Stuck In the Middle with You

Hello,

Several years ago, I was in a conversation with a group of school principals when one of them said something that has stayed with me ever since.

"We should not be judging the words or actions of children as if they are the words or actions of adults."

At the time, I nodded in agreement, but the more I've thought about that statement, the more I've realized it applies to far more than children.

What struck me about his comment was the assumption hidden inside it. When adults evaluate a child's behavior, we often do so through an adult lens. We assume the child possesses the same knowledge, understanding, experiences, and awareness that we do. Then we judge the behavior accordingly.

The problem, of course, is that they don't. If that is true of children, who are just adults in smaller bodies, the same is true of adults, who are just children in bigger bodies.

The Lens Behind the Behavior

One day, when my oldest son, Nolan, was in kindergarten, he came home and asked my husband, Howard, a question.

"What is your favorite finger?"

Howard immediately sensed danger. Nolan rode the bus filled with students ranging from kindergarten through fifth grade, which meant he was exposed to a wide range of language, behaviors, gestures, and social norms he did not always understand.

Trying to redirect the conversation, he started naming his fingers. He liked his thumb. He liked his pinky. He really liked his pointer finger. Then he held up his ring finger and explained that it was special because it was where he wore the ring Mommy had given him when they got married.

Nolan listened carefully. Then he held up his middle finger. "I like this finger." It was obvious that Nolan understood he was doing something provocative. What was equally obvious was that he had no idea why.

He had seen older students use the gesture on the bus. He recognized that it carried some kind of social power. He knew it got reactions. What he did not understand was its meaning. Nolan was not intentionally insulting his father. He was experimenting with something he had observed. The behavior was real. The understanding behind the behavior was very different from what an adult would assume.

So we explained it. We talked about why people find the gesture offensive and why it is not something we do. The consequence was not disciplinary because he did not yet understand what he was doing. The consequence was educational. Once he understood, expectations changed.

The behavior mattered. The understanding behind the behavior mattered too. It was exactly what the principal was talking about when he said we should not judge the words or actions of children as if they were the words or actions of adults.

"I Wouldn't Do That" Versus "They Should Know Better"

I think this is where many of us get ourselves into trouble. We observe behavior and quickly assign meaning to it. Then we respond as though our interpretation is the only possible explanation.

One of the most common examples sounds something like this: "I would never do that." That statement is perfectly reasonable. It tells me something about my values, my experiences, my knowledge, and my preferences. The trouble begins when we take the next step. "They should know better."

At first glance, those statements appear related, but they are not. "I would never do that" tells me something about my lens. It reveals my values, experiences, understanding, and assumptions. "They should know better" is something entirely different. It assumes that the other person has access to the same experiences, understands the situation the same way I do, and arrived at the same information I did.

Sometimes that assumption is correct. Sometimes it is not. The problem is that we often decide before we know. Nolan taught me that lesson more than once.

Same Behavior, Different Meaning

Two years later, we received a phone call from school because Nolan had drawn a picture of Abraham Lincoln with a gun and blood. Lincoln had clearly been shot, and the school was understandably concerned about a kindergartner drawing images involving guns and violence.

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When we looked at the picture, however, we immediately recognized something that was invisible in the drawing itself. At the time, Nolan was fascinated by money. His curiosity about money led him to questions about presidents, which eventually led him to Abraham Lincoln and his assassination. What looked like violence was actually curiosity. Nolan wasn't glorifying violence. He was processing history.

The concern from the school was understandable because they only had access to the drawing itself. What they could not see was the chain of thinking that produced it. What looked concerning through one lens looked entirely different through another.

The Story We Tell Ourselves

Stephen Covey shares a story in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People that illustrates this idea perfectly.

He describes sitting on a subway when a father boarded with several children. The children were loud, disruptive, and bothering everyone around them while the father appeared completely disengaged. Like many of us would, Covey found himself becoming increasingly irritated. He began creating a story about what he was observing. The father was inattentive. The children were out of control. Somebody needed to do something.

Eventually, Covey spoke to the father and suggested that he might do something to control his children. The father looked up and quietly responded that he supposed he should. Then he explained that they had just come from the hospital where the children's mother had died. He wasn't sure what to think, and he guessed the children didn't know how to handle it either.

What is interesting about that story is that nothing about the children's behavior changed. They were still loud. They were still disruptive. They were still running around the subway car. The only thing that changed was the information available to Covey.

Before speaking with the father, he interpreted the behavior as evidence of poor parenting. After learning about the death of the children's mother, he interpreted the exact same behavior through a completely different lens.

I think that happens more often than we care to admit. A colleague misses a deadline, and we decide they are irresponsible. A parent does not return a phone call, and we decide they do not care. A student refuses to complete work, and we decide they are lazy. A person makes a choice we strongly disagree with, and we decide they should know better because we would know better. In each of those situations, we may be right about the behavior while being completely wrong about the story behind it.

Accountability Without Assumption

None of this means behavior should be ignored. Understanding is not excusing. Context is not immunity. Nolan still needed to learn that the middle finger was offensive. The school was right to ask questions about his drawing. The children on the subway were still disrupting other passengers.

The point is not that intent erases impact. The point is that understanding the thinking behind the behavior helps us choose a response that teaches, supports, repairs, or redirects rather than simply punishes. In fact, that is the original meaning of discipline. The word comes from a root meaning "to teach" or "to instruct." Discipline, at its best, is not about punishment. It is about helping someone learn and grow.

There is a difference between accountability and assumption. Accountability says, "This happened, and we need to address it." Assumption says, "This happened, and I already know why." The first leaves room for learning. The second often leaves room only for labeling.

This is one reason I have always appreciated Covey's fifth habit: seek first to understand, then to be understood. It reminds us that effective relationships begin with curiosity rather than assumption.

Likewise, the Platinum Rule expands on the more familiar Golden Rule. Rather than treating others the way we would want to be treated, it encourages us to treat others the way they want to be treated. Both ideas require us to recognize that our lens is not universal. The world as I experience it is not necessarily the world as you experience it.

What I find most challenging is resisting the urge to finish someone else's story for them. When information is missing, our brains are remarkably efficient at supplying it. We connect dots that may not belong together and become increasingly confident in conclusions we have not actually verified. Curiosity interrupts that process. It creates space for questions before judgments and grace before certainty.

The Middle Finger We Give Ourselves

Most of us are not Nolan on the bus anymore. We are the adults now. We are the ones observing the gesture, the drawing, the missed deadline, the unanswered email, and the decision we would never make.

The question is whether we will rush to assign meaning or take the time to wonder what lens produced the behavior in the first place. Because every time we assume we already know the whole story, we risk making the same mistake we tried so hard to avoid when Nolan was five years old. And in the process, we may discover that the person we are giving the middle finger to is ourselves.

~Heather

P.S. Some stories entertain. Others consume your attention completely.

That is why my Catch of the Week this week is the Netflix series Dark. It reminded me of Lost in the sense that it is layered with mysteries, connections, and seemingly unrelated events. The difference is that Dark feels like it knew exactly where it was going from the very beginning.

The show is a masterclass in stories within stories. Characters you think you understand become part of larger narratives. Events that seem isolated reveal themselves to be deeply connected. Every thread eventually leads somewhere meaningful.

What I appreciated most was the confidence of the storytelling. The writers trusted viewers to pay attention, sit with uncertainty, and gradually piece things together. The payoff is a rare feeling that the complexity was earned rather than manufactured.

Just be prepared to occasionally pause an episode and ask yourself, "Wait... who is that again?" It is part of the experience.

P.P.S. Please remember to...

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