Why saying ‘thank you’ matters so much

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express feelings, gratitude, Jane Butler, thanks, words

I cannot say enough good about thanks.

At the bus stop today, which I visit regularly to stay in touch with my youngest neighbors, I showed the kids how to get my dog to do tricks in exchange for treats. One little girl was so charmed as my dog dutifully came to her on command, that she said to me quite directly, “You come back tomorrow and we’ll do this again.” Once the older kids were on the bus and she was headed back home her mom insisted she and her very young brother say thank you to me. She didn’t let them off the hook when it seemed a little difficult. They both knew, they’d been down this road before with mom, and they said their thanks. I thanked them in return for being great friends to me and my dog.

The parents of my piano students do the same. After every lesson they instruct their children to say thank you to me. I in turn thank them for working hard and for being great students. Kids don’t always want to do this. When my kids were little we called it a ‘proper thank you’ and it required that you look directly into the eyes of the person you were addressing. It matters to me that we acknowledge one another.

Friends of our stopped by last night to say thanks for a favor we’d done them. They stayed and chatted and let us know what it all meant to them. We shared in the joy of having a connection. We said thanks back for being great guests and for acknowledging our favor.

The reason I bring all this up is because saying thanks is part of how we get to know ourselves. It is a significant means by which children learn who they are. My MANTRA! Helping kids know who they are! It is important to me because it is the reason kids ever leave home and get jobs. They are itching to go and be who they are and live the life of a grown-up after all those years of being a kid and just thinking about it.

Saying thank you is a way to become aware of what they like. They are grateful and they say it out loud. Parents help kids know this about themselves. Know what they like. Consciously. Out loud. And this in turn helps them get to know who they are. And then they often hear back why the other person is grateful for THEM. Bonus that kids then learn even more about themselves. Teaching children to be grateful, to show gratitude, to not take the world, even neighbors and piano teachers, for granted, is a gift to your child because it is a doorway to helping them learn who they are. If they know who they are they have a chance of figuring out what to study in high school, in college, and then into the work world. Knowing who they are helps them direct themselves in life.

There are a whole bunch of other benefits to saying thank you, like bringing a positive spirit to those you interact with, like character building which is shown to be a key to doing well in school, like inspiring others to be conscious of themselves, like teaching children how to treat their parents once they themselves have become teenagers and then adults, and on and on. And there are, of course, many additional ways to learn who you are. But saying thank you is a cultural norm that I love to see young parents teaching their children. It is good for children, it is good for parents, and it is good for us all.

West Chester Story Slam winners polar opposites

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being yourself, change, express feelings, Jane Butler, writing

I went to the West Chester Story Slam again last night to watch and learn what it is to tell your story. I am also sizing up the competition so I can be prepared to compete in the Grand Slam storytelling event in November. I am eligible for that since I am this year’s January winner (see my video tab above) and all the year’s winners compete against each other at the end of the year. It gave me a chance last night to talk to the winner and ask him about his process. Even though he is about as smooth as they come, easily rattling off his story and hilariously, I’ll add, it turns out he preps just like I do. He writes and he rehearses and he does all the things I was sure I was doing as extra work that ‘real’ storytellers surely do not have to do.

But the real winner of the evening was a gentleman I’d never seen there before. He stood and told a spellbinding story of childhood sexual abuse of a sickening proportion. I went looking for this guy just afterward but I think he left quickly because it had to have been a monumental feat to do what he did. Michael Trageser told a poignant, eloquent, heart-wrenching story that ended with him admitting he is wracked as an adult by guilt and shame and cannot carry on in an adult role because of his haunting, debilitating past. I wanted to find this man and tell him how proud I was of him for standing up there and telling his story. It’s hard to tell your story when it isn’t about your life having been ruined at the age of five, so to do what he did, I am sure, was excruciating. I wanted to let him know that by telling his story he starts conversations among people that then allows light to come to a topic that is usually hidden in the dark. I wanted to tell him that although he feels he cannot carry on in an adult role, he is indeed doing something only adults can do, and that is to bear witness to a childhood stolen, for all the kids out there too young to speak for themselves. I wanted to tell him to keep telling his story, to contribute as an adult to the rescue of children who are so victimized. Being brave enough to tell your story is scary, and this guy did exactly what he should do, and exactly what only he can do.

I would have liked to have talked to this fellow. I would have liked to have urged him to forgive himself for the life that happened to him, and to encourage him to continue to share his story as a way to heal himself and help others. I really liked that guy.

Minus the sexy parts, again

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being yourself, boyfriends, change, dreams coming true, express feelings, Jane Butler, joy, listening, mother, relationship, words

I posted this a few years ago but not much has changed in terms of my teenage boy challenging me.

I just started in cataloging all the boys and men I’d ever dated. We were alone in the car with 90 minutes in front of us, just my teenage boy and myself, so I started in. I knew of no other way to impress upon him the concerns I had about his relationship with his current girlfriend. You don’t tell teenagers directly what you want because they in turn, in keeping with their job in life to separate from you after a childhood of deliberate bonding, reject it. So the next best thing is to open myself up and share my personal experiences.

Turns out my litany of boyfriends, and there were not that many really, seemed a little interesting. And I say that not because of anything my son said, instead it was because of what he didn’t say. He didn’t say a word. For over an hour he said nothing as I detailed the reasons why one guy was good and another not, from my perspective as as teen and young adult, back in the day. I explained about the one who dropped cigarette ash on my rug, the one who was a high school dropout but doted on me like I was a queen so I stayed with him for five years, the one who had tons of money and a Porsche but his friends didn’t like him, the one who couldn’t ever find time for me, and those that had only one thing on their minds. I told him the entire experience of meeting his father and how we developed our relationship and why I liked him better than the others even though at first it was not so clear. I told it all minus the sexy parts. And he remained silent. But I could tell he was listening, and he even had a few questions, particularly about his father and me. He said it was cool that Dad really liked me even though I wasn’t that sure at first. He liked that part. The tenacity of his father, in love. Hmmmm.

The point is I needed him to know that staying with a girl for years, because it is easier than breaking up, is not that great an idea, and why. I threw in some examples amidst the smokescreen.

A few months later he broke up with his girlfriend. I was surprised, that is, until he pointed out that it was me who told him to do it.

Guess what, I was thinking about you

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being yourself, express feelings, inspire, Jane Butler, teacher, writing

Funny thing happened today in English class. My Goth friend, who earlier this week literally needed to be woken up from a sound sleep, suddenly was acting oddly interested. I hadn’t planned on it but I told him I’d been thinking about him outside of class. I’d been talking about him to a friend, I told him, for no reason other than that he is a standout in class for having fallen asleep so often.

Now normally all I’ve ever seen of this guy is the crown of his head, and a glimpse of his pale skin glancing past his long black hair. He’s usually hunched over and usually withdrawn, and usually doesn’t talk,

I guess I felt so encouraged with him looking directly at me, in response to the revelation that I’d been thinking about him out of class, that I just kept going. I told him the whole story of my friend, the person I’d told about my sleeping Goth student. I guess I told them both about each other, actually. And I didn’t hold back. My friend, I told my student, surprised me by telling me about how he too once was an army boot and flak jacket wearing teen who was headed down the wrong path, getting arrested and doing drugs, not that I presumed to know what my Goth friend did outside of class.  But this had in hindsight been a kind of reaction to the long slow painful dismantling of his family over the course of many years. Turns out his dad left the family and his mom was so deeply grief-stricken as to appear mentally ill, and it dragged out for ten years before it felt like it ended.

Checking out, getting into trouble, these were ways to carry on in the face of disaster. My friend said he landed in a foster care situation and then his father did something unusual for fathers who leave their kids, he came back and got his wayward son into boarding school. From there he made it to college and onto a path that was healthier. I told all this to my student in a long exposition I hadn’t planned, and so I laughed at how us adults, this friend of mine and me too, project our experiences and understanding onto others. How he had suggested that maybe my Goth student was like him, reacting to issues at home. I had said, who knows, maybe.

By now my Goth student was quite present with me. I wrapped up my monologue and explained about the power of words and why we bother with the writing assignment before us. About how it’s hard to let kids know the value of learning, and how to communicate through writing, but this assignment is, unfortunately, how we do it. I told him no matter how crappy life is or what you do or do not have, communicating with words can get you all kinds of chances – jobs, college entrance, scholarships, girls, apologies, everything. So let’s humor the system, I proposed, and work on this essay together.

That’s when all of a sudden, he started talking, stringing whole sentences together, and looking right at me.

Teach your kids to be honest about how they feel

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being yourself, express feelings, family, Jane Butler, love, Thanksgiving

Here’s why we must teach our children to be honest about how they feel, not squelching emotions and denying the truth. When kids grow up they must use this ability to survive the holidays. Take a look at what I mean:

I went back into scared kid mode this Thanksgiving! It happened, fittingly, when my last baby tooth broke. Yes, I still have one baby tooth that never came out, and the day after Thanksgiving the hors d’ouvres did it in. I have been dreading this my whole adult life, avoiding the inevitable.

There are many turns in this story but the end result is that I was unnerved by both this experience and the ensuing laughing and joking about my tooth problem by the gathered family. I left the room angrily telling people to stop talking to me like this. I went up to my room and looked in the mirror.  I cried. I felt awful.  But eventually I went back downstairs.

By the time I returned to the group people were mad and leaving! I had ruined what had been up until my tooth broke, about the most fun time I’ve had with family ever. We’d been to a terrific show that had us all laughing and howling with delight. And we were happy to be together, as always.

The little kid in me was a mess, though. I had acted out of the fear of the dental work to come and the embarrassment of a missing tooth (right in front) and who knows what else. And I had ruined everything. People were mad.

I pleaded with my sister-in-law not to leave but she said I had been rude and they had to go. I was shocked. I had no idea my feelings could have this effect. Thankfully, I blurted out the truth. I felt afraid of dental work and the embarrassment of a missing tooth. That I had been dreading it my whole life. That I didn’t mean to snap at everyone or leave the group angrily. That it was just me being scared. Upset by the joking. Sorry everybody, I said. It isn’t you, it is me being afraid.

That changed everything. Coats came off, folks would put the dinner together for me. I was told to go upstairs and recover, then get down here and join in the group. And by the way, we love you.

What??? This never happens. People understanding? My little kid mode swears that adults don’t understand, or say they love me. That’s the experience my little self had. People didn’t understand and people didn’t say they loved me.

So, this Thanksgiving weekend, after I’d screwed up pretty bad, I risked telling the truth. Being vulnerable to the rejection I am most familiar with, at least, that is when I am being scared and acting like a child. I was taught through years of training that my problems didn’t matter, my fears were unwarranted and wrong. I was taught to reject my own feelings as invalid and unimportant, and it has taken a lifetime to get that straightened out.

As miserable as this situation was, it worked out well because I told the truth about how I was feeling.

I aim to teach all my kids to do the same.

A six-year old’s first impression

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being yourself, express feelings, Jane Butler, piano lessons, relationship, teacher, trust

The mother of one of my piano students came to me last week and asked if we might start her six-year old boy on lessons on a trial basis. We’d do a fifteen-minute lesson and see how he took to it. After all, he’d been asking for lessons and copying his sister for weeks now.

So, after his sister’s lesson I sat down with him at the piano and we started. All we do at the first lesson is touch every key and name it, spell some words on the keys like DAD and CAB, and then I usually do some silly quizzes about which hand is which and which finger is which. It gives us a chance to get to know one another and to introduce the piano, and it is easy.

In just fifteen minutes, I can decide whether the student is ready and able to take lessons. For instance, this little boy stayed focused and engaged with the process the whole time. He didn’t get frustrated, and he did know which hand was which. It’s hard to teach kids piano if they are unsure which is the left hand or if they keep looking back at their mom to see if they are getting the right answers. But he was willing to trust in the process and allowed a fifteen-minute relationship with me all for the sake of learning piano. They say first impressions are real so I am counting on it, and I feel this guy is ready.

The crazy thing about this experience is what he did next because it is a reminder that kids are just as capable as adults of sizing up the situation. His first impression is valid, too. After we were finished and I told him he’d done a good job, he ran right over to his mother. I got a perfect look at his back as he spoke to her.  In a clear and loud voice, as if I couldn’t hear him he told her, “I want piano lessons.”

Kids are great. They know how they feel. And there is such a short line between how they feel and what they say without a lot of smoke and distraction in-between, that if the adults in their lives are good stewards of that we can trust them to be honest with us for a long time.

My secret life as a writer

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express feelings, Jane Butler, writing

Writing is a way to get something that is in you, out of you. 

There once was a time, thirty-five years ago, when I went to work every day and marveled at how possible it was to do virtually nothing all day and have it go unnoticed. What I did instead of working was sit at my desk trying to get rid of my extreme feelings and still act normal, because I guess I didn’t feel awful enough to not care about appearances anymore. I just sat at my desk writing. Writing is a way to get a thing that is not exactly concrete, from inside your body to outside your body. Apparently the act of putting a representation of it on a piece of paper feels cathartic. Writing is a way to unload feelings and express them because they no longer reside in your body and mind, but instead on a piece of paper where they can be seen by someone else. You are no longer alone if you put it on a piece of paper. So that’s what I did. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote.

The weird thing is though, that I was so miserable, and so insecure, that I dared not write anything anyone would ever see lest they judge it or be upset by it or react. I couldn’t risk letting anyone know what I was thinking, or feeling because who knew what terrible thing would happen then. But yet I kept writing and writing because I had to. I had to get it out. So instead of writing words and stringing sentences together that might mean something, I wrote only the first letter of each word that I was thinking at the time. No kidding, just pages and pages of pure gibberish made up of the first letter of each word I would have written if I’d had the nerve to say out loud on paper my thoughts. Instead they were kind of encrypted. To protect the innocent.

I was guilty of nothing more than having extreme feelings I couldn’t manage without some way to cope. So writing it was. I coped through writing. I probably ate or burned the potentially crackable coded pages I wrote endlessly before I found more productive ways to carry on.

So all of this is to say that I feel better now.  The proof of that is in the idea that I am working on a book about my life where I write down and share all kinds of things I once felt sure were too secret to say.

 

For every kid who wants a sibling – wish I had a sister

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express feelings, Jane Butler, parents, relationship, sister

It was all I could do to wait my turn to say my thoughts today at the Quaker Meeting. All that was on my mind as I sat in silence was the phone call I had with my sister yesterday. Here’s roughly what I said.

I want to tell the story of my sister. It is a short story. She is a few years older than I am so I was about sixteen and she was about eighteen when she ran away from home. She stuck out her thumb and hiked across the country. She headed for Alaska and eventually ended up at the very end of the island chain. She moved to Oregon after that and has been there for the past forty years. She doesn’t want to know me anymore. Once a year I call her on her birthday and sometimes she calls me on my birthday. So we talk twice a year sometimes. Last time I saw her was five years ago when we both went to our father’s funeral, but I haven’t seen her much in all the forty years she’s been gone. Yesterday she called me back after I waited a week to hear from her. I’d left her birthday messages on her answering machine at home, at her work and on her personal cell phone two times, so I’d left six messages. After we talked a little bit and it was time to go I had one more thing to say. I told her I’d been worried she wouldn’t call me back since it had taken her so long to return the calls. I told her that between that and the fact that whenever I ask if she’d like to get together she always says ‘no’, I was starting to get the idea that she just didn’t want to see me anymore. I asked her, ‘Do you even want to see me again?’ Her answer was, ‘Not really’.

That’s when I told her I was pretty sure I hadn’t done anything to deserve her shunning me. That I’d been a nice sister and that her not wanting to see me was probably more about our past than anything else. I said I thought it had to do with our parents being difficult, and our childhoods being difficult, and that the fact that she’d run from them didn’t really have to do with me. I told her all that.

My parents were not terrible people. They were good folks but they unwittingly fostered a distrust among their children that lives on today. I’m telling this story because I am always in favor of happy childhoods and for people realizing the power they have as parents to make good childhoods for their kids. I am here to say that it’s best to know what you’re doing when you raise kids because if you get it wrong there can be some pretty painful long-lasting results.

Dad asleep on the couch meets Javert from Les Miserables….?

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express feelings, Father's Day, Jane Butler, parents, relationship, writing

If you are a Les Miserables fan you may appreciate this Father’s Day gift our daughter gave my husband yesterday that had his face turning red, him going mute, and wiping tears off his nose.

When the kids were small I had them start a little bound notebook full of birthday and Father’s Day wishes that they would write in instead of buying him cards. The pages are filled with drawings and stickers and scrawlings, and eventually block printing and then script handwriting, all espousing his virtues.

This year, pasted in the book, are the lyrics to our sixteen-year old daughter’s gift, an audio file. And I know it took her all day to make. The audio file was of her singing, and she doesn’t do that usually. HE is the one who sings, and often, and quite well. It is his secret skill that only those of us in this family know about. He sings really well. So this time, SHE sang to him, and she sang his favorite song. It’s the one he is always breaking into at any provocation,’Stars’ from Les Miserables, the one where Javert vows to the night sky that he will fulfill his mission in life. Only she changed all the words to proclaim her own mission in life, one that results from her father’s mission in life.

Here it is, with both of their permission:

(to the tune of ‘Stars’ from Les Miserables:

There, out on the sofa
My father lies sleeping
Out like a light
Out like a log
Mom be my witness
He’s worked very hard
In Malvern today
In Malvern today

He deserves to have rest
He works so hard for his kin
And those who obey the words of my dad
They always will win
But if they hear
When my father snores
They’ll run away
They’ll run away!

Mike,
With your witicisms
Scarce to be counted
Filling the dinner table
With laughing and love
You are the perfect dad
Silent and sure
Keeping watch over me
Keeping watch over me

You want to help me do well
You want to help me succeed
In sports, school, or life as a whole
You’re there to explain
And if I need to ask you for help
You never complain!

And so it is sung and so it is written
In your Father’s Day chronicle
That I love you so very much
Each day I live

Please let me help him
That I may praise him
In all that I do
I will never rest
Till then
This I swear
This I swear by the stars!

God was friendly again today as usual

Tags

being yourself, earth, express feelings, higher power, inspire, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler

As I meet people at the Philadelphia Writer’s Conference this weekend I feel renewed confidence in my intuition since after all it is just that that led me there, so accordingly it is time to post this gratitude to the earth once more which I first posted in February.

I grew up isolated and in the woods so I am always looking to nature for signs of communication. You know, a breeze or a thunderbolt or a special crash of a wave in answer to my question, whether posed aloud or in my heart. And so today is no different, as I have found my whole life, it is good to discuss my problems with the earth. I do not know why, but no one else as far as I can see up and down the beach, wanted to walk along the sand at seven in the morning in February except my pup, who heartily agreed when I asked her. So there I was again, under my own personal sky. I looked out to God and said, “I have stood on these shores countless times in my life, and I have looked out at your grandeur and your beauty over and over. You are always here no matter how many years go by. No matter how many times I look to you to show me the way, no matter how many times I look to you to hear me and see me and know me, and no matter what, you are still out there being solid and present and beautiful. Nothing much seems to change with you, gorgeous sunrise above the earth, but boy, my world sure has changed.”

That’s when I saw the sun, shrouded by gray stormy clouds, peaking out a bit in answer. Oh, yes, I thought to myself, that is how it is, my earth always responds. I can always trust that. Well what about all the troubles I feel, the pains about getting out of my isolation, and trusting that the world can take the frightened person that hides in me? How perfect is it that I feel ready to share myself more, at last, and not let fears rule my life? How perfect is it that you have been standing ready for me to say these words, because you have been sharing yourself and your perfect glory for eons already, so you know what it is. I walked along some more feeding treats to my pup every time she came back from a dig at a crab hole to let me know she is still my friend for life. The clouds shifted and a few tears flew into the wind. I stopped, and as is common for me, I addressed the world directly, after all I could not feel safer than when entirely completely all alone, and I said thank you. Thank you for still being out there for me even though so many people and ideas and hopes and dreams have come and gone. I know I can do this. I know I can carry on and be myself out in the world despite the confusion I feel.

That’s when the sun glided bright suddenly forcing clouds aside to say directly to me in a broad and winning smile, “Yes.”

And that’s when I laughed out loud, because I am sure that one footstep washed away by the sand at a time, I am getting to precisely where I have always been going.