Avoiding Assumptions

Last month, for my husband’s birthday, all eight grandkids came into town to celebrate. We had a Lego robotics party where all nine of the “kids” (because of course the birthday boy got in on the action!) built robots that then competed with each other in a ring over several rounds. At the conclusion of each round, the last remaining robot in the ring was declared the winner, and the child who had built the winning robot received a glittery, plastic “first place” necklace, like a string of Mardi Gras beads. It took some serious concentration, Lego engineering, and imagination to both build the robots and then win. During an early round, I caught a glance of Sadie, the youngest, and I could not believe the serious expression of determination on her face. She was listening to the instructors intently and making decisions that were well beyond her years. (Did I mention that Sadie’s favorite color is “sparkly” and that all she wanted for her fifth birthday was to get her hair done so she looked like her doll, Samantha?)

As we watched Sadie compete successfully against all of her older cousins and siblings and win first prize I remarked, clearly a bit too loudly, that “perhaps Sadie will become an engineer and we will all look back on this day as the time she gave up her dream of becoming a princess.” She looked over at me with a rather (ok, VERY) critical face and stated, “Baba, I just wanted to win the sparkly necklace!” I was so sure I had understood the internal motivations behind her actions and behavior, but I was proven wrong by Sadie. And through the look on her face and the tone of her voice, I was told so in no uncertain terms.  

Asking Questions (rather than assuming) Leads to Understanding

After the party, we chatted about this incident and how often we assume we understand someone’s internal motivation and why they do what they do or say what they say. But the truth is much more complicated: unless we ask someone why they did something, or what an experience has meant to them, or what they are hoping to achieve, we are left leading and operating with our own biases and wishes. And this way of being and interacting can often be less helpful to those we care about. It turns out that even Sadie’s motivations were more complicated. If you ask her now, after the party, what she remembers, she is insistent that she wanted to beat her cousins in the robot race and win the necklace. Motivations are, indeed complicated; people, it turns out are, too.

I shared this story at a presentation last week. I usually start my talks with a personal story since I believe if you can’t laugh at yourself, you miss a lot of opportunities to have a good time! People in the room really gave me a hard time for the way that I had only been able to think of Sadie in simple terms—as a future engineer, instead of a princess-engineer, or an engineer who likes sparkly things. That she could be both didn’t cross my mind at the time.

Caregiving Tips to Fill the Gap between Assuming and Understanding

What I didn’t expect was the comment from a care partner whose husband is living with dementia. She related the story to her own situation and how she often makes assumptions about her husband’s behaviors, comments, and reactions. Other participants reflected on how often they make assumptions about the motivation or the resulting behavior in their caregiving roles. As more stories were being told and more questions being asked, we talked about the challenges of being a care partner: we are trying our best to understand our role, our own feelings, and the feelings and needs of those we love and care for who have complicated and diverse ways of communicating and expressing their wishes. Understood this way, we can see what a complicated task we have before us!

I reminded folks about the caregiver tips on our website—especially the ones about understanding behaviors and communication strategies. While the group expressed appreciation for them, they also let us know that they needed something else—something shorter that could be easily printed, shared and accessed and, as one woman remarked, “stuffed in my purse.” We know it can take multiple ideas to find what “works” in a given situation. Having handy grab and go tips can quickly fill the gap between assuming and understanding.

They were “spot on.” As a result, we have created an introductory library of what we call Quick Tips. Quick Tips are short (mostly two-page) introductions to topics that encourage care partners to put their toe in the water, try new or be reminded of known approaches. We chose the 7 topics in most demand. As you will see, they can be distributed with ease to other family members, care partners or others in the community. And, yes, I tried “stuffing one in my purse” and there is plenty of room. More information on each topic can be found in the Caregiver Tools section.  Please wander around the Quick Tips section, print them out, share them, try them and let us know what other topics would make good “Quick Tips.” We will do our very best to respond as quickly as possible.

And, for those of you still wondering what I got Sadie Lady for her birthday, I found her some princess Legos. Maybe she can have it all after all!