My 9 year old step daughter is currently learning, and, it is fair to say, struggling a little, to tie the shoe laces on her first pair of lace-up shoes, feeling more and more grown up by the minute.

In comes Mum, this morning to find the shoes discarded in the hallway, laces still tied.

‘Don’t you remember what the shoe sales lady told you about untying your laces before you take your shoes off’, she said angrily as she rushed around helping our daughter to get ready for school (ASSUMPTION AND JUDGEMENT).

Her mother and I were convinced that our daughter had come home tired, pulled off her shoes, without untying the laces and discarded them in the hallway (ASSUMPTION).

We proceeded to give her a hard time. All her defensive protestations failed to convince us.(JUDGEMENT AND POSITION)

After all, wouldn’t it have been just like her to do this. She can be a bit lazy sometimes and it was the end of a school day and she was excited about seeing her Nanny who had collected her from school.

BUT how wrong we were (ASSUMPTION).

She was eventually allowed to spluttered out, with an air of self justification and wrongful indignation, that she had correctly removed her shoes and then shown her Nanny how well she could tie her laces whilst not wearing them! She had simply left them tied up.

We had been wrong!

We had made an assumption without checking.

We had judged her on how we had expected her to behave and not offered her the benefit of the doubt.

We had reacted based on our assumption causing her to react in response

We had created a closed interactive loop based on misperception, assumption, judgement, reaction, counter-reaction, defence….

We could simply have said;

“Darling why are your laces still tied, you know what the shoe lady recommended”

In turn, she would simply have explained what have happened, avoiding our anger, her reaction, our counter reaction and her tears.

Of course, we apologised properly.

We all need to be more mindful and curious about how we respond to each other. Mindful of ourselves and others.

Each of us is responsible for the part we play in our relationship interactions and any conflict that ensues.

I break down this need into 3 parts. The need to;

1. Be continually observant of self and others. This could be about remaining self aware and self observant of our emotional states and tendencies to react and curious about what causes us to react in this way helping us to achieve a higher level of self understanding.

2. Be open and honest with we people we interact with and ourselves (not judgemental),

3. Be as objective as we can when it comes to reflecting on past conflict and the part we played in it which creates the reflective distance we often need before we can truly see and feel the impact of our behaviour on others.

This is reflection in action!