Side-eye. On Judgment and being Judgmental.
My daughter and I love Dachshunds. If we could have one, we would. A quick pick-me-up scroll readily feeds us reels of these adorable little dogs doing crazy things. One thing they seem to be impressive at, is the ‘side-eye’ look of judgment. And the sideways eyeroll has become shorthand at home for ‘judging’.
Judging – the preserve of the superior mind, or superior rank…It’s a status-oriented activity. Occupying higher ground – moral, social, situational, political. In toxic hierarchies, its where people consolidate their belonging by undermining, bringing others down, or into disrepute. Classic ‘mean-girl’ or ‘mean-boy’ behaviour. And it’s everywhere – on playgrounds, in common-rooms, in offices and board-rooms. It’s in the interface between ‘reality’ TV and our home-lives, and it’s everywhere online.
Being judged by others can be a wonderful thing when we are acknowledged for the good we are capable of, or being judged on the basis of our efforts – whether or not we achieved our aims. Being judged wanting by others can be a devastation and is something we strenuously avoid -especially in the teenage years.
Being judgmental, can be a toxic habit that is an easy social win, and a dangerous snare. Judgmental gossip feels good in the moment – it binds people together but it makes a fickle basis for friendship. When we think about being role models for the young people in our lives, its worth taking a pause to consider how we show up.
Over these past few months, I have been thinking a great deal about leadership in speeches for various conferences. How we lead our lives, and how we might lead others for a better, greater good. We are living through times now where leadership on the world stage is often seeming volatile, unfiltered, judgmental, and self-oriented. The world is feels less safe and more polarised as a result.
It’s entertaining to see Gossip Girl played out in High School on TV. It’s not so cool to feel the same dynamics being played out in high political office. It’s awful to think that our own kids might be on the giving or receiving end of toxic energy, judgment, gossip.
In the work I do on healthy relationships, and living lives in connection, my thoughts often centre on the power of 1. The power we have as individuals to make a difference in other people’s lives. As psychologists would name it: our locus of control.
Are we showing up in a way that is likeable? With an integrated mind, able to listen, read the room, include, appreciate? Are we leaders who lift other people up? Or status-driven, competing, depleting value, detracting? And in doing so – what are we teaching others? Are we victims who bring other people down – as Brene Brown memorably phrased it ‘candle-blower-outers’? What is getting modelled to our kids?
Whether we are CEOs of large businesses, School leaders, teachers, line managers, team members, or as parents, friends, partners, we all of us have a part to play, large or small as leaders in our relational lives. Each of us, in every interaction we have, we have the power to elevate…or not.
As Jayson Gaddis writes in Getting Back to Zero, we all have the scope to be in the victim or author position in the way we handle friction, differences with others. I would extend that to authorship in the ways that we walk our world and come in and out of each other’s lives.
We have choice, when we walk into a shop, café, or retail outlet, about the mark we make on the people who serve us. We can be an uplifting presence – engaging in eye contact, speaking with warmth and human interest, acknowledging and valuing the others who share our world – even if it’s only for an instant or two.
I have noticed how hard it is to show up consistently as someone who is looking to see the good in things. It’s something I try to do, but often find myself lacking…And the world we live in is constantly bringing the pressure of comparison and competition to bear.
We feel it for ourselves and we fear it on behalf of our children. Sometimes it is hard to resist the sideways glance at their contemporaries and very easy to find the FOM(CM)O…(Fear of my child missing out)…Then when our kid comes home with their wonky rendition of Macchu Piccchu in Shortbread form, we side-eye the comparison with the school’s photos on Instagram.
Many of our favourite shows on TV are ones that invite observation and judgment and taking sides. Notice the proliferation of debate around this. Shows like Bake-off, The Apprentice, The Traitors – they have after-shows, or podcasts where fans and pundits bring their analysis. Gogglebox is another, where we watch people watch TV and make judgments. Quite often the funniest of these are also the cattiest.
Right now, we are loving the Apprentice – it’s a great one for watching with teens. Observing the group dynamics, the outliers of arrogance, the game-players and underminers and those whose egos are their downfall. For kids at school, it’s a great way for them to see some of the issues they are wrestling with played out on the screen and justice – mostly – being served episode by episode. I have to say we love it! It takes about twice as long to view because we’re hitting the pause button to anticipate disaster or replay the delicious eyerolling.
This show is full of characters we love to hate. It’s comforting to sit back and feel that we would never be like them. Equally, we watch the clothes, the fashions, the hair, the botox, the hastily assembled camera-ready looks coming together.
The allure of financial success is foregrounded; the enormous house, the glitz, the glamour, the limousines, and – recent addition – the showcase of extravagant sunglasses modelled by Lord Sugar’s business gurus.
As a would be reformed mean-girl / gossip girl myself, I am watching myself more vigilantly. Our 15-year-old daughter is also taking in the values on display, and looking at what’s normed on screen – she’s also taking in what’s normed by our reactions. I feel this keenly. My parents were of a generation which rarely held back from personal comments about looks, weight, and appearances. Even now, in her care home, my Mum has strong opinions on what’s what in terms of skirt length and fashion.
These days I am trying to be more mindful about the ‘rules’ I have picked up and don’t want to be her inheritance. I am looking at the way shows like these make me go into less generous mindsets…as Terry Real would say – ‘One up’ – where I feel superior to the person on screen and deliver a classic take-down which a younger me would have had ready to hand.
Or ‘One down’ – where envy makes me feel somehow cast down by someone else’s success. I am careful to try to notice that, and be more generous, to be able to recognise and celebrate the beauty in others where at other times, I might have withheld that praise or appreciation of what others are capable of as humans, rather than as rivals or competitors.
When I speak about toxic relationships in school – how to empower young people to be effective in self-advocacy and make healthy, happy bonds with peers, not so much is said about the anatomy of ‘meanness’. What it is and where the urge to relentlessly dominate others comes from.
If we want to equip those who suffer in the wake of this behaviour, we need to swim against the tide of these pervasive judgmental and status-driven ways of being. We need to norm appreciating, uplifting, valuing others – and teach our kids to recognise that a lack of generosity in relationships, a need to dominate, someone who inflicts suffering, someone who is anti-inclusion, someone who engages in ‘othering’ others – is someone who is struggling. That there is something wrong there.
I attended a talk by Jeremy Hunter, Associate Professor at the Claremont Graduate University, and Director of the Executive Mind Institute, where he was talking about how we can nurture vitality in ourselves, and then as leaders, or as individuals, radiate vitality in the way we respond and interact with others. He described it as a ‘rigorous and challenging practice’. How do we nurture our ability to have this capacity to be open, curious, and generous in the way we show up in the world?
At a recent parent conference, I was talking about how as parents we can give our kids better social, emotional and friendships skills which are lagging in our current post-pandemic digitally-involved lifestyle.
These were the top five things that I feel can make a difference -one family, one child at a time…
- For parents to get good at noticing and speaking to the good in life and in the strengths our children show. This capacity to notice, value, grow the good, and absorb it, is in short supply leading to anxious imbalances. Be the person who is a good noticer of whatever is good. Be on the lookout for understanding and compassion and goodness in others.
- For us as parents to manage our human tendency to focus on deficits – things that are going wrong, the marks our kids didn’t get…to have a very performance-driven approach.
- Don’t ask what other kids got on their tests. Be the parent who backs off from benchmarking or comparing. Focus on them only. How they did, what it means to them, what they did, what they learned, how they feel about it, what they want next time…Similarly if a story comes home about someone being nasty to them, or to a friend, don’t start playing relationship Poirot. Get your kid to extend their thinking about the impact of what happened, the importance of the moment, the potential underlying motivations, their wants and needs in the residual impact of the event…Develop their capacity for empathy and reflective thinking, allow them to articulate what they stand for with increasing clarity. In these ways we’re nurturing what is intrinsic to their sense of self in the world.
- Don’t be the parent who judges and provides damning commentary on others. Whether it’s some celebrity with a wardrobe disaster, or diagnosing one of their peers and their fundamental flaw. Save that for Chardonnay time with any other grownup who might be interested (good luck with that). You don’t help your kids by piling on to judge other people and other people’s kids. When you do this you stoke their own inner critic voice, you teach them that mistakes are high stakes and your disapproval (and their worst fear) is ready to hand – meaning their capacity to be authentic and vulnerable and messy in your eyes is impaired.
- That parents are able to be present to and allowing of the full range our children’s emotions. This doesn’t mean fixing feelings – but debriefing effectively and compassionately in order to help release and resolution. Kids learn both directly and indirectly that a number of key feelings are not welcomed. When they don’t know what to do with those feelings, they act them out – often on other kids. Siblings, or other children or teens lower down the social pecking order.
- That parents need to expect, conflict or counterwill as a natural developmental life force. And to get good at boundaries, negotiation, conflict resolution. Kids need to exert autonomy as they grow. It’s a fundamental psychological need. This means they do need to say no to us, in order for their yeses to have meaning and authenticity. Kids who don’t have sufficient autonomy in their relationship with caregivers will act out their coping strategies in their peer-group lives. They may become overly controlling in their friendships, for instance.
- Our kids learn what they live in their homelife. This is where they spend around two thirds of their formative years from 0-18. They then go out into the world and live what they have learned. So as parents, we have to think about what is modelled at home in what we focus on. How we lead. Are we shopoholics with empty bags? Focusing on their missing pieces…Looking for the missing pieces that will somehow make things whole? Whatever those ingredients are – things to buy, things to consume, or achievements…
We live in a world where it is very very easy to be ungenerous with our time, our attention, our good will. It is so easy to be judgmental and vent online about others. Partial truths or perceived errors become evidential rather than something subject to circumstance and nuance.
This is happening all the time, online, offline, on the world stage up and in our smaller interactions – whether it’s at the school gates or at coffee with other parents, offloading about some element of school life
Thinking about this as parents and as teachers, I believe this practice is more important than ever. I often repeat the famous quotation by Richard Fulgham: don’t worry that your kids don’t listen to you…worry that they are watching you.
Consider Coaching if…
- You feel you are trapped in power struggles or conflict loops in family life
- You are experiencing a lot of self-judgment and self-doubt as a parent
- You are concerned that your child or teen is becoming overly controlling or judgmental in their interactions with peers or siblings
- You want to free yourself and your family from intergenerational problems eg to do with handling conflict.
- You need a non-judgmental space to consider the expectations and impact of your own emotionally immature parents / your children’s grandparents.
Check out http://wearebreakingtherules.co.uk who are also on Instagram. A wonderfully life affirming collective looking at psychology and nutritional therapy…
Linked articles:
https://emmagleadhill.com/articles/choose-respect-including-and-especially-for-yourself/
https://mailchi.mp/emmagleadhill/what-do-you-do-when-you-think-your-childs-bff-is-bad-news
https://mailchi.mp/cac1650ed12b/preventative-and-protective-parenting-anti-bullying-week-17357126
