When six year old Lucy Magnum was bitten by a shark as she boogie-boarded in the shallow waters off the North Carolina coast, she was understandably upset. Thanks to her parents, who acted quickly to get her out of the water and applied pressure to the wound, Doctor's were able to save her leg.
Recovering from her wounds in the hospital, Lucy angrily declared: "I hate sharks. I like dolphins way better." But once her parents explained that the shark had simply made a mistake and didn't know she was a human when it bit her, her attitude changed: "I don't care that the shark bit me," she told her mother. "I forgive him."
This cute and amusing story nicely pictures an important principle of psychological healing. The way you picture and explain an experience to a child can completely alter their emotional reaction to it.
People can behave like sharks sometimes in that they often make mistakes that can cause others a great deal of pain and suffering. Yet how you explain those things -- as either the product of intentional malice or the misunderstanding and imperfections of flawed humans -- will determine whether a child finds a quick psychological recovery, or stays stuck in a ruminative state of negative emotions that stays with them well into the future.
Children will suffer injustices in their lives at the hands of others. Yet when they do, parents routinely cause their child far more harm than the event they are concerned about by modeling reactions that teach them a negative, stigmatizing or destructive way of relating to that event. Remember this: while experiences are limited in nature, a child's interpretation of that experience, which is largely garnered by the attitude of adults, will endure well into the future. Whether a child continues to be bothered by a negative experience often has little to do with the event itself, and everything with how parents teach them to relate to that event.
As this shark mistook this child for a source of food, sometimes people make mistakes in the way they behave. Just as it feels worse to believe a mean-spirited shark is out to deliberately ruin our day at the beach by trying to eat you, it feels worse when parents react to their child's bad experiences with explanations of intentional malice from others. So be very careful how you teach children to see their world. You want them to live where good people sometimes make mistakes, not in a world where people are always out to get them.
Let's examine several ways to apply this story to our own lives.
Look for the innocence in others.
As we live our lives, we should always look for the good in others, as opposed to searching for injustice. As Lucy's anger against the shark disappeared when her parents explained a more innocent view of the shark's action, so to can our own anger dissipate when we try to understand the innocence in other people's actions. Psychiatrist Dr. Richard Carlson says, "I have found that, if you look deeply enough, you can almost always see the innocence in other people as well as in potentially frustrating situation. When you do, you will become a more patient and peaceful person . . ." *
Distinguishing between result and intent.
Do not assume that other people do hurtful things with the intent of hurting us. This is rarely the case. The hurt we cause one another is almost always an accidental outcome, just like the shark bites.
Understanding the needs of others.
Remember that behind every hurtful deed is an unfulfilled need. Just like hungry sharks that take a bite out of little girls, the hurtful behavior of others is always driven by a desire to fill some perceived need. We should always recognize their needs and desires as legitimate and worthwhile, even if some of the ways they go about trying to fulfill that need are not. Every action of every person is merely an attempt to either seek pleasure or avoid pain. Just as it's silly to hold a grudge against an animal that mistakes us for a meal, it's rather pointless to hold grudges against people who are merely trying to go about the job of securing happiness in the best way they know how at that particular time.
* Reference: Dr. Richard Carlson in 'Don't Sweat the Small Stuff', New York: Hyperion Press, 1977
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