Imagine a scenario - Pat and Chris go out to dinner. Chris is a refugee from abroad and lives in a state of poverty. Pat is getting to know Chris, so she invites her out. However, when the bill comes, Chris insists on paying for the meal. (Trust me. It has to do with dementia.)
Knowing how little money Chris has, Pat offers several times to pay, but Chris will not give in.
Wanting to help in some way, Pat offers to leave the tip. But this time, Chris says that it is not necessary to leave a tip.
Knowing that Chris is not familiar with the American culture, Pat insists on the importance of leaving a tip. Chris becomes irritated.
On the way home, Chris cannot find her keys. Together, they look everywhere but they cannot find the keys. Chris declares that she will ask a neighbor to break down her apartment door.
Pat suggests that Chris come home with her instead and return in the morning when the office is open to get new copies of the keys. Chris says no.
Pat explains that breaking down the door will result in a huge additional cost. Chris says no.
Pat pleads with Chris to reconsider. Chris says, “You can leave now. I no longer want to be friends with you.”
As an American, this can be a very confusing scene. We are so logic-oriented that we cannot see why Chris is so offended by Pat’s attempts to help through reasoning and explanation.
The Peel
Before Ben ever got dementia, I was equally baffled by my interactions with him. If I tried to explain something to him, he would get angry at me. If I corrected his understanding of the rules of a game, he would say I was “too competitive”. If I closed the windows that he had left open in the middle of winter, he called me controlling. I could not understand what I was doing to cause him to treat me with such contempt.
Then he got dementia. Everyone knows that a person’s ability to reason dissolves when they get dementia. The number one rule when dealing with dementia is Don’t Argue!
One day, we were going out. When I tried to lock the door, he prevented me. I began to reason with him about the importance of locking the door. The more I gave my arguments, the more agitated he became. He physically blocked the door so that I couldn’t lock it. The end result was a big blow-up.
The Fruit
From that experience, I began to understand the big picture. Both Chris and Ben respond to honor, not logic. My attempts to reason with either of them (yes, I was Pat in the story) were actually acts of shame in their eyes. Due to cultural differences, gender nuances, or mental capacities, we are often faced with the choice to honor with fibs or shame with facts.
Pat’s reasoning was correct, but she shamed Chris by exposing her poverty and her ignorance. She could have honored Chris by thanking her for dinner and indicating that Chris was adult enough to make her own decisions regarding her keys. On the way out of the restaurant, she could have discreetly left cash on the table for the tip without Chris seeing her.
And instead of shaming Ben with arguments about leaving the house unlocked, it would have been better to honor his decision to his face. Then once he got in the car, I could have “suddenly remembered” something I needed to get from inside the house. Retrieving a water bottle would have given me the opportunity to lock the house without disgracing Ben.
Don’t Argue! means Don’t worry about the facts! Show honor however you can - listening for 20 minutes to the same complaint you’ve heard before, bending the rules of the game, using reams of paper to print documents that don’t make sense, letting him think Sunny-D is as good as OJ, having compassion about cell phones being so messed up, etc. We create battles by pressing the truth. We create peace by showing honor. After the battles, we can fix any issues and sooth our egos.
Lord, I have used logic my entire life to deal with situations. Please teach me how to show honor first. Let me let go of being correct and instead patiently show love.
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