Or things in ways, I hadn’t planned;
I’ve seen a kid who hadn’t seen the same places where I had been,
But he was not a stupid kid.
Before you call him stupid, think, was he a stupid kid or did he just know different things than you did?

— Ruth Bebermeyer
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Often times we blend an observation - the facts of a situation - with our own opinion. Here is an example: Say your friend spent all of Saturday helping a neighbor put a new roof on their house. An observation mixed with an evaluation would sound like this: “You are going to wear yourself out!” An observation that is separate from an evaluation would look like this: “When I see you spending all day Saturday roofing your neighbor’s house and I know how hard you work during the week too, I feel worried that you might wear yourself out.”

In the first example, the speaker judges their friend’s behavior: “You are going to wear yourself out.” In the second example, only the facts are acknowledged (the friend helped a neighbor roof their house on Saturday) and acknowledges the speaker’s own fears about how this might affect their friend’s life.

The difference is subtle, but the results are not. Often times, when we mix an evaluation and observation, we promote defensiveness in other people. When we are able to separate the two, we are more likely to promote an open dialogue about our concerns.

Be aware of your evaluations and observations today. Try to separate the two to create more opportunities for open dialogue.

When we submit to doing something solely for the purpose of avoiding punishment, our attention is distracted from the value of the action itself . . . If a worker’s performance is promoted by fear of punishment, the job gets done, but morale suffers; sooner or later, productivity will decrease. — Marshall B. Rosenberg, Ph.D.

Our society spends a great deal of time punishing people for their misdeeds. This is punitive use of force. It stems from a belief that people behave in certain ways because they are “bad” or “evil”, and therefore they need to be punished to atone for their actions.

Suppose you see your child run into a busy street. If you pull them from the street and berate them for being careless, you are using punitive force because your focus is on judging their behavior.

Protective use of force, on the other hand, stems from the belief that sometimes people do things because they don’t know any better. It represents a desire to prevent injury or injustice. It focuses on protecting people’s rights and well-being, not judging their behavior. If you use protective force you would still grab your child and pull them to safety, but it’s solely because you wanted to protect them.

When we punish people, they focus on avoiding the consequences of their actions, not on their values in relation to their actions and solely focusing on avoiding consequences is unlikely to encourage change.

Focus on protective use of force today by adopting an attitude that people sometimes do things that cause them pain because they don’t know any better.